How Chatbots Reduce Support Costs 

Chatbots are becoming a popular solution to reduce support costs.

Many companies struggle to deliver exceptional, personalized customer support on a consistent basis. This is because providing customer support is expensive and time-consuming for businesses of all sizes.  

In fact, the rising cost of customer support will likely be the primary growth driver for chatbot software over the next few years.

Let’s take a look at how chatbots can help reduce customer support costs and what that means for your business. 
 

Chatbots Reduce Support Costs by Decreasing the Need for Human Agents 

When customers reach out to a company with a question or a problem, the most common method of handling the situation is to have a human agent manually handle the request. Customer support agents can be expensive and are often buried with an endless backlog of tickets. This means that human agents often don’t have the capacity to address high-value or frequently asked questions — their time is simply better spent on other tasks.  

Chatbots, on the other hand, are designed to automate the most common customer support tasks. This means that a chatbot can address the same questions that would normally clog up a support team’s time.  

For example, if a customer has a specific question about one of your products, they would traditionally interact with a human agent who would answer the question. This can be a time-consuming process, especially if the agent doesn’t know the answer and has to find the information they need by logging into different systems, like a CRM.  

With a chatbot, this same interaction can be handled automatically with a single click. Thanks to natural language processing, a chatbot can understand the question, navigate the same software that a human would use, and instantly return the information the customer needs.  

In short, chatbots help field simple, common customer questions (which account for about 80% of tickets on average) thereby freeing up agent time to work on more complex inquiries.  
 

Chatbots Help Customer Support Teams Scale Quickly, Reducing Support Costs in the Long Run

When you are operating a new or growing business, you will hit a critical point where you need to scale your support team quickly. However, it’s very difficult to hire and train new agents as quickly as you need without disrupting the level of service that your customers expect.  

The best way to scale your support team, while keeping CSAT levels the same, is to use a bot to handle simple inquiries, automate common support tasks, and improve deflection.  

As mentioned above, chatbots can help organizations solve upwards of 80% of their support tickets, regardless of how many tickets your organization receives. By utilizing a chatbot, you are ensuring your organization can keep up with support tickets while you focus on creating a strategy to hire new human agents.  

Chatbots are More Affordable than Support Agents 

It’s no secret that chatbots are more affordable than human agents. On average, chatbots cost between $500-$5,000 per month, depending on how an organization uses the bot. On the flip side, according to Indeed.com, the average salary for a customer service representative is $3,873 per month in the United States.  

This means that a chatbot, which can handle an unlimited number of support requests, costs less than two human agents which have a threshold of how many tickets they can solve. This is obviously a huge opportunity for organizations to cut support-related costs.  

Plus, chatbots have an advantage over humans in customer service because they don’t need breaks, lunch, sleep, or vacation days. Chatbots will work 24/7/365 without needing overtime.  

Conclusion: Chatbots will reduce support team costs and boost productivity

Chatbots are becoming a necessary component of customer support teams. While chatbots will never replace human agents fully, they can help support teams address ticket backlogs, resolve common questions quickly, improve scalability, and even save you some money.  

If you’re ready to learn more about how a chatbot could benefit your organization, check out our chatbot services.