With every progression in our digital evolution, we move further into a world where more marketing opportunity exists. In April of 2016, Facebook’s announcement to introduce the facility for chatbots to help brands and businesses manage their pages has opened new doors. This has proven that there is an entire segment of unchartered territory to explore where artificial intelligence leads the way for improving market research and customer experience.
The only limitations placed on using chatbots to manage interactions with your customers is the level of programming and the artificial intelligence platform being used.
Next-Level Communication
Brands and businesses can carry out the service that people are used to receiving via their social media pages, but chatbots can manage the actual work for them. This includes having conversations and gleaning insights from the responses, turning simple yes and no questions into complex questions and answers.
Using standard, human conversation, brands can bypass call centres and online forms and offer one-to-one attention to their customers in the form of text messages, alerts and notifications, product updates, company news, or whatever other pertinent information needs to be conveyed at a particular time.
So How Can Chatbots Enhance Market Research Efforts?
At it’s most basic, market research is a conversation with customers relating to how they feel about a product, service, brand or business. Using the applications that already exist (Facebook Messenger, text messages, WhatsApp etc) coupled with artificial intelligence, chatbots can strike up the conversations that businesses need to have with their customers.
Questions about products can be answered with little effort, delivery information can be sent straight to the customer’s smartphone. Direct connection can be made and based on the outcome of each interaction; an analysis of the business’s customer base can be drawn. The level of communication is simple, quick and straightforward, yet it is completing one of the most integral tasks a business makes in an effort to understand the customer better.
Chatbot Market Research In Practice
The American Marketing Association conducted a survey with two groups of customers that were recruited through their Facebook newsfeeds. A control group also completed the survey and they explored possible theories about using chatbots for market research. These were some of the findings based on the following theories:
- Facebook Messenger chatbots assist in attracting customers who are active on mobile, while providing an excellent market research survey experience via their mobile phones
Findings: The findings proved this theory to be correct. 76% of the respondents completed the survey via Facebook Messenger chatbot and rated the experience highly. The rest of the respondents used a web-based survey on their mobile phones and found it to be a poor experience.
What this means: as more people use their smartphones for daily interaction, exploration and communication, investing in mobile technology that works is an essential element for any business. Facebook Messenger already exists and is widely used, which prevents the need for further application downloads.
- Facebook Messenger survey insights can be more cost-effective than traditional market research surveys
Findings: there would be an initial investment to get the system up and running, but over time it would offer increasing value. It works best with respondents who are already opted in to receive notifications via chatbot. Once they are, future communication is that much easier and effortless to execute on.
Market research is an integral part of a business’s road to success and it doesn’t have to be paved with hurdles. We can capitalise on the technology that is already available to us, use it to its maximum potential and learn more about how our customers engage with our products and services in a non-intimidating environment.
Contact Interact RDT today to find out how we can streamline your market research activities.