92% of respondents have implemented a chatbot or are thinking of doing so

This new survey, carried out between March 24 and 30, 2023, reveals that chatbots have become more widespread, with a sharp increase in “customer/user self-care” solutions over the past two years. 92% of respondents have already implemented a chatbot or are considering doing so, vs. 48% in 2021. It is also interesting to note that only 7% of respondents do not wish to implement a chatbot. This year, bots have been one of the fastest growing company self-care solutions and have become an integral part of internal operations. 61% of employees would also like to implement a callbot vs. 46% in 2021, and 59% a voicebot (vs. 44% in 2021).

There has been a rise in the use of self-care tools this year. 91% of users check FAQs vs. 66% in 2021. 72% use forums vs. 54% in 2021, and 94% turn to the company website vs. 78% in 2021.

More than 25,000 euros spent on customer relations: a growing budget vs. 2021

More than one-third of companies spend between 10,000 and 50,000 euros on self-care solutions. It is worth noting that businesses invest an average of 131,000 euros in customer relations, and that half of the respondents spend more than 25,000 euros on customer relations each year. In other words, companies allocate 35% of their customer relations budget to self-care solutions. This budget increase is effective for 40% of respondents, revealing a promising trend.

Chatbot of the year: ChatGPT

After revolutionizing the AI industry, ChatGPT has proved its worth in the customer relations sector. 94% of respondents have heard of ChatGPT (9 out of 10 respondents), and 34% use it. 61% know of it but have never used it, and only 6% have never heard of it. 38% of respondents use ChatGPT for IT, 48% for customer relations, and 31% for external communications.
Nearly two-thirds of those who know it plan on using it in their company, mainly for customer relations and IT issues. ChatGPT perfectly complements self-care solutions.

Click here to see the infographic that illustrates this survey.

Over the past ten years, the digitalisation of communication methods and consumer practices has transformed the customer relationship. Today’s consumers are hyper-connected and expect companies to be “everywhere, all the time”. The recent health crisis has magnified this trend, and has forced customer relations professionals to question and adapt their strategies to deliver flawless end-to-end experiences. 80% of customers believe that the experience is just as important as the products and services, so the stakes are high!

How does conversational AI address customer relationship challenges?

We propose a new white paper dedicated to customer relations challenges and how conversational AI can address them. This white paper covers the following topics:

• How do high consumer expectations and new challenges faced by companies tend towards an optimized customer relationship?
• How conversational AI is transforming the customer experience?
• How to optimize your costs and boost your revenues with conversational AI
• Use cases & keys to success

Use cases of Customer Relations bots by sector 

Customer Relations chatbots can respond to various use cases, depending on the sector:

• Banking & Insurance: Bank statements, changing card limit, procedures, technical issues, making a claim, claim follow-up, billing, etc.
• E-commerce : Order management, payment, order tracking, after-sales, returns and refunds, complaints, etc.
• Tourism & Transport: Booking management, ancillary services, billing, cancellations and refunds, etc.
• Health: Healthcare, private insurance, medical exams, bloodwork, booking an appointment, etc.
• Real Estate : Rental management, property purchase, rights and obligations, procedures, legislation, taxes, etc.

To know everything about bots dedicated to customer relations: Download the white paper

Consumers are said to use the phone less and less to contact customer services. Yet phone calls remain their preferred channel. Talking is three times faster than typing and you can carry out several tasks at the same time. Phone calls are quicker, more practical, and more natural. They meet the consumer’s need for immediate information or problem-solving. In 2021, 60% of consumers contacted customer services by phone, compared to 56% for email, and 15 to 25% for digital channels such as live chat, instant messaging, or social media. However, customer service wait times can be very long, and handling customer requests over the phone is expensive for companies.

To improve the customer experience and manage costs, recurring requests can be automated by callbots, conversational robots that can be reached via a phone number. This kind of virtual switchboard is often deployed by companies with lots of incoming calls, such as those in insurance, telephony, transport, or e-commerce. Callbots are more effective than IVR (Interactive Voice Response). Although they are not widely used yet, there is more and more interest among large companies, SMEs, and public organizations.

This white paper provides further information about implementing a callbot: the challenges, performance metrics, and impact assessment. It covers topics including the challenges of providing a quality customer relationship, as well as easily identifiable use cases with 4 major scenario typologies (claims, inquiries, qualification, appointment booking). It also details its benefits, ROI calculation, functioning, and various features, as well as strategic tips for a successful roll-out. This white book draws on our expertise in natural language processing software, as well as several client testimonials, such as MACSF an insurance provider for healthcare professionals, and ANFR, the French radio frequencies agency. 

