Chatbots are renewing the way businesses interact with customers. By offering instant, on-demand assistance, chatbots are fostering engagement between brands and their customers.
By 2019, 20 percent of brands will abandon their mobile apps. - Gartner | Click to Tweet
The research and advisory firm further supports the projection and states: “Many brands are finding that mobile applications are not delivering the level of adoption and customer engagement they expected. Original return-on-investment (ROI) calculations are missing the mark due to the cost of support, maintenance, upgrades, customer care and marketing to drive downloads. Brands are now investing to build presence in consumer messaging apps, such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, to reach customers where they spend a high percentage of their time.”
Consumer messaging applications are booming. In 2017, 1.82 billion smartphone users accessed over-the-top messaging apps to communicate. This figure is projected to grow to 2.48 billion users in 2021 (Statista). Whatsapp (with 1500M), Facebook Messenger (with 1300M), WeChat (with 1040M), QQ Mobile (with 806M), Telegram (with 200M) are some of the popular consumer messaging platforms.
On-demand economy, which traditionally operates on a B2C or C2C business model is embracing this customer engagement approach to cater to its wide user base. By building chatbots for these messaging apps, businesses are expanding their reach and engagement with consumers of their services.
Considering the potential of chatbots and their ability to mimic conversations and set engagements (just like humans), they can either be a promising support or a substitute for on-demand service apps. Here are 5 ways on-demand businesses can leverage chatbots, for the good of customers.
How can On-Demand Businesses Derive Benefits from Chatbot?
The secret behind success of on-demand services is making the assets (food, transport, grocery etc.) reach the customers as soon as possible, while giving them a complete visibility of order status. Here is how an order cycle for an on-demand service be managed via chatbots.
- For Placing Orders: Taxi booking, food delivery, a room on rent; no matter what kind of on-demand service that your business offer, a chatbot built on any of the preferred messaging platform can help to set a connection with consumers. Imagine your consumers willing to hail a ride. They open Whatsapp, move to the chatbot service, enter the pickup and drop location, and the bot discovering the possible rides around the area for them.
- Order Details and Status: Order confirmation, its details, and status updates can be shared with customer on messaging platforms (like Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp), through chatbot. Also, customers can be enabled to track their order status.
- Provide Offers and Discounts: One of the major concerns of businesses is their inability make offers and discounts reach their consumers. These offers, which usually lands in an email, inbox message, or notification tray go unnoticed. Messenging chatbots have high open rate and click through rates than email and thus offer better conversion rates when personalized deals or offers are shared with customers.
- Get Review and Feedback: Once an order is delivered or completed, you can ask customers for a quick review of your services. The likelihood of receiving a feedback or review from customers on messaging platforms is high than on an email or user's next arrival on app.
- Service Assistance: Answering to frequently asked questions, resolving complaints, providing anytime assistance has been the prime motive of businesses behind leveraging chatbot services and on-demand businesses can be use these conversational interfaces to offer instant customer support.
ALSO READ: Best Practices to Launch Customer Service Chatbot for your Business
Custom Chatbot Development for Specific Business Requirements
Chatbots are not just a medium to handle minor transactions, give rapid answer to basic queries of customers 24/7, or engage users when human assistance is unavailable. Custom chatbots nowadays are capable of processing intricate transactions- from order payment to tracking, and on-demand businesses are making the most of it.
When it comes to chatbot development, you can go for off-the-shelf platforms like wit.ai, Chatfuel, api.ai. While these tools works well for basic customer engagement requirements, they do have limitations when over-the-top functionalities are to be integrated within chatbots. In such cases, the recommendation is to opt for custom chatbot development services. 
