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An Outgrow study says that 58% of B2B companies have implemented a chatbot to drive their processes. This number is set to grow further as AI-powered technology has tremendous potential and can help drive marketing and sales efforts.
In fact, more companies in the B2B space are turning to chatbots to address the various challenges they face. From automating tasks to providing instant support, a B2B chatbot can add value to different aspects of the business.
Needless to say, these bots have the power and features to transform the way B2B entities go about their business. That’s why they are now integral to the industry.
In this blog, we will explore B2B chatbots in detail, understand their benefits, see some examples & use cases, and also discuss strategies for using them.
But, before moving further, let’s first start with the definition…
A B2B chatbot is a software application primarily used for customer communication and customer service delivery tasks. It’s powered by artificial intelligence technology and can facilitate interaction between businesses and their customers.
B2B chatbots can be integrated into various digital platforms such as websites, business apps, or messaging apps and enable engagement with users in real time. They are used for facilitating conversations with users through speech or texts.
These bots can understand complex inquiries and provide relevant information. They can even automate various business processes. By using chatbots, B2B companies can improve customer service and enhance user experiences, resulting in efficiently meeting customer needs.
Chatbots are now integral to successful B2B operations. More companies rely on them to boost efficiency and productivity across sales, support, and marketing. From customer engagement to lead generation, they can enable tasks that may otherwise require intensive manual efforts.
Here are the key reasons for using chatbots in B2B –
Chatbots are now indispensable to business operations across industries. Be it offering quick replies to automating tasks, scheduling meetings to generating leads, they can do a whole array of tasks and add value to organizations of any type and size.
Let’s look at some key stats highlighting chatbot benefits for businesses –
Leveraging chatbots for business use requires careful planning and meticulous execution. A strategic approach is needed to get the most out of the chatbot for your B2B business. This is how you can achieve optimal performance and effectiveness as well.
Let’s look at some chatbot for business use best practices –
AI chatbots can add great value to various aspects of business operations, and sales are no exception. You can deploy an advanced chatbot and complement your sales activities in a big way.
Let’s look at some strategies for using AI Chatbot for sales in B2B –
Engagement is always at the core of sales. The better you engage with your customers, the more chances of sales it can produce. Keeping this in mind, your B2B business can always benefit from the bot and drive engagement. You can use it as the first point of contact and engage website visitors.
Using the chatbot, your B2B business can also qualify leads and better understand customer needs and pain points. You can always collect key information from customers and understand their preferences. You can then use the data to route leads to sales teams.
What after the initial engagement and qualification? The next stage is to focus on engaging your prospects over time. To achieve the goal, you can focus on providing helpful information to leads. You can always leverage their interest and buying stage to provide valuable content.
After all, a study by Outgrow says that 36% of companies turn to chatbots to improve their lead-generation effort. So, you too can follow the same practice.
It’s, however, important to analyze the stage in the buying journey and then make the content align with their interest. Case studies and industry reports are two valuable forms of content you can provide and build trust with your audience.
Gone are the days when your sales teams had to manually schedule product demos and trials. Today you can automate this important sales task and add efficiency to the entire process. Your prospects can now schedule demos or appointments directly through the chatbot.
All you need to do is integrate the bot with your calendar system. When you automate demos and trials, both your prospects and sales representatives can experience a seamless experience. This will also help streamline the process, resulting in improved efficiency with your sales process.
A sales process is complex. Prospects may have some concerns or issues that you need to solve at this stage. Since you’re using the chatbot, make sure it’s well-equipped to handle those common concerns.
You must equip the bot with prepared responses to common concerns. This can help you address issues in real time and remove any doubts. Successfully handling objections and concerns can prepare you to move the conversations forward.
Personalized interactions are key to driving sales. They can influence key decision-makers of target accounts. But how can you personalize engagement? Well, you can customize the bot’s messaging in alignment with the specific needs of target accounts.
You also need to tailor all your content and recommendations in a way that they resonate with the people who make decisions. This is how you can drive engagement and facilitate personalized interactions, resulting in more chances of sales.
Key Strategies
Customer relationships should never end at the purchase stage itself. It rather should stretch way beyond that. This is why offering post-sale support is key to building long-term rapport with customers and winning their trust for life.
A chatbot can prove very helpful when it comes to offering post-sales support and following up with customers. This way you can use the bot to identify chances for upselling and referrals as well. With post-sales support, you can also gather feedback and foster customer loyalty.
IBM Watson Assistant is now a top choice for many banks and financial institutions for providing financial guidance and support to customers. Bank of America uses it to power its chatbot, Erica – a virtual assistant. This way, BOA can help customers with account and banking inquiries of various natures. The use of IBM Watson Assistant has helped the bank enhance the overall banking experience for B2B clients.
Tech and IT companies are redefining support interactions with the help of advanced Salesforce Einstein Bots. VMware is a great example of how to use AI chatbots and help B2B customers with product inquiries and technical support. It has integrated the Bots with its Salesforce CRM to enhance productivity for the sales teams. The integration has also helped it streamline customer engagement.
A lot of companies use AI-powered chatbots to improve customer service and support operations for B2B customers. Siemens is one of them as it uses a powerful Ada chatbot to assist customers with technical documentation. It also relies on the bot to offer troubleshooting guides. The company automates routine queries and also offers self-service options to customers. All this helps it enhance the efficiency of its B2B sales and support processes.
Streamlining supply chain management processes has become easy due to Oracle’s Chatbot. It’s developed as a solution for supply chain processes. A business can use it to provide real-time information on delivery schedules, inventory levels, and shipments. Tracking orders and resolving issues in the supply chain is also effortless.
Engagement drives business growth. The more you engage with your customers, the better you understand them, resulting in business growth.
At REVE, we realize the huge value that a chatbot can add to your B2B business. That’s why we offer a range of engagement tools for you.
You can leverage our AI-powered chatbot to speed up responses. The bot can also be used to automate a variety of tasks.
The bot and live chat software can be paired together to offer hybrid support to customers.
With us, you can sign up and explore tools for customer engagement on any scale.
Start a 14-day free trial, no credit card required
Praveen Singh is a content marketer, blogger, and professional with 15 years of passion for ideas, stats, and insights into customers. An MBA Graduate in marketing and a researcher by disposition, he has a knack for everything related to customer engagement and customer happiness.
As a writer and analyst, he pours the heart out on a blog that is informative, detailed, and often digs deep into the heart of customer psychology. He’s written extensively on a range of topics including, marketing, AI chatbots, omnichannel messaging platforms, and many more.
Mr. Singh also has a passion for subjects that excite new-age customers, be it social media engagement, artificial intelligence, machine learning. He takes great pride in his learning-filled journey of adding value to the industry through consistent research, analysis, and sharing of customer-driven ideas.
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