Blog Article

Advantages and Disadvantages of Chatbots in a Workplace [Pros and Cons of Chatbots]

Abhinav Girdhar
By Abhinav Girdhar | Last Updated on April 12th, 2024 10:08 am | 5-min read

In the past few years, I don’t remember visiting a business site without a chatbot. And, for a good reason. The top and the bottom line of any business is to make sure that the customers are happy! One of the most effective ways to ensure customer satisfaction is to offer excellent customer service - before and after sales. Chatbots are proven tools for offering excellent customer service. Not only can they remove the hesitation of calling in, but also serve multiple customers simultaneously while reducing the waiting time for them. There are numerous advantages of chatbots for businesses, and we have talked about them extensively in our earlier posts. The perceived complexity and high cost of making a chatbot have often caused businesses to shy away from integrating this excellent customer service tool into their business websites. However, Appy Pie’s no-code chatbot builder has alleviated these concerns by offering an easy-to-use platform that is affordable for businesses of all sizes.


Table of Contents

Introduction

The importance of chatbots at workplaces has often been debated, and more often than not, chatbots have won the argument everywhere. There are multiple merits to using chatbots for businesses of different niches like real estate, healthcare, banking, and more! Chatbots can provide round-the-clock support to internal and external parties. Hence, whether it is a customer looking for a piece of information or an employee who wants to double-check on a specific company policy, chatbots are the perfect tools for both situations. In fact, we have compiled some meaningful information in the form of an infographic. Take a look at it below before discussing the advantages and disadvantages of chatbots in the workplace.

Advantages of chatbots - Pros

In recent times, chatbot usage has witnessed an exponential rise. It is primarily due to the millennials’ preference for texting as opposed to calling or sending long detailed emails. Of course, this can also be addressed with live chat where human agents sit and respond to every query coming from the customers. But, it will be awfully expensive for you to hire so many agents, and as your business grows, this demand will only grow. Hence chatbots emerge as a practical solution to ensure that you can serve your eager customers and prospects in real-time without riding up the expenses. Let’s explore this further and get into the pros of using a chatbot in the workplace.
  1. Serve your customers faster
    2. Chatbots automate responses to the most common queries or frequently asked questions. It means that your customers are served at the earliest, without having to wait for an agent to be free, working hours to commence, or any other factor. Millennials or even the older and younger generations are used to instant gratification and look forward to instant responses and resolution. A chatbot gives them precisely the experience they are looking for.
  2. Increase customer satisfaction levels
    3. As demonstrated in the previous point, chatbots have the potential to increase customer satisfaction levels through quick responses and faster query resolution. However, there is more to it. Apart from providing instant responses and quick query resolution, chatbots can be personalized to make the customer feel valued without being pressured to make a purchase decision. Chatbots also provide all relevant data in one place so that the customers do not have to hop from page to page looking for a bit of information. All they need to do is ask a question as they would to a human, and the chatbot would reply with the correct answer instantly, making the experience smooth and memorable.
  3. Collect customer insights
    4. Chatbots are great for collecting basic customer information or even information about their activities, interests, challenges, likes, and dislikes. You can then sort and categorize all this data later to identify patterns or trends that can help you make better business decisions. It can also indicate the most common challenges faced by the customers on your website or with your products. These refined insights can help you improve the customer experience and the product.
  4. Reduce costs
    5. Whether it is a question of handling internal queries or fielding questions from your customers, it requires people to handle all these queries. Now, if these were to be all done with live agents or human resources, the need for hiring people will only keep increasing as your business grows. It is bound to increase the costs as well. In contrast, a single chatbot can handle multiple people at the same time with the same efficiency. Though it may not entirely replace humans, it definitely brings down the cost of hiring multiple resources where one can suffice.
  5. Be available 24X7
    6. Irrespective of your business hours, chatbots are available all round the clock. Hence, customers or internal staff members can pose their queries whenever they want and get a timely response irrespective of the time of the day or night. It means you will never miss out on a lead or turn away a customer. No customer will have to wait for the business hours to commence before getting a resolution or response.
  6. Appeal to the millennial generation
    7. As mentioned earlier in the post, millennials are more comfortable communicating through text messages than telephone calls. By integrating a chatbot for communication with the customers, you can engage the younger generation more efficiently.
  7. Remove human bias & manual errors
    8. When humans do a task repeatedly, certain biases develop, which may interfere with the fairness and transparency of processes. In the case of a chatbot, customers or employees do not fear judgment or personal biases, thus improving overall interaction quality. Additionally, another aspect that we often encounter in manual work is the scope of manual errors. However, when certain processes are automated with chatbots, the margin for such errors is eliminated.

Disadvantages of chatbots - Cons

As the cliche goes - there are two sides to every coin. Chatbots are no exception. While we go on about how great chatbots are and how they can transform the way you conduct business, there is a flip side as well. Whether it is the complexity of implementing the system, usability, applications, or the cost, there have been several concerns that indicated heavily towards the unsuitability or disadvantages of chatbots in workplaces. Let’s take a look at some of the disadvantages of using chatbots in the workplace.
  1. Limitations in query resolution
    2. Even if you have trained your chatbot to answer every possible question that might come from a customer or an employee, there will always be situations where it would be stumped. Eventually, the conversation may have to be transferred to a human agent. Suggested solution: Use Appy Pie Chatbot to transfer the conversation to a live agent in a smooth, efficient manner.
  2. Lacks emotions and empathy
    3. A chatbot is, after all, a program that is objective in handling all matters. A frustrated customer will not find solace or any empathy from a chatbot that is only programmed to respond in a neutral manner.
  3. Costs may rise as complexity increases
    4. When you are developing a chatbot from scratch, every new feature or functionality increases the overall cost of the chatbot. In such situations, sometimes hiring resources sounds a better deal than investing more in the chatbot.Suggested solution: Use the no-code chatbot builder from Appy Pie to create the simplest to most complex chatbots at a flat subscription rate without adding to the overall cost.

Conclusion

There would always be certain disadvantages to every technology. However, as you can see above, the benefits of chatbots outweigh the disadvantages significantly. If you still haven’t built your own chatbot, it is time to get going now!
Did I miss out on any significant chatbot pros and cons in my list? Let me know in the comments section, and I would love to hear from you!

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Abhinav Girdhar

Founder and CEO of Appy Pie

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