When implemented methodically, callbots help to improve the customer phone experience and boost operational efficiency. Callbots are not intended to replace customer service agents, but to relieve them. 80% of marketing and customer relations professionals believe that bots make human agents more efficient in handling customer queries. Today, 73% think that they will create new jobs. 

To find out more about callbots: download our White Paper

The Chatbot Observatory is publishing its third study, carried out at the end of 2018. For this new edition, dydu has decided to place innovation within companies in the spotlight. How do businesses perceive innovation, what strategies have they put in place to encourage it, what is their take on conversational bots, and what impact have these had on their everyday work life? These are the kind of questions put to a panel of respondents, all of them working for a department that promotes creativity within the company.

The Chatbot Observatory was created by dydu in October 2017. It aims to provide benchmarks for the different professions affected by the development of artificial intelligence systems, in particular chatbots, relating to their use within a professional sphere, and the prospects ahead.

Download the full infography of the 3rd edition of the chatbot observatory.

Innovation is seen as necessary for growth and survival

Innovation is an extremely vast concept, of which everyone has a different vision. This is confirmed by the variety of definitions given by the respondents. The majority (26%) consider innovation to be something new. We can’t disagree with that. For another quarter of respondents, innovation goes hand in hand with new technology. This reflects the importance of digital technologies in business development plans. 13% of respondents associate it with company’s products and services; innovation enables companies to create products and services with high added value, thus giving them a competitive edge on their market. 10%, partisan to an innovation strategy as opposed to one merely of improvement, believe that it ensures company longevity over time. Finally, 1 out of 10 respondents consider innovation to be at the service of mankind’s wellbeing; simplifying and improving people’s everyday lives.

Innovation is perceived differently by the respondents, but is more or less equally divided:

• 37% associate it with invention: the materialisation of a specific creative idea – for example, the invention of the car
• 31% consider it to be a significant improvement to an existing product or service – for example, the sportscar
• for 32% of respondents, innovation is simply a continuous improvement, a new development that enhances a product or service – for example, a new car model

Finally, innovation can be found at two levels:

• At an individual level: innovation improves work methods and tools, enabling employees to do more and better – optimise, create purpose, improve, simplify…
• At a company level: innovation allows to significantly improve a product, service or even process by meeting the expectations of a market it is conquering. It’s also generating wealth, whether technological, financial, environmental, societal or relating to image

A widespread culture of innovation in companies

For the majority of businesses, innovation is driven by an eponymous, cross-departmental hub (43%). 

This is followed by General Management (24%), and then IT (21%). 3 companies out of 5 have implemented strategies to encourage innovation amongst their employees. This is even more true for the private sector (64%) compared to the public sector (48%). It is also interesting to note that the culture of innovation is more widespread in medium-sized companies (70%), as opposed to large (56%) or small ones (43%).

Amongst the different strategies put in place to encourage innovation, implementing a reward system is the most popular:

Finally, over half of the respondents consider that the failure of an innovative project is valued in their company and allows to reduce the failure rate of future projects. This is true for the majority of executives and directors (respectively 58% and 69%), whereas 37% of non-executives do not share this opinion.

So where do bots come into play?

Different types of bots were evaluated in this study: chatbots, callbots and voicebots

Each one is perceived as innovative, with an average of 3.1 for the chatbot, and slightly higher for the other two (3.2). All respondents agree (78%) that the advent of bots is inevitable! For 74% of them, bots even constitute a lever for a company’s digital transformation.

31% of companies surveyed have already implemented at least one bot. This falls in line with the two previous studies of the Chatbot Observatory, in which 42% of marketers and 23% of HR professionals had deployed a bot. Amongst the companies equipped with these tools, the chatbot remains the most popular (63%), followed by the voicebot (29%) and the callbot (8%). For this, they call upon:

• A software publisher (43%)
• A digital agency (26%)
• An Open Source platform (14%)
• Their own internal developers (9%)
• An integrator or IT company (8%)

Benefits linked to productivity are the most frequently observed (59%), followed by time saving (29%) and customer satisfaction (8%).

Amongst the companies not yet equipped with these tools, callbots are favoured (+5pts) more than in those already equipped. Customer satisfaction (+6pts) and image (+8pts) benefits are hoped for above productivity. Finally, 57% would like to implement bots for their customers, and 43% for their internal teams. The same ratio, in fact, that can be observed amongst dydu’s clients.

