From answering the same old questions multiple times throughout the day to manually tracking customer responses and grievances, the sales team truly has a lot on its plate. Due to redundant methodologies and outdated practices, they not only need to put in too much effort in streamlining the sales operations but also have to deal with increased expenses and risks. Although several advanced strategies are there to overcome such cutthroat situations, none can offer the benefits of an AI sales bot. Programmed to work like a virtual assistant, it can easily streamline sales operations through process automation, thereby minimizing the human efforts and time consumed in the end-to-end execution.
However, integrating artificial intelligence into the existing sales operations might be a riskier attempt, especially if you are not aware of its plus points. There are challenges like maintaining data privacy and security, deciding the best data sources for analysis, and designing a program specific to your business needs. But the real-time benefits of using AI sales bots overshadow these hurdles, which is why we have crafted a comprehensive guide, explaining how this technology is a blessing in disguise for your business.
How does an AI sales bot function?
An AI bot is a computerized program that function using different technologies, like natural language processes, machine learning, big data, and many more. Each technology has a dedicated use, like ML helps in training the bot to behave like a human while NLP allows the software to understand customer requests and queries and accordingly generate the answers. It doesn’t need human interference for functioning, owing to which automating sales operations is possible with AI bot integration. Additionally, the amalgamation of neural networks with ML algorithms can help the bot evaluate past data histories and generate accurate analytical reports and sales forecasts.
What are the different types of AI sales bots?
In sales operations, there are three major types of AI bots, each meant to perform differently based on the specific business requirements.
Decision-making bots
Such a chatbot for sales automation leverages a pre-defined set of questions and answers to resolve customer queries and guide them through the entire sales funnel, like providing the best product choices, answering about discounts and offers, and resolving shipping confusion.
Task-specific bots
Often AI chatbots are integrated with sales processes so that they can automate the workflow and perform the dedicated tasks with excellence. From scheduling customer appointments to generating invoices and bills, these are highly capable of streamlining workflows and eliminating production delays.
Knowledge-based bots
Another major type of auto-reply chat bot used in sales operations is knowledge-based AI programs. These leverage advanced analytical capabilities to evaluate big datasets and generate accurate reports and forecasts. For example, they use NLP to understand customer’s intent and provide the best responses to a query.
How can an AI bot can increase sales?
Increased customer engagement
The sales team can leverage AI chatbot automatic replies to increase the engagement with their customers and reduce grievances or disappointments due to late responses. These computerized programs either work on NLP or pre-defined sets of questions and answers to understand the customer’s intent. Based on the evaluation, they respond with the most relevant answers promptly, thereby increasing the engagement rate and keeping them loyal to your business.
Access to the huge database for analysis
AI sales bots can be used to extract big datasets from third-party sources like survey platforms, POS, and online commerce platforms for integration with enterprise applications including CRM. These datasets will further help your sales team understand customer requirements and preferences, track the performance of sales strategies, and detect loopholes in the sales funnels. Furthermore, these datasets can also be used to unearth hidden market trends and patterns for better sales operations.
Increased availability of assistance
Another major benefit of integrating AI customer service chatbot with sales operations is the round-the-clock availability of support to the customers. You don’t have to manage the team of human assistants to attend to customer questions or provide guidance for purchases 24/7. The AI program is capable of functioning throughout the day and delivering impeccable performance with the same consistency and quality. Besides, it will be able to keep the conversational channels open for international customers also, despite having different time zones.
Enhanced process efficiency
Thanks to the AI sales bots, you can automate mundane tasks like answering frequently asked questions, processing repeat orders, and solving customer grievances. These programs are computed in a way that they can perform the repeated tasks efficiently and within much less time. Even if there are any differences in the input, they are trained to modify their operations automatically and generate the results with higher accuracy and precision.
Enabling cross-selling feature
Providing your customers with product suggestions based on historic orders and searches can be made easier with AI chatbots for sales operations. These computerized programs pull out the data of a user’s past orders or search results to analyze the categories or types of products preferred. Based on the evaluation results, they generate product suggestions for the next purchase, thereby streamlining the sales funnel and guiding a customer throughout the purchase journey.
Easier upselling strategies
Often sales operators fail to successfully execute upselling strategies and can’t sell the premium or high-valued products or services to the customers. However, with artificial intelligence consulting services, you can develop an advanced AI sales chatbot that will help you promote high-valued and premium services or products to customers based on their past preferences. This will further help you to increase returns on upselling operations and streamline the sales funnel.
What are the concerns of using an AI sales bot?
Despite offering so many benefits, AI chatbots do bring in some concerns for your sales team that should be addressed at the earliest. These are:
- Data security is a major challenge with AI chatbots, especially when you are using third-party sources to extract customer information, past order records, and so on.
- AI sales bots are capable of delivering a hyper-personalized customer experience. However, there will be concerns with the authenticity of the responses generated through AI chatbots.
- During peak times, it might become difficult for the AI chatbots to meet customer demands and deliver consistent performance quality.
Conclusion
With the advantages of integrating AI sales bots explained in the above discussion, you won’t have to worry about lacking knowledge of the decision-making process. Furthermore, we have also listed a few challenges that your sales team might have to encounter with the bots so that you can prepare the necessary action strategies. So, it’s time you look for the best AI consulting services so that you can devise a thorough plan for developing custom chatbots capable of streamlining and automating your sales operations.
