For SaaS companies, anything that helps them create a positive customer experience, with low human effort is fantastic news. The success of SaaSbusinesses heavily depends on building tong-term loyalty amongst their customers, and most are struggling to keep upwith a customer base that places increasing importance on customer support availability.

One solution is to simply hire more agents and train them to assist your customers, but there is a better way.

Chatbots are useful in many industries, but chatbots for SaaS can offer instant support to your customers without requiring the availabilityof a human agent. They can also provide input during the sales process, attracting more qualified leads for your business while your sales reps are busy.

And the best part? You don’t have to build your new chatbot from scratch. In this article, we’ll talk about chatbots, their benefits for your SaaS business, and how Freshchat can help you create your very own chatbot.

What is a chatbot for SaaS?

A chatbot is an AI-powered assistant with the ability to have conversations with prospects and customers whether that’s on the website or within the app itself. Instead of conversing with a human customer service representative, customers type in questions to the chatbot’s interface and receive automated answers in real-time.

That’s why 14% of software businesses already have customers that have engaged with chatbots, with more looking at chatbots as a strategic enhancement of their customer communication plans moving forward.

Benefits of SaaS chatbots

Let’s take a look at some of the key benefits of investing in a chatbot service.

Answer customer questions instantly

Without a chatbot, the typical customer behavior when encountering a problem is to search for an answer online before turning to your support representative. This interaction requires customers to wait for a representative to become available, whereas a chatbot has been configured to provide instant answers.

Customers can easily get back to whatever they were doing with your software without having to wait for your customer service team.

Offer self-service

Along with knowledge bases, chatbots enable your business to offer self-service support to your customers by answering FAQs. This means customers can resolve their problems without contacting a support agent and, simultaneously, become empowered to learn more about your software.

When your SaaS business has taken the time to develop helpful self-service resources, customers are more satisfied with the support experience.

Enhance customer satisfaction

When a chatbot is available for their needs, SaaS customers feel an increased sense of satisfaction with your business. You have invested in customer service, making help for your customers always available. Customers are likely to be on your website or app anyway, and you are ensuring that they feel supported in using your software.

Lighten the load on customer support

It goes without saying that chatbots can deflect common customer service inquiries. This means your support agents have fewer tickets to deal with, so they can focus their energies on dealing with the more complex problems with your software.

Your business needs to invest fewer resources in scaling a customer support team to deal with a growing customer base. Using chatbots can reduce customer service costs by eliminating the need to hire more support personnel.

Reduce customer churn

If a customer doesn’t find an immediate answer to their question or problem and frequently has to wait around for support, they are more likely to churn. Chatbots help you create effortless experiences that ensure customers remain engaged with your software and are available 24/7, unlike your human agents.

In an increasingly competitive environment, chatbots are an important differentiator for your SaaS business.

Reach customers on their desired channel of communication

80% of customers have had a positive experience with chatbots.² Plus, 67% of global customers interacted with a chatbot within the last twelve months, making this a very popular communication channel.³

What can SaaS chatbots be used for?

 

Now you have a sense of why chatbots can prove so beneficial for your business, let’s look at how you can actually use them to best effect.

Provide pre-sales product information

SaaS chatbots can be configured to schedule demos and offer product trials to move customers through your sales funnel. They can answer customer questions about pricing, capabilities of the software, or ROI expected from migrating to the tool. Chatbots can detect when a customer has a more detailed question and connect them with a sales representative.

Streamline the onboarding experience

Customers who first sign up for your product are in need of support to get started. Chatbots can augment the onboarding process by suggesting features for them to try or recommend self-service content that might be useful.

Offer post-sale customer help

After you have won over your new customer, they will likely need assistance along the way. Chatbots can provide customer support without needing an agent's intervention and help prevent churn among your customer base as they’re getting to know your software.

Introduce new product features

When you roll out new versions of your software, there are likely to be new features that help customers gain more value from your product. Chatbots can make customers aware of new features while using the product and boost customer satisfaction.

Find cross-sell and upsell moments

Chatbots can do the work of your sales representative by alerting customers to new products they have not yet tried. In this way, chatbots can increase the lifetime value of your customers by increasing cross-sells and upsells.

How chatbots can improve the SaaS customer experience

Employing a chatbot in your SaaS business means you can go beyond the typical low-touch model of most B2B SaaS. The perfect customer journey is one where a customer never has to contact a support representative, but, if they do, chatbots can provide more personal interaction that increases customer acquisition and reduces churn.

Providing chatbot supports means customers feel your company is looking after them without you having to invest in lots of extra resources. The bot answers their questions and suggests relevant materials, which means customers never have to wait in a queue.

When customers receive this kind of instant and helpful support from your chatbot, they are more satisfied with your SaaS brand overall. It’s quite clear that you have invested in the customer experience and are striving to make them happy.

Why Freshchat is the best solution for your SaaS business

Did you know that when you invest in Freshchat live chat software, you have access to an in-built chatbot  that can provide better support for your customers? Freshchat’s chatbot builder is a no-code solution that enables you to create a unique chatbot for your SaaS business.

With Freshchat, you can support your customers in multiple languages with a multilingual chatbot. Freshchat has the ability to detect your customer’s language settings and interact in their preferred language. With multilingual chatbots, you can cater to customers from different cultures and significantly widen your customer base.

Freshchat chatbots can detect customer intent and form intelligent conversations that have been programmed using the builder. You can use setup flows to guide your customers through the troubleshooting process and help them reach a resolution.

You can improve your workflows by setting up APIs with the Freshchat bot that trigger while in conversation with your customers, fetching and pushing data to third-party applications, and improving the customer experience.

The bot is fully customizable with the ability to use the CSS editor to change the appearance of the widget to match your brand. Your chatbot will come across as a seamless addition to your SaaS brand and instill confidence in your customers.

Analytics allow you to measure your bot’s performance and generate reports so you can improve your chatbot over time. This makes your bots more efficient and improves their ability to help customers.

Conclusion

Deploying a chatbot for your SaaS business is a no-brainer. While chatbots are dealing with repetitive customer queries and guiding customers to success, you can focus on building experiences that your customers will love. It’s even more criticalfor SaaS businesses to invest in a chatbot as they conductmost of their operations through their website and app.

Chatbots can augment the customer experience and ensure customers remain engaged with your software, freeing up your team to devote their time to other activities. Chatbots can also intervene in the pre-sales process, earning you new business without you having to lift a finger. With their near-human-like communication abilities, chatbots are a great assistant to your team.