Chatbot Use Cases

As understanding of what a chatbot is and the chatbot industry grows, more and more businesses are deploying bots to convert users to customers, drive sales, and improve the overall consumer experience. The question is not whether or not your business can benefit from a chatbot, but rather whether or not you should invest in the creation of one. Will the return on investment be worthwhile?

Recent trends say yes, but the use and functionality of a chatbot may also depend on your industry and use case—the factors that identify and clarify your requirements for a real-time chatbot. For some, the benefits are obvious; for others, it may be more ambiguous.

In this exploration of chabtbot use cases, we’ll look at the functionality and capability of chatbots in various industries and the benefits thereof, starting with utilities, telecom, and insurance.

THE CASE FOR UTILITY PROVIDER CHATBOTS

No one likes calling utility companies. Though they cover a range of providers—electric, gas, water, etc.—it seems that utilities are all under the same umbrella of having unfavourable customer service, often in the form of complex processes, lengthy hold times, and an overall lack of communication.

Here we see three examples of a consumer interacting with a chatbot. On the left is a simple inquiry from which the bot can extract information to provide an accurate response. In the centre is an example of a bot scheduling an appointment. The rightmost image shows a chatbot delivering an important update, and then replying to the customer’s note regarding an outage.

Note how the bots use a conversational tone; this is a primary goal of a chatbot, as well as an effective method to strengthen customer relationships and improve their experience.

Customer Service and Account Inquiries

Chatbots are readily available to answer customer issues twenty-four hours a day, which eases consumers’ minds; they know they can always have a connection to the company if need be. In an age where accounts are accessible from anywhere at any time, it is equally important to maintain that always-on connection.

Studies show that up to eighty percent of a business’s customer queries are repetitive, so automating those routine requests streamlines the interaction from both sides—the business and the customer. For the business, it means reducing stress on customer service representatives who spend a large percentage of their time on medium. For the customer, it means virtually no time spent waiting on hold or for an email reply.

Emergency Updates

Chatbots are particularly adept for providing updates to a consumer base, but the concept of emergency updates is a situation unique to utility providers; for instance, power outages, weather warnings, or construction work that affects water lines. These are examples in which automated chatbots can be put to work to update customers with real-time information in seconds. This helps the customer stay safe and informed, and improves the provider-consumer relationship as well.

TELECOM COMPANY CHATBOTS: THE USE CASE

By telecoms we mean telephone, internet, and cable providers. Competition is quite fierce in these industries, and with frequent price fluctuations, it can be an uphill struggle to acquire and keep customers. Despite this, it seems that customer service tends to be generally lacking across the board. Below we’ll look at a few ways that telecom companies can benefit from chatbots.

 

Account Upgrades

On the left in the image above, we see a customer inquiring about an upgrade to her subscription. The chatbot simply offers her a choice of options, and she chooses the one best for her. Not only does this effectively drive revenue, but the bot features a built-in payment option to make the upgrade fast and easy. Also noteworthy is the complete lack of sales tactics; all too often consumers prepare themselves for a lengthy sales pitch from a human representative. Bots make it simple, hassle-free, and no-pressure for the customer.

Technical Support Chatbots

In the centre of the image above, we see a bot using a simply text-based flow chart to aid a customer with a technical support query—no hold times, no extraneous question-and-answer. Keeping in mind that a majority of customer inquiries are similar, a bot can aid in all of those simple solutions. If a more difficult issue arises, the bot can seamlessly transfer the customer to a human representative for further assistance.

Payment and Account Assistance

Finally, the rightmost image shows a customer requesting their balance, and then inputting a new payment method. With identity theft being such a rampant issue these days, fewer and fewer people are comfortable issuing their personal details by email or phone. Today’s chatbots are safe, secure, and maintain privacy with the help of authentication gateways. 

INSURANCE COMPANY CHATBOTS

Insurance companies are constantly seeking ways in which to gain more customers, and over the past few years huge amounts of money have been funnelled into AI research. Let’s look at a few instances of use cases of insurance providers.

 

 

Claim Filing Chatbots

Much like the technical support decision-tree from our telecom example, the leftmost image above shows a chatbot guiding a customer through the process of filing a claim. The key benefit here is simplicity and speed; by answering a few questions, a customer can efficiently log a claim without needing to make a phone call or wait on hold—which can be very frustrating for someone who has just experienced an incident.

