Chatbot examples: Communication revolution in various industries
Since the launch of the well-known chatbot ChatGPT at the latest, the majority of the population probably has a rough idea of what a chatbot is. More and more companies are offering their customers or employees chatbots to automate communication. Companies that are not yet using chatbots are often at least in the evaluation phase. This phase serves on the one hand to identify the appropriate use cases and on the other hand to define the appropriate technology.
Chatbots can be used in a variety of ways. Here are some examples of their use, broken down by industry and department.
Chatbots in customer service
Chatbots are a common tool in corporate customer service. They can help customers answer frequently asked questions, track orders and check delivery dates, and resolve problems with products or services. Chatbots are particularly useful for companies with a high number of customer inquiries, as they can provide answers quickly and efficiently without the need for employees to be constantly available.
Chatbots in sales and marketing
Chatbots can also be used in sales and marketing to answer customer queries, recommend products and facilitate purchasing decisions. You can also help conduct surveys and collect feedback from customers. Chatbots can also automatically generate personalized advertising messages based on the user’s behavior and interests.
Chatbots in human resources
In the HR department, chatbots can help with application processing and arranging job interviews. You can also answer questions from employees, generate payslips and process vacation requests. Chatbots can also help with the integration of new employees and provide information about the company.
Chatbots in education and further education
Chatbots can help to support pupils and students by answering questions and helping to solve tasks and problems. They can also provide information about educational programs and assist with course registration.
Chatbots in the healthcare sector
Chatbots can be used in healthcare to help patients make appointments, monitor symptoms and communicate information. They can also help with medical advice and diagnosis by asking about symptoms and making recommendations based on information. Chatbots can also help with the provision of medical knowledge and the monitoring of medical devices. When using chatbots in the healthcare sector, however, it must be borne in mind that chatbots can also give incorrect answers. This can have fatal consequences in medicine. The chatbot must therefore be extremely well monitored or it must be ensured that it is only used for simple health-related questions.
Chatbots in the travel and tourism world
Chatbots can be used in the travel industry to help customers book flights, hotels and tours. They can also provide information on destinations and help with travel planning. Chatbots can also help answer questions about travel insurance, visa requirements and other travel-related questions.
ChatGPT (as of April 2023), among others, was used to describe the individual application fields.
Chatbots examples: Chatbots in different channels
Consumers often perceive chatbots as the small chat windows at the bottom right of a company’s website. Chatbots can also be integrated into many other communication media. Here are some examples of where chatbots can be integrated in addition to the company website.
Chatbots on websites
Chatbots can be used on a website to answer visitors’ questions and help with navigation. They can also help to provide product or service information and support purchasing decisions.
Chatbots in messaging apps
Chatbots can be used in messaging apps such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Signal, Telegram, Microsoft Teams or Slack to answer customer queries and help plan appointments. They can also help deliver messages to customers and generate personalized recommendations based on user behavior.
Chatbots in Facebook Messenger
Chatbots can be used on Facebook Messenger to automate customer support, order processing and other functions. One example of this is H&M’s chatbot, which supports customers in their search for clothing and accessories.
Chatbots in WhatsApp
Chatbots can also be used on WhatsApp, for example to take orders, provide information on products or provide customer support. One example of this is KLM’s chatbot, which helps passengers to book flights and manage their bookings.
Chatbots in Slack
Chatbots can be used on Slack to improve team communication and collaboration. Examples include the Trello chatbot, which sends notifications about tasks and projects on Trello, and the Standuply chatbot, which collects daily status updates and reports from team members.
Chatbots in Telegram
Chatbots on Telegram can be used to provide users with information, process orders or provide customer support. One example of this is Pizza Hut’s chatbot, which helps customers order pizza and provides delivery details.
Chatbots in Microsoft Teams
Chatbots on Microsoft Teams can be used to improve team communication and automate workflows. One example of this is Trello’s chatbot, which enables team members to create and manage tasks directly from the chat.
Chatbots in Google Chat
Chatbots on Google Chat can be used to send notifications, make appointments and provide customer support.
Chatbots in emails
Chatbots can be used in emails to answer customer queries and help provide information. They can also help create automated email campaigns and generate personalized recommendations based on user behavior.
Chatbots in mobile apps
Chatbots can be used in mobile apps to answer customer queries and help with navigation in the app. They can also help to provide information on products or services and support purchasing decisions.
Chatbots in voice assistants
Chatbots can be used in voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant to answer users’ questions and help them perform actions. They can also help to provide information on products and services and to navigate through applications.
Chatbot examples from practice
I’m often asked what the best chatbot is? Or which bot is my favorite? These questions are not easy to answer, as new bots are constantly coming onto the market. Below I have compiled a list of chatbots from different industries and for different use cases. But even these bots all have their advantages and disadvantages, their strengths and weaknesses.
Chatbots in customer service
Banks and financial services
A very well-known chatbot from the financial world that even uses ChatGPT technology is Clara from Helvetia Insurance Switzerland. The bot uses the ChatGPT API and is designed to answer all simple and repetitive customer queries relating to insurance, pensions and home ownership. You can read more about Helvetia’s experiment here.
Telecommunications
Deutsche Telekom ‘s chatbot answers the most frequently asked questions from customers and potential customers. The bot recommends that existing customers log in first. This means they are directly authenticated in the chat and the bot can also provide customer-specific information.
