Imagine you’re an e-commerce website owner. You’re struggling to sleep one night and find yourself on a competitor's website, doing some online shopping. You find exactly what you’re looking for but the size you’re after is out of stock. The website has a chatbot and you ask it when your size will be available. Good news! If you pre-order now, you’ll get it next week. You place your order and put your phone down. It’s no surprise that all you can think about now is how you wish your own website had the same feature. Well, it can!

FAQ chatbots and FAQ pages

You’re probably familiar with traditional FAQ chatbots. They use a live chat feature that’s pre-programmed with responses to FAQs. They’re designed to guide shoppers to the next stage of their buying process. They perform well in the right contexts and for certain businesses. In fact, they are already the better option if you compare them with the common FAQ page found on most websites today.

Scrolling through long lists of FAQs is tedious. Being able to just ask a question and get your answer immediately is a far better solution. In fact, 77% of shoppers say chatbots have and will continue to transform their shopping experience expectations from brands, over the next several years.

While both FAQ chatbots and FAQ pages can solve certain problems, they’re limited in their ability to intuitively and naturally answer the questions customers really want answered.

AI chatbots are a better alternative

Conversational AI Chatbots simply offer more than what FAQ chatbots can. Because they use machine learning technology, and natural language processing (NLP), they can engage in conversations with shoppers that mimic in-store shopping. That’s really important for customers that have questions an FAQ chatbot might not have the answer to. What’s key here is identifying what you need your chatbot to do and selecting the bot that will do that for you.

How should you build a Conversational AI Chatbot?

At Kindly, we’ve developed a winning formula that helps you get your AI chatbot up and running in no time. It’s always our goal to give you solutions that help your business sell more, reduce costs, and improve customer support. Here’s what we recommend:

Set a specific scope: what is the main objective you want your chatbot to achieve

Test, test, test: dedicate a team of users to interact with the chatbot and use their feedback to create a detailed implementation plan

Iterate, improve, evolve: make improvements to the chatbot based on your early tests and roll out new features to make your user’s experience even better

What questions should chatbots ask?

If customers can get all the information they need without any roadblocks, they’re more likely to complete a purchase. To do that, your FAQ chatbot needs to ask the right questions. Here are two types of questions that work best:

Questions that give customers more information

As a shopper yourself, you know that you often need more information about a product or service than what’s listed in the information section. A good chatbot should ask open-ended questions to get the shopper to the information they need. A really good example of this in action is from Birk Sport, a chain of Norwegian bike shops. Have a look at their Birk Bot:

Questions that guide customers toward the correct purchase

Chatbots can also function as digital buying guides. They can ask questions about how shoppers will use the products or services they’re interested in, then send them directly to what will suit them best. Similar to what in-store sales assistants do.

3 Examples of FAQ chatbots with an AI upgrade

It’s pretty incredible what upgrading your FAQ chatbot can do. Here are three inspiring examples of how different companies used Conversational AI Chatbots and the value they added to their businesses.

1. Sell more: Hertz Sweden drove higher bookings

The goal of most businesses is to sell more! More revenue, plus lower costs, equals long-term growth. AI chatbots help businesses do just that. Hertz Sweden saw a 23% growth in total revenue by adding an AI chatbot to their website. Their chatbot was programmed to answer FAQs and send personalized messages to their users on their website.

2. Lower costs: Norwegian Airlines saved support manpower

AI chatbots help customer support teams become even more efficient. Support teams deal with repetitive tasks and end up answering the same questions over and over. Letting the AI chatbot respond to these questions frees support teams to spend their time more productively, which ultimately benefits the business.

Norwegian Airlines used their AI chatbot to help their support staff. By routing more FAQs from travelers through to their chatbot, the team was able to spend more time on bigger picture tasks. Thanks to the AI chatbot, the team automated 20% of all inbound support enquiries.

3. Improve support: Adecco reduced repetitive enquiries coming through live chat

Adecco’s AI chatbot streamlined their productivity. In the past, they relied on a live chat feature to handle the bulk of enquiries from their prospective candidates. Live chat meant support staff had to dedicate all their time managing the product. By introducing an AI chatbot to answer FAQs, Adecco was able to provide even greater support to candidates, and employees were able to spend more time on helping people with more complex enquiries.