Enhanced Customer Service

Both the middle and right images show a chatbot answering customer service inquiries. Both cases are fairly standard questions that an insurance company is likely to receive often—essentially, the chatbot is an automated FAQ that engages with the customer and makes the interaction conversational. The simplicity of use and streamlined approach enhances the consumer’s experience while reducing the impact on customer service representatives.

 

Instant quote generating chatbots for insurance

Because the calculation of insurance quotes is set by well-analysed formula, it's easy and effective to embody those calculations in a chatbot and give a potential customer an immediate quote. This is a clear use case that is very visible for companies dealing with large volumes of standard requests, such as quotes for car or property insurance. The chatbot takes the burden of repetitive questions away from the human staff and for the customer, it is really helpful to get a quote right away. For examples of use cases of insurance chatbots that issue quotes see the FAQ section below.

THE USE CASE FOR TRAVEL COMPANY CHATBOTS

The travel industry is something of a wide net to cast, so in the interest of focus, we’re going to specifically use the examples of airlines, which unfortunately are renowned for stories of poor customer experience, particularly in the arena of miscommunication.

 

Reservation Management Chatbots

In the above image, the left example shows a customer that wants to change their flight. Typically they would have to do so over the phone—which could possibly involve lengthy hold times, further delaying the necessity to quickly change travel plans—or online, which requires navigating an account or contacting a representative via email.

However, as you can see, a chatbot makes this process fast, efficient, and entirely text-based. Managing reservations—not only for flights, but also for hotels, excursions, and other modes of transportation—is an obvious use case for nearly any travel company, since it can alleviate the headaches generally associated with what should be a simple task.

Deliver Updates and Bulletins

A popular use of chatbots is to deliver updates and bulletins to consumers en masse in a way that is both personalised and easy, which is precisely what the example on the right is showing. In this case, the bot is using a previous trip to inspire the customer to use the company’s services again. Note that the dialogue is in no way pushy or gimmicky; it is simply asking if the consumer would like more information based on the relevance of her past travels. In this way, chatbots can use inspiration to drive revenue, and though it is a good example for travel companies, it works equally well in other sectors.

FINANCIAL SERVICES CHATBOTS

The single most important aspects of customer experience in the financial services sector are privacy and security. Thanks to strides already taken with chatbots in this industry, modern platforms are safe, private, and secure—which is good news for any industry using chatbots.

Chatbots Protect Against Fraud

In both of the examples above, a financial service chatbot is helping a customer avoid a situation that potentially avoids fraud. In the case on the left, the customer is requesting assistance; in the case on the right, the chatbot has reached out due to unusual activity on an account. Both examples require a four-digit PIN to verify the user’s identity.

Also, by removing the possibility of fraudulant activity by a person, reducing crime is one of the most important use cases for chatbots in the banking industry.

If escalation was required, the bot can easily and quickly route the user to a human representative for intervention and resolution—but if you recall from the first part of this post, up to eighty percent of nearly any industry’s customer inquiries tend to be repetitive, so the bot’s ability to handle most of these simpler tasks reduces stress on customer service agents.

Increase Revenue with Chatbots

Much like our example above with the travel industry, which used inspiration to drive revenue, chatbots can reach out to consumers regarding new offers, better options, and promotions. Bots can be programmed to either suggest new offerings at a specified time (for example, when a subscription or contract is about to expire) or to proactively open a dialogue.

Wire Money Transfer via Chabot

In the past, transferring required visiting a bank or broker in person or calling over the phone. Today, a lot of transfer providers have shifted to be able to accommodate transfers online, and those that have utilised this approach can put a bot to work to make the process even easier and faster. In the above example on the right, we see a customer making a simple inquiry to send money overseas, and bot guiding them through the transfer, as easily as if the consumer were having a conversation with another person.

THE USE CASE FOR HEALTHCARE CHATBOTS

Healthcare provides yet more use cases for chatbots as it is another industry in which privacy and security must be of the highest standard. Beyond that, the use case of a healthcare provider might be influenced by legislation (such as HIPAA compliance in the US), and patient confidentiality.

Diagnosis and monitoring via chatbot

There is still no substitute for expert human assessment of medical conditions. But diagnosis and symptom reporting certainly provides a good use case in healthcare. Lots of national healthcare systems used chatbots to cope with massive levels of queries concerning possible COVID19 symptoms, with the chatbots easily able to either reassure the user or else direct him or her to the procedure for obtaining a test. Increasingly, peope wearing smart devices can monitor their bodies and also talk to chatbots about their well-being.

