Over the last few years, customer experience has grown significantly as a driving factor in marketing strategy. What do customers expect from your brand? How do they interact with your brand? What differentiates your brand from the crowd and leaves customers with a positive experience? All these questions and more have become the driving force behind certain marketing tactics, such as the use of chatbots.
In fact, customer experience has taken such a prominent role in today’s marketing strategy that HubSpot did away with the traditional marketing funnel in favor of the “Flywheel.” The Flywheel puts customers at the center of all marketing efforts and focuses on not just meeting customer needs but exceeding them to create terrific experiences.
In 2019, customer experience should be the driving factor behind your marketing. Listen to what your customers want, and then meet, if not exceed, the expectations of your brand whenever possible. And this leads us to the topic of this chapter: chatbots.
Customers want to communicate with your business through a chatbot, a computer program that simulates conversations with human users. This might come as a surprise to some marketers, but according to a study done by Twilio, consumers prefer messaging as the number-one channel of communications with businesses. There’s a large demand for messaging (especially from millennials) and chatbots are a great way for businesses to address customer needs in 2019.
Chatbots provide the opportunity for your business to make more personal connections with customers than ever before. This might seem counterintuitive, but AI is increasingly improving the interactions people have with chatbots and can replicate a genuine human interaction.
Not only are chatbots great for your customer experience, they also save your business time, energy and of course, money! Businesses that implement chatbots on their website typically see cost savings of up to 30 percent. For those interested in a chatbot to try out on your site, consider HubSpot’s free chatbot.
Today, customers demand 24/7 access to brands. The concept of a brand being “offline” is rapidly becoming an outdated notion. Chatbots allow your brand to communicate with customers on their schedule and are the preferred medium for communication in 2019.
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