Methodology

The ‘Institut Occurrence’ carried out this third study between the 10^th and 21^st of December 2018 amongst 310 professionals from General Management, IT, Research & Development, Marketing or Innovation departments in France. All company sizes and levels of responsibility were represented, including directors (21%), executives (57%) and operational employees (22%). The margin of error is +/- 6 points (i.e. for a result of 50%, the accurate result lies somewhere between 44% and 56%).

The Chatbot Observatory was created by Do You Dream Up in October 2017. It aims to provide benchmarks for the different professions affected by the development of artificial intelligence systems, in particular chatbots, relating to their use within a professional sphere, and the prospects ahead.

HR departments are reluctant to deploy a chatbot

Although the Observatory’s first study highlighted the appeal of chatbots for marketing directors, the same cannot be said yet for HR. For HR professionals, the term “chatbot” remains obscure – only one in five HR professionals knows exactly what a chatbot is and what it can be used for, whereas one in two marketers reported that they did. 43% of HR respondents even declared that they were not at all familiar with this tool! This trend can be confirmed by Do You Dream Up’s experience as a chatbot editor – 1 in 4 chatbots are deployed to meet HR needs, versus 3 in 4 for marketing or customer service needs.

Another difference between HR and marketing is the actual, or projected, implementation of a chatbot within a company. Whereas 42% of marketers were looking into the possibility of deploying a chatbot in their company, only 23% of HR professionals were doing the same thing. Out of all the respondents, only 6% of HR professionals had implemented a chatbot at the time of the study (versus 16% of marketers questioned).

For those who had set up a chatbot, the overall experience was less successful with HR than with marketers. As such, HR directors gave an average satisfaction rating of 6.6/10 to their chatbots. That’s not bad, but it’s not a resounding success quite yet, and there is still a lot of progress to be made when defining the perimeter within which the chatbot operates and the needs it is expected to meet. Two HR respondents even gave their own chatbot 2/20!

Out of the 285 HR respondents who had not yet implemented a chatbot in their company, unfamiliarity with the subject matter was the second reason they had not done so (30 answers), following closely behind budget constraints (59 answers).

And yet, HR professionals are confident company chatbots will become more and more widespread

68% of HR professionals believe that chatbots will become more and more commonplace in their line of work. Amongst them, HR managers from medium-sized companies were the most likely to hold this favourable opinion (75%). And their marketing counterparts were even more likely to think so (92% of marketers), regardless of company size.

Below are the main functions, in order, for which HR professionals would like to implement a chatbot:

• 49% to give access to functunal HR services (e.g. leave management…)
• 34% to improve the management of training
• 26% to help employees with the internal mobility process
• 19% to intervene in the recruitment process
• 18% to inform employees about their rights
• 17% to evaluate employee performances

For HR directors, the main benefit of implementing a chatbot is to facilitate the lives of their colleagues by making HR services available 24/7. Unlike marketers, they attach particular value to the security aspect of these systems and ensure that they include login authentication functions for their colleagues. This reflects a particularly sensitive approach to the integrity of company assets, particularly staff data, a positive response in view of the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Overall, HR managers have a positive image of chatbots:

68% of HR managers think that chatbots will become more widespread in human resources (versus 92% for marketers).

They think :

• chatbots will replace intranets 62%
• chatbots will handle recruitment better than a human 30%
• chatbots will be an essential tool for recruiting 44%
• chatbots are an asset for employer brand 65%
• chatbots increase the value of brand image 67%

Contrary to what could be observed amongst marketers, company size does not impact the way HR professionals views chatbots. Moreover, it should be noted that those in a Human Resources Director’s position, were the most convinced that chatbots would be useful during the recruitment process.

Chatbots and employment in HR departments: risks and opportunities

As for the relationship between job insecurity and chatbots, the survey carried out amongst HR professionals by the Do You Dream Up Observatory, yields results in line with those obtained from marketers – 60% of HR managers believe that chatbots will replace certain functions within their teams, versus 71% for the marketers. And a little over 1 in 2 HR professionals (56%) considers that chatbots will contribute to the creation of new jobs in HR departments (a view shared by 73% of marketers).

Methodology

The ‘Insititut Occurrence’ carried out this first study between the 15^th and 30^th March 2018 amongst 303 HR professionals located in France, in Paris, Ile de France and other regions. All company sizes and HR positions were represented, including directors (12%), managers (50%) and operational employees (38%). The margin of error is +/- 6 points (i.e. for a result of 50%, the accurate result lies somewhere between 44% and 56%).