Introduction
Chatbots have taken over customer service for a huge chunk of online businesses in the present world. With the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, bots are now capable of responding to customer queries, providing helpful solutions to users, and even troubleshooting issues.
Chatbots have succeeded in enhancing the digital experience of users, with brands integrating them into their customer support platforms for faster and more efficient resolutions. Needless to say, this technology has helped businesses beat the competition, engage customers, and improve brand image.
Although AI-powered chatbots are a boon for all demographics in one way or another, they have connected the best with the younger generations, namely millennials. The online behavior of the millennial crowd resonates well with AI operations, thereby providing brands an easy way to connect to this demographic and secure new customers.
But before we dive into how brands can leverage chatbot technology to attract millennials, let us get a brief insight into chatbots and how they help elevate the operations of a business.
Chatbots for Customer Service
A chatbot is a software application that can conduct a live conversation online with customers, over text or text-to-speech. It has replaced direct contact with a human agent in customer support operations.
The chatbot software can help customers get answers to basic questions, register service requests or complaints, and perform tasks such as account modifications or order placement. It also helps streamline customer service tasks for the business by initiating automated conversations on messaging platforms and reducing the time to close queries.
Chatbots and Millennials
Chatbots gained mainstream prominence in 2016 after Facebook enabled developers to integrate chatbots on Messenger. Since then, more and more brands have joined the AI chatbot bandwagon to optimize support operations and lower costs.
This form of communication has connected well with millennials, a population demographic comprising people born between the 1980s and early 2000s. Since millennials have grown up during the internet boom, their online behavior is much more evolved than their previous generation. Brands can harness this demographic’s habits to deploy chatbot strategies for expanding their business.
Studies say that about 40% of millennials admit to interacting with a chatbot daily. On average, one out of four customers uses chatbots to reach businesses. This statistic speaks to the power of AI technology to rule customer operations and do much more for online businesses.
However, 71% of customers have also said that a bot could not resolve their problem satisfactorily. Hence, they tend to seek human intervention while placing queries or requests. Yet, 83% of respondents said that they would buy from a brand that offered a chatbot that could enable service tasks efficiently.
While chatbots may sometimes prove frustrating to interact with, millennials still prefer this medium as it suits their priorities. They do not like to be on long calls to reach a customer support executive and want quick solutions on the go, which they can navigate hands-free from the comfort of their homes.
Thus, it is evident that brands can leverage chatbots for millennials by placing insightful strategies and improving on problem areas.
How Brands Can Leverage Chatbots for the Millennial Demographic
While chatbot integration helps the entire customer base as a whole, it has added benefits for millennials and younger generations as they are more used to texts, voice chats, and remote assistance. Through the following aspects, brands can fetch better results with bots when it comes to the millennial demographic.
Self-Service Options
Millennials, in general, want more self-service options while interacting with brands. It is safe to say that given a choice, the majority of the millennials would prefer to use automated customer service as opposed to live support from a human customer care executive.
Thus, evolving your chatbot to include more self-service options can work as a way to draw in millennial customers. Instead of relying completely on FAQs, tutorials, or how-to blogs, consider implementing more elaborate menus and wider search options on chatbots so that customers get instant responses instead of being redirected to another knowledge source.
In-App or On-Site Assistance
Chatbots work best when users can access them without leaving the website or app. If you include help options with a single click or integrate chatbots on your web pages, users will be able to find the chat option more easily and get faster resolutions.
Specifically for millennials, an instant response is always preferable to registering a ticket or sending an automated email for follow-up. Hence, focus more on activating chat-based help on your website and in social media messengers as opposed to initiating tickets and making customers wait for a resolution.
Empowered Customer Service
A chatbot can remain available for help around the clock, whereas human representatives have specific hours of operation. Since millennials have less rigid internet activity hours than the older generation, a chatbot can serve them better, even if they seek help in the middle of the night.
It is also a fact that most millennials prefer text-based communication over phone calls. Hence, if small issues like problems with order placements or tracking can be solved over a chat, they would go for it. This is a win-win situation for the company and the customer.
Brands should therefore use AI to study customer interactions, gather information, understand context, and anticipate needs, thereby giving rise to an empowered customer service platform for better user experience.
Voice Support
Chatbots have evolved with voice technology for more efficient and insightful searches, like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, etc. Customers, especially the younger generation like millennials, prefer to shop and browse online by speaking to their smart devices and getting answers through voice technology.
Integrating voice support in chatbots is a great way to engage customers and create a seamless experience with multiple functions. It can be used to gather information and execute actions on the website.
Voice support is a highly suitable fit for millennials as it offers direct communication with the business while maintaining automation and availability. Thus, they can resolve issues from their phone or voice devices instantly.
Personalization Through AI
Another way to leverage chatbots for millennials is by providing personalized customer experiences through AI-driven data. Research says that brand loyalty among millennials can be increased by an average of 28% through personalized content and experience.
If a business tracks the shopping habits and knows the preferred mode of communication, it can cultivate brand loyalty and retain customers longer. A chatbot can do so by using natural language processing and machine learning. It can:
- Analyze customer queries
- Interpret and match their tone
- Carry out more personal conversations
- Predict customer needs
- Provide right answers and suitable recommendations
Conclusion
Chatbots tick all the boxes of preferable communication modes for millennials. They are sufficiently impersonal, effective in providing resolutions, and can be reached through text or voice search. By improving these features further and learning from the large amount of data collected through previous conversations, businesses can leverage AI to target this demographic and attract more customers, traffic, and revenue.
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About AskSid
AskSid is a global conversational solutions company that partners with retail brands to elevate shopping experiences by leveraging the power of Artificial Intelligence. Our capabilities extend beyond support automation, extending to insight extraction, analysis, and business opportunity generation, all by leveraging the power of conversational data. We combine domain expertise and cutting-edge technology to build a Retail AI Brain for our clients, that mines insights from conversational data and becomes the basis of the business opportunity creation we offer. The power of actionable customer data has allowed us to create value and bring change to global brands including AkzoNobel, Danone, Wolford, Akris, and Himalaya. AskSid has live implementations in 23+ countries and supports 100+ international languages, managing millions of satisfied customers the world over.
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