September 21, 2020 
Today a lot of companies use chatbots for customer service. This number is growing rapidly, as the latest statistics have shown that chatbot has been used by more than 60% of customers around the world for customer service and support.
Recent market indices predict that in 2021, over 80% of customer service and interaction will be carried out by chatbots (without human agents.
It has also been noted that more than 30% of customers are not concerned about who handles customer service and support; their priority is getting results.
Another advantage of using chatbots for customer service is its ability to drastically reduce operational cost while improving customer response time and effectively giving answers to frequently asked questions.
Chatbots are now ‘regular’ utility devices in many homes, and many customers have come to depend on them.
From regularly interacting with Siri, Alexa and Google, customers are becoming aware of its usefulness and efficiency.
Chatbots, initially, were overlooked by businesses and their wide-reaching potency, grossly underestimated.
But today, businesses have come to realize that chatbots can no longer be ignored and the vast potentials of using chatbots for customer service is for the benefit of every business as it can swiftly enhance customer interaction and better customer satisfaction.
This is why more and more companies are utilizing chatbots for their customer service.
Why most businesses are finding it tough to provide quality customer service
For a business to succeed, customer service is highly essential. Great customer service is key to brand loyalty and increased profits. That is not all.
Quality customer service is a prerequisite for customer retention, acquisition and business growth.
But a lot of businesses are finding it difficult to offer stellar customer service. Why is that so?
The reasons are that today’s customers have ever-changing preferences, and the demand for immediacy and prompt replies by customers has astronomically increased.
In addition to that, customers expect nothing less than around-the-clock customer service and support system.
These demands, although realistic, are difficult for human customer agents to perform adequately.
These demands have revealed some lapses and weaknesses that even premium customer service software and applications will fumble and falter at.
For instance, with the combination of a great number of customer service agents and powerful customer service software, there are still limitations. Your agents will have to catch a nap and are only available during business hours.
Furthermore, it even becomes more challenging when you have to consider other factors like multilingual capability and time zones (for businesses making an entrance into the international market).
These difficulties make businesses fail at providing effective customer service – except those that use a chatbot. AI-powered chatbots like Zebrabuzz are self-sufficient and can provide round-the-clock customer service. Chatbots are improving customer service operations.
It is our aim that you will learn in this article, how companies are using chatbots for customer service, which will inspire you to implement them into your social media customer service strategy.
Companies using Chatbots for Customer Service
These are some of the companies using chatbots to improve their customer service.
eBay
eBay is a popular e-commerce brand, known for its shopping website and web auction system. It has more than 100 million monthly shoppers and is one of the companies that is utilizing chatbots for customer service.
eBay using a Facebook messenger chatbot, which is named ‘ShopBot’. With the help of the chatbot, customers can select and find whatever items they need.
While the Facebook messenger bot, ShopBot helps eBay analyze and understand customers’ shopping style through providing a personalized shopping experience.
Also, the customers, through the chatbots, will optimize the messaging platform as a shopping channel. ShopBot is AI-powered and is aimed at smartly assisting customers in sorting through specific goods or article.
It is understood that unlike physical stores where there are store assistants and salespeople to help find and recommend products for users in an abstract manner, e-commerce platforms are not privileged to have that.
With ShopBot, eBay expects an enhanced customer interaction where customers can chat and send images to the bot and expect a swift reply. Just like Zebrabuzz, ShopBot optimizes machine learning, so it can boost its effectiveness as customers continue to use it.
Read: Why do Companies Use Chatbots?
Techcrunch
Who says media companies cannot use a chatbot for distribution strategy?
Well, popular American tech media company, Techcrunch, led the way. Techcrunch, arguably, is one of the first online publishers to use a chatbot for customer service.
In 2018, Techcrunch unveiled the ‘ TechCrunch Messenger bot’. This chatbot, similar to Zebrabuzz, has a lot of enhancements, which include better customer interaction, the ability to comprehend natural language better and negative questions.
With the help of the chatbot, TechCrunch serves more personalized content to users, while updating users on popular stories and tracking whatever they read to provide related stories later.
TechCrunch Messenger bot has helped cast the media company in a positive light while improving their web traffic.
Air France
Air France is the national airline of France and serves more than 30 million customers yearly. The French airline company is one of the numerous air transport businesses that use chatbots for customer service, support and engagement.
Seeing the vast potential and huge benefits of the chatbot, it launched its messenger bot ‘Lucie’ in 2017.
This chatbot – Lucie is available for customers to chat with 24/7 and is bilingual, fluent in English and French. Lucie also plays the role of a travel guide, offering useful contents and suggesting interesting places to visit.
Read: Why Your Business Needs A Chatbot
Nike
Nike is known for their stylish shoes and footwear. The company is worth more than 20 billion dollars and made over 30 billion dollars this year. It is the biggest sports footwear supplier in the world, and it uses a chatbot for customer service.
For sneaker lovers, the Nike messenger bot ‘stylebot’ allows users to create their style with sneakers.
Though the bot targets the female gender, it is a good way of understanding how chatbots can help personalize the shopping experience for customers in a fun and easy way.
Through the chatbot, buyers can simply and swiftly browse sneakers on Nike website and can match their choice of sneakers with whatever style they want or have uploaded.
So those are the ways companies are using chatbots for customer service, support and sales. You can begin providing values and quality customer engagement today by using Zebrabuzz. It is affordable and highly effective. Click here to begin.
