Humans vs Chatbots is the most common phrase we’ve been hearing in recent times in the customer service industry. This can also be interpreted as Livechat vs Chatbots as in 90% of the cases, livechat is the medium for humans to go about with customer service.
To start things off, Chatbots are said to be successful in decreasing customer service costs by upto 30% which we believe if true, is a very significant sum for businesses to save and allocate to other departments. This can be seen as indispensable but it’s not.
Chatbots are said to be lame and no-creative, unable to solve complex problems etc.,
When it comes to livechat, a recent survey stated that 73% of all the people they surveyed prefer Live Chats over surveys. Also, While using livechat the companies have an added advantage as their agents can improvise accordingly which the chatbots cannot do. Humans can also solve complex problems without any hassle.
With so much conflicting data available, it has become hard to take a side in this Livechat vs Chatbots debate.
So let’s check out if this comparison of Livechat vs Chatbots makes any logical sense or not? Any conclusions we can draw?
We will start with the basics here,
What is a chatbot?
A Chatbot is artificial intelligence (AI) driven software that can simulate a human-like conversation with a user in natural language. Chatbots are often described as one of the most promising new technologies to gain popularity in the 21st century. They are said to be the one capable of simplifying the interaction between humans and machines.
What is a Livechat?
A Livechat software allows human agents to connect and talk to visitors and prospective customers on a business website. It is said to be an excellent tool to improve customer service & engagement while also lowering support costs. Using a livechat can also help in having a personalized customer experience or better brand interaction with a user.
Livechat vs Chatbots Current scenario:
If we consider the current scenario, we can say without a blink that livechat is way ahead of both. But considering chatbots are relatively new and not yet that advanced, this is expected.
Let’s talk numbers for a moment here, from the data provided by livechatinc we can see that out of the total chats that took place around 3% were handled through chats that had chatbots and the remaining 97% were processed solely processed through Live Chat.
But those times are changing. According to recent estimates, more than 67% of consumers worldwide used a chatbot for customer support in the past year and it is expected that 85% of all customer interactions will be handled without a human agent in the coming years with chatbots having a major chunk.
So let’s just drill down to the advantages and disadvantages of both the mediums and see if we can take a side in this “Livechat vs Chatbots” argument.
The battle of Livechat vs Chatbots.
Chatbot advantages:
- Availability: Humans need rest but chatbots don’t. Unlike humans, chatbots are available 24/7. This is a great thing as chatbots can be perfect associates for clients in need of support outside the working hours.
- Fewer errors: As chatbots use AI for processing information and with a lot of information stored upfront, we can say the forced errors here are very low compared to humans.
- Scalability: As a chatbot is pre-built and it having the capability to handle any number of concurrent requests, scalability is never an issue as long we have dedicated servers with required configuration.
- Faster Responses: Chatbots are significantly faster than livechat as in livechat information is being processed manually by a human, whereas in chatbots it is completely automated giving significantly faster responses.
- Cost-effective: One of the main reasons chatbots are attracting businesses is their cost. They are one of the most cost-effective ROI driven business tools to come out in the 21st century.
Chatbot disadvantages:
Some of the disadvantages of chatbot include.
- Chatbots simply cannot be humans and they Lack the fluency, friendly nature you have while you communicate with a human
- chatbots have several limitations when it comes to understanding the natural flow of human dialogues and grasping the context of user queries
- We can say decision making as one of the main disadvantages of chatbots as they simply cannot take decisions on any minute scale.
Livechat advantages:
- Answering Complex Queries: Chatbots are programmed & can only answer questions which are predefined. This is a great advantage for live chat agents as they can provide rational answers and solutions for complex queries right away.
- Spelling and other errors: Chatbots are very sensitive to spells as they are pre-programmed and might not understand wrong-spelt words. While a Human-agent Can comprehend and adapt to a spelling mistake with no trouble.
- Versatility: This nature of creativity helps humans to adapt to changes very quickly without being “programmed”. Meaning, humans can quickly respond with intelligence to new questions when poised, unlike chatbots.
- Credibility: This is solely based on the trust factor. You don’t trust business communication if it is not done through a human as simple as that. When businesses have real-time interaction with its clients it also increases the trust factor.
Livechat disadvantages:
Some of the disadvantages of chatbot include.
- Queueing of customers when live agents are busy is a major hassle. While chatbots can handle ‘n’ number of requests concurrently.
- Scalability is a big issue since scaling is directly proportional to recruiting more people which increases costs exponentially.
- The query resolution time is very slow compared to chatbots as humans have to think and search before they give the answer.
From the above information we just laid out, it is clear that both chatbots and livechat have significant advantages to outperform each-other and also disadvantages that give a huge competitive edge to the other.
And, after all the fuss we made above, you might be wondering, Are chatbots ever going to replace livechat in business communication?
Our simple answer, NO. Chatbots are never going to replace humans when it comes to Customer support or business communication.
We believe they are going to work in tandem complementing each other by making use of multiple advantages both the technologies have and providing the customer with impeccable customer support.
What should you do?
By this point, you might have understood that your business should use both chatbots and live chat to provide top-class customer service.
Anyone with experience in the customer service industry can tell you that the majority of the customer requests are Level 1, common and simple. These requests eat up a major chunk of your human agents time.
So it is better to use chatbots for resolving easy and repeated requests while your human agents can be assigned for more complex issues.
Conclusion:
All we can say here is that businesses can get the most benefits if chatbots and livechat are used in tandem. To ensure maximum performance of your customer support, use chatbots to answer easy and common questions and divert all the complicated requests to humans.
We can make it clear that chatbots are not going to replace humans in the customer service industry, at least in the near future.