Editor's Note: This post was updated with additional content on March 13th, 2025.
Customer conversations are the lifeblood of any successful business. Effective communication with customers is critical to building relationships and growing your business. With the latest technology, businesses can now enhance their customer conversations in ways that were once unimaginable. From chatbots and artificial intelligence to personalized marketing and social media, the latest technology offers new ways to engage with customers and create a more personalized customer experience.
To help overcome challenges and as a way of giving back to our valued clients, we created this webinar series called “Ahead of the Curve”. Here is a recap of our webinar on reimagining your customer conversations using the latest technology by Eric Cook from Michigan, USA.
What is Conversational Marketing?
Conversational marketing is a real-time, dialogue-driven approach to engaging with potential customers through messaging apps, chatbots, live chat, and AI-driven communication tools. Instead of relying solely on traditional marketing methods like email or static forms, conversational marketing facilitates immediate, two-way interactions that guide users through the buying journey.
The Evolution of Customer Conversations
Traditionally, businesses relied on asynchronous communication methods, disseminating content to their audience without real-time interaction. The advent of AI and chatbots has shifted this paradigm toward synchronous communication, enabling real-time, dynamic engagements. Because the likes of Siri and Alexa have become such a part of everyday life, it follows naturally that 90% of consumers now prefer to use messaging to communicate with businesses.
Types of Chatbots and How to Get Started
Chatbots have emerged as pivotal tools in modern customer engagement strategies. They can be categorized into three primary types:
- Informational. This simple version of the chatbot uses the data that you have mined from FAQs and your frontline personnel to answer queries conversationally.
- Transactional. More interactive, transactional chatbots walk customers through the buying process with authentication for payment, tracking notifications, et cetera. This can even bypass a website and occur directly from a link within your social media marketing.
- Advisory. The most sophisticated type learns over time.
Get started with the help of your WSI Consultant via the search functionality on your website. Together with Google Analytics, you can discover what visitors to your site are looking for. Speak to your call center and sales reps, too, then map out the desired conversation flow – including instructions on connecting to a human being.
Benefits of Chatbots
The top three benefits of using chatbots as part of your digital marketing strategy are:
- Improve engagement and qualification
- Enhanced conversion rates
- Reduce costs
- Improve customer engagement
- Provides conversational marketing
- Proactive customer service
Best Practices for Meaningful Conversations Using Chatbots
- Transparency: Clearly communicate to customers when they interact with a chatbot and ensure they always have the option to connect with a human agent if needed.
- Continuous Improvement: Regularly update your chatbot's knowledge base and capabilities to reflect new information, products, or services.
- Human Touch: While automation is valuable, maintaining the human element in customer interactions is crucial. Ensure that your chatbot's tone aligns with your brand's voice and that it can seamlessly hand off to human agents when necessary.
What Not To Do
Avoid the “uncanny valley” where you try to pass off a bot as a real person. This does more harm than good.
It is far better to clarify that you are using chatbot technology but that human support is always available as needed. Never ignore the personable human element!
Tips for Managing Customer Conversations with Chatbots
- Set Clear Expectations
- Inform users about the chatbot's capabilities and limitations upfront.
- Use greeting messages to clarify what the chatbot can help with.
- Optimize Conversation Flow
- Implement guided responses to reduce misunderstandings.
- Use quick replies, buttons, or multiple-choice options where possible.
- Maintain a Natural Tone
- Ensure the chatbot's responses feel conversational and relevant to the user's query.
- Avoid excessive formality or robotic phrasing to make interactions comfortable for the user.
- Use Context Awareness
- Store past interactions (if privacy allows) to offer personalized responses.
- Implement session memory for smoother multi-turn conversations.
- Enable Seamless Human Escalation
- Provide a straightforward and easy way to reach a live agent if needed.
- Detect frustration signals (e.g, repeated queries) and offer escalation automatically.
- Regularly Update and Train the Chatbot
- Use chat logs and analytics to refine responses.
- Adjust the AI model based on valuable insights from customer feedback and behavior.
- Ensure Accessibility and Multi-Channel Support
- Optimize for screen readers and voice interactions for inclusivity.
- Support chatbot usage across web, mobile, and messaging apps.
How CRM and AI Can Strengthen Customer Relationships
Integrating CRM solutions with AI-driven chatbots allows businesses to gain deeper insights into customer preferences, buyer behavior, and common inquiry themes. This boosts customer satisfaction by providing more relevant recommendations and encourages continued interaction.
Linking chatbots to your CRM system also helps streamline ticket management, enabling businesses to resolve concerns swiftly. AI-driven chatbots can analyze support tickets, escalate complex cases to human agents, and ensure customers feel valued.
When chatbots are designed to use conversations effectively, they become powerful tools for marketing and support teams. Businesses can refine their marketing efforts by leveraging AI insights, better addressing pain points, and enhancing product development strategies.
WSI Is Here to Enhance Your Digital Marketing Efforts
For more details on the above, watch the recording from our webinar, “Conversational Marketing: How to Reimagine Your Customer Conversations Using the Latest Technology” (posted below).
You can count on WSI to deliver expert digital marketing services. Contact us today to learn more about customer conversations using the latest technology!