Scheduling Appointments via Chatbot

Traditionally, scheduling an appointment with a healthcare professional is not terribly difficult, but there’s still room for human error. Chatbots can be embedded with scheduling capabilities to make the process simpler, improve efficiency, and decrease the margin of error, as shown to the left in the examples above.

Invoicing Chatbots

Paper invoices and so-called “snail mail” is already becoming a thing of the past as more people opt to pay bills online. Chatbots make this process even easier, using saved payment methods for faster processing. And with a bots’ ability to integrate rich media into the conversation, a record of the transaction can be stored in the cloud for users to reference anytime in the future.

Provider-Patient Communication

Education and awareness are areas of healthcare that, unfortunately, fall somewhat flat using even newer technology. We previously mentioned chatbots’ ability to disseminate information quickly and in a way that feels personalised. For the healthcare provider, that means a bot can use rich media, such as photos and videos, to help educate patients—as in the example on the right above. This strategy increases value in a consumer’s eyes, and as a result, drives loyalty.

DEPLOYING CHATBOTS IN BUSINESS

Now that we’ve explored several industries and the use cases of each, we hope you can see the variety of uses and capabilities and how businesses can benefit from automation. Once you’ve established your own use case, the next question will be, how do I go about getting started?

The solution is simple. Here at Snatchbot, we want to make the process of building your own chatbot as easy, inexpensive, and user-friendly as possible. Our platform is private and secure enough for any industry, and subscription fees are as inexpensive as any you’ll find on the market today.

SnatchBot’s revolutionary approach blends the smartest ML (machine-learning) and AI (artificial intelligence) technologies with the peerless conversational design. We’ve created bots for some of the world's premier brands.

For the business looking to use chatbots to drive marketing, SnatchBot has developed a striking new feature called the broadcast message function, which allows a bot to send marketing notifications to all users. Each time a user chats with your page via any channel—for example, Skype—they become a subscriber. With the broadcast message, you can essentially message thousands of subscribers at once to notify them of content updates, news, or anything else pertinent to your business.

There’s no doubt that businesses across a wide range of industries can benefit from automation. Contact us today for customer solutions and ideas on how you can improve customer communication with the help of bots.

Chatbot Use Case Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best chatbot use cases in healthcare?

Some good examples are Youper, which is an emotional mood tracker: research shows chatbots can help with anxiety and depression; OneRemission, which provides oncology consultation 24/7; Safedrugbot gives doctors information about the contents of drugs and Babylon Health offers a preliminary diagnosis service to users.

What are the best chatbot use cases in banking?

An early example was Bank of America’s Erica, which handles all the common customer queries and transactions; similarly, India’s HDFC has EVA for customer FAQs; Commonwealth Bank Australia built a chatbot called Ceba which handled half a million customer queries in the first year.

What are the best chatbot use cases in insurance?

Allstate began their chatbot as a tool for agents and then expanded it for end users; AA Ireland created a chatbot to give immediate quotes to users, which led to an increase in sales of around ten per cent; Credit One use SnatchBot’s platform a chatbot that handles tens of thousands of queries a month and which has automated the process of making renewals, starting claims, et c.

What are the best chatbot use cases in retail?

Dominos Pizza launched a very successful chatbot on Messenger that allows users to create and track orders; similarly, Zalando fashion lets customers track their orders through Messenger conversations with a chatbot. Retailers can recommend products, through chatbots like that of American Eagle Outfitters, which asks questions then makes recommendations. Once customers have engaged with a chatbot on Messenger or a chatbot for WhatsApp and agreed to the privacy terms, the bot can broadcast new offers with a good use case being MVMT’s chatbot.

What are the best chatbot use cases in education?

Dozens of universities are using chatbots in a variety of ways, The University of Johannesburg was an early adopter of the technology for its library services, freeing staff time for more expert work than processing renewals and handling common questions about opening hours, etc. The University of Arkansas developed a student-facing chatbot that was especially helpful for new admissions and timetables. Increasingly, course content and even quizzes and instant grading is being offered to students via chatbots, such as from Vedic Maths in India.

Can I get a PowerPoint slide presentation of chatbot use cases

Yes, we’ve posted over thirty chatbot presentations here.