How AI-powered Chatbots Enhance Customer Engagement in Salesforce

In today's business world, Salesforce is one of the most popular CRM platforms. Chatbots are one of the hottest topics in customer engagement. So, how can you combine these two technologies to enhance customer engagement for your business? Let’s dive in and find out!

Integration of Chatbots within the Salesforce Ecosystem

Chatbots powered by artificial intelligence are revolutionizing the way businesses interact with their customers. Recent studies have claimed that businesses could save an average of 30% on customer service costs by using chatbots. AI chatbots can understand the natural language used by humans. This allows them to respond to customer inquiries in real time without any manual intervention. 

A knowledge base/FAQ library in Service Cloud or a Customer Experience Site using Experience Cloud helps provide information to customers and prospects whenever they need it. But it can be tedious to find the answer you need if you don’t know where to look. This is where chatbots help to filter questions and provide relevant answers in real-time. Multiple layers of technology such as machine learning and natural language processing allow chatbots to quickly identify the intent of a customer's question. This enables a chatbot to provide an accurate response tailored to each interaction. It also ensures a seamless customer experience and enhances user engagement. Both of which are very much integral to the success of Salesforce.

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How do AI-powered chatbots work?

First, let’s understand how chatbots work and how they can be used to answer customer questions. 

Chatbots are computer programs powered by Artificial Intelligence that can respond to users in a natural and conversational manner. They automate customer-service conversations, allowing businesses to help their customers immediately, in an efficient, cost-effective manner. 

Chatbots use natural language processing (NLP) technology, which helps them understand the meaning of different phrases and questions customers type out. They learn from previous interactions with customers to provide more accurate responses while keeping the conversation friendly and engaging. Answers are modified specifically for each customer based on their interaction history with the company's products or services.

Recent studies from Salesforce promote the use of artificial intelligence-driven chatbots because they scale up the business at a lower resource cost and improve efficiency. Salesforce offers chatbot functionality through their Einstein Bots. The State of Service, Salesforce Research, March 2019 edition states that 64% of agents with AI chatbots are able to spend most of their time-solving complex problems, versus 50% of agents without AI chatbots.

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How AI-powered Chatbots Enhance Customer Engagement in Salesforce?

• Personalization: AI-powered chatbots can be trained to greet customers by name and recognize their status or tier of service, just like customer service agents. This helps to create a more personalized experience for customers.
• 24/7 Availability: Chatbots provide instant support to customers at any time, they never take breaks or holidays. This increases customer satisfaction and engagement by providing them with quick solutions to their problems.
• Saved time for Agents: Chatbots can automatically respond to common customer questions and requests, freeing up time for agents to focus on more complex and critical issues.
• Increased Efficiency: Chatbots can handle multiple customer interactions simultaneously, reducing response time and increasing efficiency.
• Cost-effective Solution: Implementing an AI-powered chatbot is often more cost-effective than recruiting more employees, especially for small to medium-sized businesses.
• Data Analysis: Chatbots gather data on customer interactions and behavior. This provides analytics and valuable insights to improve customer engagement strategies.
• Improved Lead Qualification: Chatbots can help qualify leads and provide personalized recommendations to customers based on their needs and preferences, helping to improve sales conversations and conversions.
• Improved Customer Satisfaction: Through quick and efficient solutions chatbots improve customer satisfaction; thus, creating a positive brand image.

How can a Salesforce-native chatbot help you?

If you are considering investing in a chatbot to increase profitability, before you do anything, stop and analyze your options.

Some people may tell you to implement a chatbot somewhere else in your business, but we think the best place is within your central source of truth: Salesforce.

Why?

Because you have the benefit of leveraging your available customer data, knowledge data, and product data. This helps the chatbot to surface through a huge volume of data to enhance the customers' engagement and journey.

It helps you to create records and trigger automations within Salesforce to give you consistent, productive results.

Chatbot Use Cases for Streamlining Salesforce Operations and Enhancing Customer Engagement

Below are some use cases showcasing how businesses can use chatbots for automating business functionalities in Salesforce to improve their customer engagement.

Leveraging Chatbots for Seamless Customer Scheduling

Business Need: Customers need to schedule appointments. They should be able to select the date and the time at their convenience. Proper reminder notifications need to be sent, and if they cannot make their appointment, an option to reschedule should be given.

Solution: The chatbot solution via a text messaging channel can work. By providing your business number the customer can text whenever he wants to book an appointment. The phone number is linked to a chatbot solution that is built within Salesforce. The chatbot can then ask a series of automated questions like What date would you prefer? What time suits you? Would you like a reminder notification? Etc. The customer fills in the information and the booking is done. The chatbot will send the notification and can also provide the option for rescheduling.

Utilizing Chatbots for Automated Ticket Updates in Salesforce

Business Need: Tickets raised by clients and customers need to be updated inside your Salesforce CRM. Proper filtering of the ticket as per the department like Sales, Business, or Marketing is expected.

Solution: Customers raise tickets via text message on the business number. Chatbot begins the two-way conversation and asks a series of questions like How can I support you today? Please select the team you need to talk to (Sales, Business, Marketing, etc.), Can you please in a few words explain your problem? This helps the chatbot to create a ticket and gather information from the customer and store it within Salesforce. Chatbot filters the team value and sends it to the department. This is done using standard Case assignment rules within Salesforce.

Automating Lead Qualification Through Seminar Engagement

Business Need: Have automated lead qualification and capture new potential leads.  

Solution: Potential clients and customers are invited to attend a seminar where the new and existing products and services are being presented. The members attending the seminar are provided with your business number at the presentation. Interested customers are requested to text the word “Interested” and send it to the shared business number. From there the chatbot activates and asks a series of predefined customized dialogues. For instance, “Thanks for attending the seminar and showing interest in our organization! Can I have your first name? Last Name? Email address? Phone number?

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This new lead record is updated in Salesforce based on the information collected through the chatbot.

These were just a few examples of where AI-based chatbots can provide solutions to businesses and improve customer engagement. There are many other areas where chatbots can be used to upscale your business potential.

Deploying a chatbot is a decision that needs proper assessment and analysis. To see if a chatbot in Salesforce can help your business grow you can contact us. At SPAR, our experts will guide and answer any questions you might have.‍