Do Small Businesses in Africa Need Chatbots?

There’s a lot of talk about chatbots due to the huge advantage they offer businesses around the world. Chatbots leverage the growing popularity of messaging apps and Artificial Intelligence (AI) drive a new kind of mutually beneficial relationship between businesses and customers. 

Some years back the question was: Is Africa ready for Chatbots? We’ve seen the Nigerian international financial institution, United Bank for Africa (UBA) launch its chatbot Leo, and with the rise of chatbot developers like Talklift in Kenya and Botza in South Africa, not forgetting Whatsapp and Telegram chatbots offering. It’s safe to say that the technology is not at all new to businesses on the continent.

While big players are leveraging chatbots, one would wonder what if small businesses in Africa and also take part in the revolution. Considering the rise of platforms like Talklift that want to the want make it easier for small business on the continent to get on board with the chatbot technology, the door open now than ever before to small businesses. 

There are a lot of benefits African small business can derive form using chatbots. Let’s have a look.

24-hour Customer Service

As customer service shifts to digital interactions, call centres are slowly becoming a thing of the past. A report by Chatbots Magazine states that businesses can reduce their customer service costs by up to 30 percent using chatbots to speed up response times while answering up to 80 percent of routine questions.

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Live Updates for Customers

Chatbots help small business to make the most to the rapidly growing e-commerce industry in the country. You can use this technology to power your online store by giving instant updates of new stock or services using chatbots.

Find Out What Makes Your Customers Tick

Chatbot analytics, much like web analytics, will help you find trends in what your customers are searching for. It’s hard to know what your customers really want, but over time, conversational data will reveal the most-used terms or phrases. This makes it easy, to find new opportunities for promotion on other platforms, such as social media and emails.