These days, in the business arena, companies are increasingly seeking different technological solutions to optimize company performance. Probably, the most widespread examples of such technologies are chatbots-the solution able to replace a whole list of tasks usually performed by employees. The Crowdy team would like to have a closer look at the key benefits that using chatbots provides in comparison with hired workers.
Cost-effectiveness and Cost Reduction
They don’t need salaries, social benefits, and other components of compensation associated with employee workforce. Normally, the one-time cost of development and subsequent support for a chatbot far outweighs the cost of maintaining a live employee.
Since working in an electronic environment requires no physical workstation and hence no office equipment besides all the other stuff, a chatbot further minimizes the company’s operating expenses.
Boosting productivity of the company
A chatbot enables you to work and interact with your customers 24/7; unlike human beings, it can work around the clock without breaks and weekends, hence providing service to your customer without any interruptions, along with routine tasks.
Chatbots can process several inquiries at a time and give real-time responses. It greatly speeds up customer service and reduces waiting times.
Reducing human factor
It means that chatbots, being implicitly error-free, are programmed to perform particular tasks; thus, they do not make human mistakes. Therefore, this increases the degree of accuracy and decreases the risks of unwillingness or non-observance of work instructions or performance of job duties with a mistake. As a rule, a chatbot offers standardized services, which means every customer gets the same attention and quality-a thing that can never happen with a workforce of big size.
Flexibility to change and scalability of processes
Since the integration of chatbots with existing systems is smooth, this also can be updated quickly for newer tasks in order to improve functionality based on changes in business processes. This makes them ideal for serving a handful of queries as efficiently as thousands of queries at one time and in multiple languages.
The use of chatbots offers a number of advantages over hiring employees, including cost savings, increased productivity, reduced human error, and flexibility and scalability. Implementing such technologies allows companies to optimise many processes, improving overall efficiency and customer satisfaction. These factors make chatbots an important tool in the arsenal of modern businesses.
Main claims of employers to employees
Nowadays there is a great number of factors that influence productivity and performance of employees in the contemporary working environment. Still, there are several behavioural factors that can cause the greatest irritation and dissatisfaction on the part of employers. Below we would like to look at the main claims which employers make about their subordinates.
Unethical behaviour at work
An employee’s behavior is considered unethical if it runs counter to not only legal but also generally accepted moral behavioral norms and has an adverse effect on other people, coworkers and clients. Needless to say, such behavior has a bad effect on the psychological climate in the team, on the efficiency of the rest of the staff, on relations with partners, customers, buyers, and on the business reputation of the firm.
In our opinion, unethical behavior may include the following features:
- Rude and obscene comments, remarks, or gestures directed at colleagues and customers;
- Use of foul or taboo (for example, on religious or moral grounds) words and expressions obscene address to a certain person;
- Obnoxious comparisons;
- Touching a person without his consent;
- Aggressive form of communication and other manifestations of aggression;
- An action causing lack of respect to the chain of command.
Lack of Willingness to Learn and Self-Confidence
Also, one of the key problems in employer-employee relations is the unwillingness of the latter to learn and develop. Employees who believe that they already know the best way to do their job often ignore the approaches used in the company and new technologies, which may lead to the obsolescence of their skills and knowledge.
Lack of willingness to learn and unshakable self-confidence significantly hamper the effectiveness of corporate interaction. In practice, employees who are convinced that their working methods are the best, often refuse to adopt innovations and progressive methods. All this prevents not only personal growth, but also professional one, because the world is not standing still, and technologies and work processes are constantly improving.
As a result, a situation may occur in which labour forces no longer correspond to contemporary market requirements, which, in turn, reduces the competitive advantages of the company and make its opportunities on the market more restricted. In the highly competitive and rapidly changing market environments, failure to update one’s knowledge and skills may become a critical threat to the professional future of employees and the strategic development of the organisation itself.
Laziness and irresponsibility
Laziness and irresponsibility have a big impact on barriers to keeping corporate performance at a high level. The results of this kind of behavior not only diminish the quality of certain activities but also demoralize the whole team. The result can be an overall drop in productivity as effort and resources that could be used to develop and achieve corporate goals are spent on compensating for the performance shortcomings of unscrupulous employees.
Because of fraudulent workers, when there is a redistribution of duties among employees, this puts the rest of the team under greater pressure and can lead to professional burnout, reduced motivation, and job satisfaction among responsible employees. It also gives rise to the risk of establishing an improper corporate climate in which fraudulent behavior becomes typical and the principles of justice and equality are thus violated.
Defending personal boundaries at the expense of work duties
Employees who actively assert their personal boundaries, but do not show the same zeal in their immediate work responsibilities, create problems in teamwork and may be perceived as not being fully engaged in the work process. Protecting employees’ personal boundaries is an important aspect of modern corporate culture that supports psychological well-being and professional satisfaction. However, when employees focus on personal boundaries at the expense of professional responsibilities, this can cause difficulties in teamwork and can give the perception of not being fully engaged in the organisation. This situation contributes to conflict, reduces overall productivity and may have negative consequences for team morale.
Separation of “own” and “common”
Clearly dividing employees’ interests into “personal” and “corporate” interests can create a number of problems in the workplace, including diminished loyalty and a reduced willingness to compromise in the interests of the common cause. When employees perceive their tasks as “not their own,” they may be less actively involved in the company, negatively impacting their contribution to common goals. The problem of the separation between ‘own’ and ‘shared’ is often accentuated in settings that lack a culture of mutual respect and co-operation. It may result in employees’ alienation, not seeing a direct link between their efforts and the success of the company. Overall, motivation and performance decrease in such settings.