Retail and e-commerce
The e-commerce provider Brack.ch does not yet use a fully automated chatbot on its website. But what customers don’t know is that bots and artificial intelligence are supporting the employees in the customer service center in the background. With Typewise’s technology, the employees who answer customer emails receive useful text suggestions and can answer the emails semi-automatically. More on this in the upcoming podcast episode #91.
Chatbots in marketing and sales
Product recommendations and upselling
The online store HSE won several awards for customer experience on the phone in 2022. If customers want to call the online retailer by phone, in many cases they speak to the company’s voicebot. The bot not only answers customers’ questions, but is also encouraged to cross-sell and upsell. You can hear how he does this and what success figures he has already achieved with it in podcast episode #71 of my podcast.
Lead generation and qualification
The chatbot from Swiss health insurer Swica helps customers find the right insurance. Potential customers can get advice from the bot, so to speak, and are shown the various health insurance options.
Incidentally, the bot also offers some added value for existing customers. For example, customers can change their address with the help of the bot.
Healthcare
BKK ‘s digital care pilot is designed to provide patients with information on care services and advice around the clock. People seeking help can ask their most important questions about care around the clock.
Patient care
The Lucerne Cantonal Hospital wanted to test the use of chatbots on a limited scale and integrated the chatbot on the maternity clinic’s website. The chatbot answers all questions from expectant parents about the maternity clinic and the birth process. However, the chatbot deliberately does not provide any health information. The hospital does not want to run the risk of the chat robot providing incorrect health information.
- Personalwesen
- Applicant management and onboarding
- Employee support
Education and training
Knowledge transfer and tutoring
Chatbots are also well suited to imparting knowledge. In this research, I have shown how bots can be used to increase financial literacy. The startup eggheads.ai has also focused entirely on chatbots for knowledge transfer. Here, for example, is a chat designed to create more security awareness in the company.
Language learning chatbots
ETH startup Quazel uses GPT technology for its language learning app. Users can create a fictitious conversation partner and state their topic preferences. They can then have conversations with a fictitious person via the app. The user’s texts and voice messages are regularly improved. Users are also given small tasks or key topics that they should include in the conversation in the foreign language.
Travel and tourism
Travel planning and tourism assistance
Wienbot – that’s the name of the chatbot for Austria’s capital. The Wienbot not only answers questions from Viennese citizens, it is also available to Viennese tourists. Users can either navigate through the conversation with the help of buttons or formulate their own question in the input field. Unlike most of its digital colleagues, the Wienbot is not only accessible via the website, but also via Signal Messenger or the Vienna Tourism App.
You can hear more about the Wienbot and why the city has been using chatbots for so long in podcast episode #17 of Sophie’s Chatbot Talk.
Travel information and customer service
The chatbot of the airline Swiss is called Nelly and introduces itself to users as the SWISS Chat Assistant. The chatbot primarily answers frequent and urgent questions from customers who have already booked a flight. It can help to find alternatives if flights have been unexpectedly canceled. He also helps passengers who have missed their flight and provides further information about the airline’s services.
Chatbot examples: What makes a good chatbot?
The chatbots mentioned above are examples of chatbots that are certainly not the worst. All these bots have their strengths, but also their weaknesses. The important thing with all chatbots is that they create the right expectations among users right from the start. If users have too high or false expectations of the chatbot, this leads to disappointment. The chatbot is then rated as bad. A good example is Helvetia Verschierung with its GPT chatbot “Clara”. They make it very clear that the Clara March 2023 version is an experiment and that wrong answers are possible. The chatbots from Vienna or Swiss communicate very precisely at the start of the chat session in which areas they can help their customers. This also helps to create the right customer expectations.
The majority of the chatbots presented have their own name or a customized tone of voice. Good chatbots are also characterized by the fact that they create a wow effect for users. The right tonality and the introduction of the chatbot play a decisive role here.
Chatbot examples: Potential and future prospects in the digital age
The examples shown here are mostly classic rule-based or intent-based chatbots. In the future, many more companies will probably rely on the latest technologies of Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT or GPT3.5 or GPT4. The advantage of these new language models is that companies do not have to “manually” train their chatbots by inserting every possible user request into the chatbot as a training sentence beforehand. Companies can then simply provide the chatbot with a wide range of information, for example their own company website as a source of content, and the chatbot can use this to answer user queries. It is therefore to be expected that the quality of chatbots and the scope of their knowledge will increase significantly in the future and that more and more companies will use them to automate some communication channels.
Chatbot examples – Frequently asked questions & answers
What is a chatbot and how does it work?
A chatbot is a computer program that conducts human-like conversations via text or voice. It uses algorithms, artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) to understand queries and provide suitable answers.
In which industries are chatbots frequently used?
Chatbots are used in areas such as customer service, sales and marketing, human resources, education, healthcare and the travel and tourism industry.
What advantages do chatbots offer in customer service?
Chatbots offer round-the-clock availability, fast response times, cost savings, automated processes and personalized customer experiences.
How do I integrate a chatbot into my existing communication platform?
There are various chatbot platforms such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram, Microsoft Teams and Google Chat that provide APIs and developer tools to seamlessly integrate chatbots.
What challenges and limitations need to be considered when implementing chatbots?
Data protection and security, language barriers and cultural differences, incomplete information and misunderstandings as well as technical integration and interoperability are some of the challenges.
