One of the most cost-effective solutions for enhancing customer engagement is chatbots. They are AI-powered tools that offer real-time assistance to your users. By automating routine interaction, chatbots not only improve response time but also contribute to overall business growth. Currently, almost 60% of B2B companies and 42% of B2C use chatbots. This number is likely to increase by 30% in 2025.
This article explores various use cases of AI chatbots across multiple business domains, helping you improve customer service.
What are AI Chatbots?
A chatbot is a computerized program designed to stimulate human conversation with an end user. Chatbot technology can be found everywhere, from smart speakers to WhatsApp Messenger or workplace messaging applications, even on most apps and websites you browse.
AI chatbots use technology like natural language processing to understand your user questions and generating automated responses to their queries. The ability of AI chatbots to adapt to users’ conversational styles and use empathy to answer questions helps improve user engagement.
Based on the technology it uses, a chatbot handles different types of interactions, including pre-programmed queries and basic requests. It also directs a request to an agent for the job. The information gathered can be used to improve chatbot solutions.
How Does AI Chatbot Improve Customer Support?
According to Hubspot, 90% of customers expect immediate responses to their queries when interacting with customer services. The study highlights why users prefer live chats over the phone or email. AI chatbots offer a 24/7 channel for support and communication to your customers. Live chat has a higher satisfaction rating due to its quick response and conversational nature. Automating daily routine tasks and instant answers that AI chatbots provide reduces time and frees up human agents to handle more complex issues.
AI Chatbot Use Cases
No matter which industry you do your business, customer support is very important in every single one of them. Here are some AI chatbot use cases in different sectors:
AI Chatbot Uses For Different Business Functions
You can use chatbots for various business functions, including marketing, sales, customer support, lead generation, and more. Let’s look at some of them:
Lead Generation with Sales Approach
Rather than spending time and money to identify the cold prospects (new leads with no interaction at all), you can contact warm leads (individuals previously engaged with the company). These individuals are more likely to interact and respond to your marketing efforts. You can use a sales-oriented AI chatbot and add it to your website homepage to ask potential prospects questions and guide them through the checkout process.
For example, Shopify uses AI chatbots to enhance lead generation. The chatbots interact with visitors, answer questions, and provide personalized product recommendations. These chatbots also help users through the setup process.
Marketing Automation
The main aim of marketing is to generate sales. Chatbots can enhance your marketing strategy and nurture customers through the sales funnel, providing them with proactive suggestions and recommendations.
AI chatbots initiate conversations with users, asking them questions about their needs and preferences. This interaction helps to keep customers engaged. Based on a customer’s responses, a chatbot suggests products/services that align with the user’s interests. These AI chatbots can be trained to send reminders and notifications and automate follow-up messages.
For example, Starbucks’s AI chatbot, My Starbucks Barista, simplifies customer interaction. The chatbot is available on the company’s mobile app, where customers can use text or voice to ask questions, get suggestions about what to order, and place orders.
Employee Activity Assistance
chatbots can help your employees improve their productivity by supporting tasks like scheduling meetings, ordering office supplies, or sending notifications. The 24/7 availability ensures employees receive assistance even when human resources are not on hand.
Beyond task assigning, employees can also use chatbots to access quick links and knowledge-based articles for work-study and efficiently retrieve customer data. This allows them to focus on high-priority tasks.
For example, CISS uses the chatbot Freshchat to improve its customer experience. Freshchat helps CISS automate chat assignments to its customer support team based on the inquiries received so that they can handle requests accurately.
AI Chatbot Uses Based on Communication Channels
There are various ways in which you can implement a chatbot. Let’s look at a few of them:
In-App AI Chatbots
The in-app AI chatbots are optimized to maintain a consistent brand experience through push notifications, upselling, or cross-selling products or services. For example, these bots can message a customer who purchased a product from your app, saying, “Hey! You might also like this product”. You can program a chatbot to add an internal link for the product along with the message, enhancing click-through rates.
Website
Nowadays, people want to make educated decisions about the products they consume and also want fast solutions to issues related to the services they purchase. For this, they rely on the website to take action, such as product research and filing a suggestion or complaint. Using AI chatbots for websites can help you proactively engage with your customers, provide personalized messaging, and provide support in different languages.
Messaging Channel AI Chatbots
You can integrate AI chatbots into various messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. This integration helps you conduct a targeted marketing campaign and reach potential customers through personalized messaging. The message can include promotional content, event invitations, or product updates.
For example, you might have seen how various platforms send messages on WhatsApp after you log in to their website or purchase a product. If you respond to the message, it instantly replies.
Voice-Based AI chatbots
Voice-based chatbots interact with users through voice commands. These chatbots use advanced speech recognition and NLP to understand, process, and respond to the user’s voice commands, making communication more natural and hands-free. Voice chatbots can perform various tasks, including answering questions, setting reminders, providing directions, and controlling your smart home devices, such as lighting or curtains.
For example, you can adjust settings in Amazon Alexa to give you personalized responses, control your home devices, order food, track fitness, set up music, and more. Another example is Gemini Live, a hands-free voice assistant recently launched and released by Google. It allows you to chat naturally with Google Gemini on your Android phone, ask it questions, get details about the topic you’re interested in, and talk back and forth.
