How Consumer Brands Can Make the Most of the Busy Holiday Season With Chatbots
Chatbot  -  Nov 26, 2021

In the second part of this two-part blog, we’re looking at how chatbots can be a valuable tool for consumer brands going through their busiest time of the year.

While holiday seasons for B2B businesses tend to be quiet, for consumer brands it’s when workloads reach their peak, with marketing and sales leveraging seasonality with big campaigns and sales increases leading to high customer service demands.

Tools that can take care of some of this burden can therefore leave you and the teams in your business more time to take care of what really matters. Chatbots for consumer brands are an incredibly powerful tool, capable of:

  • Offering 24/7 personalized customer service
  • Growing sales via improved customer experience
  • Growing sales via conversational marketing tactics
  • Helping with long-term growth by strengthening your brand

This means chatbots can make this time even more profitable, while also relieving workload – making for a more relaxed and fruitful holiday period all round.

24/7 customer service, no agents needed

Managing customer requests during the holiday period can mean calling on more resources, eating into profits and time demands.

Chatbots have long been sophisticated enough to be used for effective customer support. Even a simple chatbot setup can handle questions about a product or can direct users to appropriate resources. For requests that can’t be handled communications can be fielded until a human agent becomes available – people are used to chatbots now (with 67% of web users reporting having used one in 2020) and don’t always expect to immediately be in touch with a human agent when they send you a message. 

IBM estimates that chatbots can answer 80% of standard questions, and more complicated questions can often be tackled too, especially by chatbots using the power of AI (artificial intelligence) and NLP (natural language processing).

A new or updated chatbot solution could therefore be the ideal gift for your customer service team this holiday period, giving them more time to spend on solving more difficult problems and cementing the reputation of your brand.

More holiday sales with incredible customer experience

For consumer brands during the holiday period, especially those in eCommerce, it’s all about customer experience.

Chatbots offer a way to steer customer journeys in exactly the direction you want them to go. For example, abandoned cart messages don’t have to be confined to easily-missed emails. Chatbots can be used to nudge users next time they’re online.

Personalized product suggestions can also be used here. Chatbots can easily store and use information about users, giving you more opportunities to up- and cross-sell. Being able to personalize these experiences means high conversion rates and customers that come to trust your brand and keep returning.

Chatbots can also be used to share holiday period special offers at just the right time. All of this means a personal and engaged customer experience, creating the ideal conditions for a successful purchase – and an experience that the customer is more likely to want again.

Use chatbots as part of your holiday period marketing campaigns

Chatbots are often overlooked as a marketing tool, but if you’re running campaigns through other channels, you’ll want to align efforts and share your message as widely as possible.

The promo codes you’re sharing on social media can be promoted even more with a conversational chatbot. Give all users the chance to enjoy a discount, and not just those who came to the site via a paid promotion. 

Chatbots can be used to segment audiences, for example into new users, returning customers or those being referred from another page. This means you can tailor discounts and messages for each kind of user, and the creative needn’t stop at the point of referral – keep users intrigued with on-brand messaging in your ads all the way through to the checkout page.

Conversational marketing tactics can also include some fun things just for the holidays. From holiday-specific greetings to themed quizzes, it’s a good time for marketing to get creative with a tool that interacts directly with potential customers. Games, quizzes, and questionnaires can all be used to keep customers engaged but also for data capture and market research, so you can make the most of increased traffic numbers and get additional insight for the future.

Not just a short-term boost

It’s easy to see how chatbots can be used to directly influence sales. There aren’t many more useful tools when it comes to personalization, which is always the key to a memorable customer experience and encouraging people to buy.

But there is so much more being offered here than a temporary boost to holiday sales. A memorable customer experience means people remember your brand, so they’re more likely to come back for more.

Customer support ratings are essential for growing consumer brands. 68% of consumers say they’ll pay more for products from brands known for their positive customer service experiences, while 89% are more likely to make additional purchases after they’ve had this experience themselves.

This, combined with greater opportunity to strengthen your brand’s voice with your use of messaging and tone, means an even better bottom line even when things start to quiet down.

Try a new chatbot solution this holiday

A tool that increases long- and short-term revenue, while decreasing workload?

If your consumer brand isn’t already using a chatbot, it’s likely to be missing out. And if you’re already a chatbot user looking for a solution that’s easy to use but still uniquely powerful – while also a better price than big-name competitors – then now’s a good time to contact Instabot to learn more.

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