Inactivity
Employee inactivity can be viewed as a considerable obstacle to the innovation and dynamism of an organization. When employees are not proactive, eager, and ready to input into the common cause, this could be perceived as lack of interest in work and unwillingness to contribute to the development of the organisation. Such behaviour reduces overall productivity and lowers team morale because active and motivated employees may be perceived as being underappreciated and overburdened.
When is it better to use a chatbot instead of a human?
With all those facts in mind, there are 4 cases when it will be reasonable for companies to substitute employees with chatbots.
- As a Virtual Assistant
Chatbots never sleep, and that means you can be sure there’s always someone there to answer a customer’s question, even if they arrive at an unreasonably late hour. - As a Lead Generation Channel
In the chatbot, one can request contacts of customers, distribute checklists, guides, and other useful materials, warm up the cold audience, announce webinars, marathons, and other events that one holds in social networks. - As a sales channel
It also accelerates the selling cycle and improves customer satisfaction because people get answers faster compared to talking to a human on the phone or email, and it accepts payments automatically 24/7. - learning new tasks
By training the chatbot to do new tasks, you will be able to scale faster than by training a new employee.
Other advantages of AI over humans
In today’s world, where digital technology permeates all spheres of business, the introduction of chatbots is a very important integral part of the customer service strategy. Among the advantages of using chatbots over live operators are: handling a big number of requests simultaneously, continuous availability 24/7 in several languages. Below are listed key aspects that accentuate the advantages of the use of chatbots in online communications.
- Scalability and accessibility
The main peculiarity of such robots consists in the possibility of holding a parallel dialogue with several users, which seriously saves the resources of customer support. This is especially important for companies that have a huge customer base and receive thousands of enquiries every day. Bots do not get tired, do not require breaks, and work in a round-the-clock mode, allowing one to get answers at any time of the day without delays. - Reduction of Operation Costs
Replacing or supplementing live operators with chatbots can reduce payroll, training, and infrastructure costs drastically. Chatbots require one-time setup and periodic support, making them a cost-effective solution for many businesses. - Standardisation of responses
Chatbots provide a high degree of standardisation in customer service. They are programmed to provide the right and consistent answers to standardized questions without human error and this helps to enhance the service quality. - Integration into various Platforms
Modern chatbots are easily integrated with various communication platforms such as websites, social media and messengers. This enhances customer interaction and user experience by providing information wherever it is convenient for the user. - Data analysis and training
Modern chatbots are able to collect and analyze some data about user behavior, which helps improve the quality of service and optimize marketing campaigns. Using machine learning, bots get smarter every day, answering queries with more precision and anticipating customer needs. - Addressing customers in their native language
As of the year 2024, ethnic structure in Estonia looked like the following: permanent residents consider themselves the following: 70% Estonians, approximately 23% Russians, 4% Ukrainians, 1% Belarusians, and 0.6% Finns. A chatbot has an immediate and colossal advantage compared to a human: a chatbot can speak with a customer in his native language.
Chatbots are indeed powerful for customer service automation, providing high response rates, lowering operational costs, and improving customer experiences. Their integration into a digital engagement strategy allows companies to maintain a competitive advantage in an ever-changing marketplace.
The strengths of chatbots in customer service
Chatbots enhance customer service over a live employee.
- Reduce costs at least 30%
One chatbot can serve many more customers than one manager and at much cheaper costs. - Response immediately after contact
The key is to respond immediately before the attention of the customer is lost; this increases the chance that the customer will stay with you. It’s a well-known fact in online marketing that responding within the first 5 minutes of making contact increases customer conversion by at least 20%. This accelerates the sales cycle and raises customer satisfaction, as people receive a response faster than if they were communicating with a person by phone or email. - Availability 24/7
A single chatbot can serve an almost unlimited number of customers at the same time.
How can Crowdy reduce the cost portion of employee compensation for your company?
Today, the use of innovative technological solutions plays a key role in optimising costs and increasing the efficiency of companies. One promising tool in this direction is the use of chatbots, such as Crowdy.ai, which can significantly reduce employee labour costs.
Overview of Crowdy.ai chatbot functionality
Crowdy.ai relies on sophisticated natural language processing technologies while providing immediate responses to customer queries. Such interaction not only accelerates the customer service process but also considerably lightens the workload for support staff. This is because the chatbot response system automatically handles regular questions and requests, saving staff’s time for more complex and creative tasks.
Reducing the workload of staff
The integration of Crowdy.ai into the website of a company reduces hours that employees spend on direct communication with customers. This leads to staff optimization and, correspondingly, a reduction of salary costs. Automation of routine processes allows for reducing operational costs while sustaining a high level of service quality.
User behavior analytics
Crowdy.ai answers not only questions but also gathers valuable data on user behavior on the website. The data can be used to further optimize marketing and sales strategies and bring analytics staff costs down. Using deep analytical tools, you will be able to fine-tune your marketing campaigns, reduce execution costs, and further increase your overall ROI.
Increasing customer loyalty and retention
Continuous interaction with clients through chatbots allows one to socialize their loyalty and trust. That decreases the cost of attracting new customers since usually, it was more expensive than retaining existing ones. Crowdy.ai works effectively at all levels of the sales funnel, improving conversion and customer retention without additional investment in human resources.
Using a Crowdy.ai chatbot can significantly reduce labour costs, increase the efficiency of marketing campaigns and sales, and improve the quality of customer service. Implementing such technologies becomes not only a cost-effective solution, but also a strategic step towards digital business transformation.