AI Chatbots Industrial Examples
Healthcare Industry
The healthcare industry requires timely communication for quality patient care and effective resource management. AI chatbots help reduce the workloads of healthcare professionals by automating routine tasks and offering instant advice to patients. These chatbots provide:
- Offer medical guidance to patients.
- Manage and schedule appointments.
- Find the nearest healthcare provider, clinic, or pharmacy based on an individual’s particular needs.
- Offer symptom analysis through question-answering.
This improves overall accessibility by ensuring patients receive timely responses, reduces unnecessary visits, and enables healthcare providers to focus on more critical cases.
An example of a Healthcare AI chatbot is Buoy Health. This chatbot is widely used for symptom-checking. Firstly, a patient or an individual starts by telling Buoy what they are experiencing. The individual can ask questions specific to their needs. The AI chatbot will then narrow down the symptoms (what is going on) based on the answers. After the analysis, Buoy guides the individual to the right service, and if you provide the chatbot permission, you can also follow up on your progress.
Travel Industry
The travel industry is fast-paced and highly service-oriented, with customers frequently seeking assistance at various stages of their journey. AI chatbots improve customer service in the travel industry by managing high volumes of queries and helping customers with their travel plans, such as:
- Helping with bookings and cancellations of tickets and rides.
- Navigate through the travel itineraries.
- Providing information for flight times or reservations.
- Suggesting nearby activities or restaurants to enhance customer travel experience.
By integrating AI chatbots within travel operations, companies can significantly enhance user experience.
Expedia uses an AI-powered chatbot named Romie to help travelers work out the details of trips based on their interests. Romie assists travelers in planning, shopping, and booking and even helps with events that change during the journey, serving as a personal AI travel buddy. This AI chatbot has a proactive learning nature, learning from conversations and backing up every step of the trip.
Retail Industry
The retail industry thrives on customer engagement and seamless services across multiple channels. The shift towards online shopping and increased customer expectations has called for AI chatbots to manage customer data and drive sales. Chatbots might help deliver over $140 billion in retail sales. These chatbots provide:
- Suggest products to customers based on their past purchases.
- Order Tracking in real-time to the consumers.
- Raise a ticket for the customer if they have trouble placing an order.
- Support for inquiries like return policy or cancellation of orders.
- Assist with internal communication, enabling different department teams to work in unison.
For example, Sephora is a multinational beauty and personal care product retailer. It sells a wide range of products, including skincare, cosmetics, fragrances, hair care, nail color and body products. The company uses multiple AI chatbot technologies to enhance its customer experience across various platforms. The Sephora chatbot on Facebook Messenger assists customers with product inquiries. Beauty Chat feature of Sephora’s website and mobile app provides live interaction with beauty advisors, booking appointments for in-store services, and retrieving order information.
Real Estate Industry
Selecting a suitable property is time-consuming as it requires looking for various factors, including pricing, commute, lighting, and surrounding areas. It is estimated that, on average, it takes 10 weeks for a person to settle on a property. AI chatbots help real estate professionals by streamlining operations like:
- Offer real-time support to customers and initiate conversations with potential buyers or sellers.
- Answer repetitive questions.
- Help with the virtual tours.
- Collect qualifying information and build customer profiles based on demographics.
OJO Labs Holmes is an AI chatbot that uses machine learning to interpret natural language and offers personalized assistance to home buyers and sellers. The conversational technology can understand user intent and provide timely responses to potential leads or customers.
Finance Industry
The finance sector is essential as it helps manage financial assets, safeguard against risk, and support personal and business financial stability. This sector is highly customer-centric and requires a certain amount of time to build trust. With the vast amount of daily transactions, service requests, and inquiries, implementing AI chatbots has benefited financial institutions immensely.
These chatbots can:
- Provide financial advice based on customer profile and transaction history.
- Assist with loan applications, policy recommendations, and credit checks.
- Simplify investment tracking and provide spending insights.
- Answering customer questions about account balance and policy claims reduces call wait times.
For example, TARS is a conversation AI chatbot that helps financial institutions like banks optimize their conversation funnels and automate some customer service features. When a financial institution integrates TARS within its system, its online users are greeted by the chatbot, who asks if the user needs assistance.
Government
The government organizations are complex and distributed among various services and departments. This distribution makes it difficult for citizens to navigate and find the correct information about the service they need. AI chatbots simplify the process of seeking assistance by acting as a centralized access point, helping citizens connect with the right resources.
These chatbots help the government by:
- Guiding citizen to the correct department for their needs.
- Answering questions on policies or permits.
- Assisting with application processes like passports, licenses, or exams.
- Providing updates on the new regulations across various channels.
An example of a chatbot used by the US government is Emma for the Department of Homeland Security. It answers questions about immigration services, passports, and the green card acquisition process.
Conclusion
AI chatbots have transformed how organizations interact with customers, manage operations, and provide support. From lead generation to streamlining government and healthcare services, Chabots offers a responsive solution that meets the needs of the digital economy.
FAQ
Which Industry Uses the Chatbots Most?
The real estate industry is now using chatbots more frequently than other industries. Chatbots’ ability to answer customer questions in a timely manner is critical to making sales.
Why are Chatbots Used in the Workplace?
Chatbots in the workplace help streamline day-to-day tasks such as scheduling meetings, booking meeting rooms, submitting hours, requesting time off, and more.
Are Chatbots Used in the Hotel Industry?
In the hotel industry, a chatbot is software that replicates a conversation between the property and potential guests on a hotel’s website.
