Nearly 75 per cent of businesses will adopt chatbot, and according to a reputed research firm about 85 per cent of customer interactions will take place without involving a human agent. Today, many organisations are facing ambiguity about the kind of investment required and the ROI it will receive on an RCS chatbot.

This is because initially, the running cost of chatbots was expensive. They were long drawn projects that required long man-hours from the vendor and organization side in the past, however, things have rapidly changed.

With the advancement in cloud technology, Microsoft Azure, and several other players, it is easy to pull in AI services, such as speech, language, vision, etc on pay per use basis and integrate it within the chatbot.

So how is RCS bot different and how does it play an important role to improve ROI?

As a basic form of artificial intelligence, chatbots are cheaper and faster than live service agents, as they can use keywords and key phrases to respond instantly to people in multiple independent conversations and channels at the same time.

They can also offer 24/7/365 online support and customer engagement.

Since RCS does not require to install another app and offers brand verification, it is ideal for chatbot adoption while offering privacy. It cuts down on the development effort and the maintenance cost is also low.

Different organisations measure ROI in different ways, and some of the metrics include cost per contact and in case of help/service desk scenarios, the cost per contact for live agents which goes down considerably as the RCS chatbot takes care of all L1 or low-value questions and answers them well before the customer is connected to the live agent desk.

The other metrics include no of escalations that have happened from the bot to the agent and no of queries the bot was able to resolve on its own without human intervention.

One of the biggest advantages of rolling out an RCS chatbot is that the virtual agent is available 24/7 and Enterprises have some form of natural support for its customers, even when the support desk is not in the office, during holidays and days off.

E-commerce companies are using RCS chatbots to give personalized product suggestions based on their recent in-store pickup orders via suggested actions and suggested reply feature.

They can order products and pay for it with a credit card on-file or in-store while picking up the product. Many conversations have more than single intent.

Consumers may want to perform multiple tasks, such as view “Order/Status” which is usually followed by another intent, such as changing the delivery address, changing order items, switching to store pickup, cancelling the order or asking for a refund.

If the bot is unable to handle the secondary intents as mentioned above, RCS Business Messaging enables easily escalation of secondary queries to a human agent. Thus, preventing a potential missed lead and enhancing ROI.

Where next for RCS Chatbots and what does this mean for Enterprises?

According to a reputed global Consulting company, surveyed executives said that their top customer service priority over the next five years is to reduce call demand and increase self-service.

The ability to quickly handle simple inquiries 24/7 has made RCS chatbots a valuable enterprise asset for brands across all industries.

RCS also support Google Pay and other third-party payment options which will lead to a higher conversion rate. Around 8.1 per cent of mobile networks globally have adopted RCS messaging.

RCS will help companies to generate ROI by enabling transactions within the campaign. It will also help make personal recommendations based on history, send individualized deals and enable transactions through chat which will assist in lead generation insights.

Published in Telecom Economic Times: RCS chatbots to improve enterprise ROI