Chatbots have become an integral part of our digital experiences. Integrated into everything from online banking to appointment setting, chatbots have helped to streamline many diverse industries. Here, we delve into the following 6 industries most impacted by the integration of chatbots.

• Customer service
• Healthcare
• Banking
• Feedback and surveys
• Sales
• Education

1. Customer Service

Chatbots have been utilized within the customer service industry to offer 24/7 customer support, handling of common queries and to escalate more complex situations to human agents.

The use of chatbots for this role has helped to improve efficiency and increase customer satisfaction, as the waiting time between enquiry and resolution has been significantly reduced.

However, as customer service is a very personable role, off-the-shelf chatbots can prove too rigid for the job at hand.

Effective chatbots must be able to understand the intent and context behind the customer’s inquiry, not just the content.

This is why many web developers are turning towards NLP-powered chatbots.

Natural language processing, a field of AI, is being utilized to develop more intelligent, responsive and user-friendly chatbots.

These NLP chatbots have an improved understanding of user intent and enhanced language comprehension, helping them to gain a deeper understanding of the query they are being tasked with handling.

The rising popularity of NLP chatbots will only further deepen the integration of the technology into the customer service industry.

As the NLP technology continues to evolve, expect chatbots to become even more effective in meeting the needs of complex and diverse customers.

2. Healthcare

Chatbots are used extensively across the global healthcare industry, primarily in the early touch-points of a patient's journey.

Within the medical field, chatbots have been deployed for two primary uses; symptom checking and appointment reminders.

Even when fully advanced, chatbots are unlucky to be ‘left alone’ to diagnose a condition, due to the overwhelming complexities and number of variables involved in a medical diagnosis.

However, chatbots are being used by many health providers to pre-qualify a patient’s symptoms, helping to escalate inquiries with severe or urgent symptoms.

For example, the UK’s NHS app will ask pre-determined questions such as whether the patient is experiencing chest pains. If the responses indicate a medical emergency, such as coughing up blood, the chatbot has been trained to automatically advise the patient to seek urgent medical attention.

In this instance, the role of the chatbot is not to diagnose the medical condition, but to signpost the patient towards the most suitable care provider.

When used for medical use cases, chatbots must be carefully trained upon trusted medical sources, rather than relying upon open-source information online that may be of questionable medical use.

Custom training of chatbots is vital in industries where the chatbot must provide only the highest degree of accuracy when responding.

Other prevalent use cases for chatbots within the healthcare space is in setting appointments. Advanced chatbots can combine calendar availability with the severity of the symptoms provided to find an appropriate time for the patient to visit a medical professional.

If the patient has expressed low level symptoms that do not leave them in pain or with severely restricted movement, the appointment can comfortably be set for a period of time away. In other instances, urgent appointments might be required to ensure the correct level of medical care is provided as early as possible.

You can read about how other NLP-driven methods, alongside chatbot integration, are being developed here at NetGeist to benefit the healthcare industry.

3. Banking

Chatbot integration within the banking sector can handle account inquiries and perform automated fraud detection to help keep their customers safe when accessing their financial information online.

Virtual assistants have been deployed to assist customers with loan applications, providing information on the required documents as well as even providing pre-advice on whether the customer is likely to be eligible for the loan based on the answers they have provided to the chatbot.

Online banking requires the highest level of cyber-security and trust. Therefore, chatbots trained for the banking sector must be secure against any malicious intent to extract information.

Sufficient chatbot integration must have defined rules about what information can be accessed and shared, and to whom. Sensitive information such as account details and transaction history must never be shared over a public chatbot.

Similar to the field of healthcare, we have been developing NLP solutions, including chatbot integration, to help improve the service banks and other financial enterprises can offer. You can read more about this here.

4. Feedback and Surveys

The online survey industry has grown into a multi-billion dollar operation, with the insights used at every level of business planning, from start-ups through to multinational corporations. Statistics showcasing why it is so popular and growing at an unprecedented rate can be found here.

Online surveys have evolved far beyond simple forms with static questions and answers. NLP-powered chatbots are allowing for dynamic surveys that react to the emotions and topics expressed throughout the survey.

Should a participant be expressing clear signs of frustration, the survey chatbot can focus upon the sources and potential remedies for this frustration.

Should a customer be expressing praise throughout, the chatbot will ensure to collect this information and look at ways of ensuring this customer satisfaction is maintained and recognised.

If sentiment analysis is performed upon the responses that the virtual assistant receives, the business can gain a deeper understanding of their customers' attitudes and opinions towards them.

5. Sales

The sales industry as a whole has benefited greatly from the efficiency improvements that well-trained chatbots have offered. The bane of a sales person’s life is unqualified leads, they can waste precious time and resources sifting through enquiries that was never likely to come to fruition.

For an industry so reliant upon success-based payments and commission, wasting time is not an option.

Chatbots trained to pre-qualify leads can help sales teams to quickly identify hot opportunities, as well as potential time wasters.

The chatbots can collect all of the information a salesperson would need to decide whether to engage with a lead, or move onto more fruitful avenues.

In certain industries, the chatbot itself can act as a sales tool, by understanding where the user is during the sales cycle, and signposting them towards the sales material that will help to progress them further along.

For example, if a user is exploring their options, they might be directed towards user guides or explainer videos.

Whereas if a user has identified themselves as being in a transactional state of mind, they might receive personalized special offers or given instructions on how to complete their purchase.

6. Education

Educational chatbots can provide a tailored learning experience for students. Whether students are trying to understand new concepts, recall key information or undertaking exams, personalized chatbots provide a flexible teaching aid for them.

NLP-powered chatbots can adapt their tone and level of complexity according to the user. Should the person using the chatbot be identified to be a child, the chatbot can adapt to convey messages in an age appropriate manner.

When deploying chatbots for educational purposes, it is vital to have full control over the sources of information being used to train the chatbot.

Not all information online is correct; the last thing a school would want is an educational chatbot providing incorrect information to students.

Chatbots can even be used to help students receive personalized feedback for their exams and tests.

Advanced chatbots can understand the context of inputted answers, which can help the chatbot to identify why an answer to a question might be incorrect, allowing the chatbot to provide personalized feedback to the student as to their mistake.

Overall, chatbots have been developed to offer industry-specific solutions. The days of one-size-fits-all chatbots are over; your customers demand and deserve advanced chatbots that can actually help them along their journey.

We’ve seen just how effective they can be across various sectors. There are many more, including the role in government institutions too.

Training a chatbot for your specific requirements might sound daunting, but NetGeist is here to help. Our custom project capabilities help businesses like yours to deliver a solution specifically designed with your customer in mind.

From custom data training to front end design and everything in between, NetGeist are your custom chatbot specialists. Chat with Assistant Robert to get started with your custom solution!