If you’ve recently published a new website, whether it’s because you’ve given your established business a much-needed makeover or because you’ve just launched a brand new startup, your work isn’t finished.

Of course, your website is a branding cornerstone for your business; but it’s also the place where a bevy of prospects, leads, and customers alike are going to land — often in search of information.

The reality is that your team might not be cut out to handle all of your site’s customer service needs — in which case, it might be time for you to lean on the power of chatbot technology instead.

Here are six reasons why it may be a good idea for your business to make the switch!

1. Chatbots of Today Are More Human Than Ever

Debunking one of the biggest stigmas surrounding chatbot technology, today’s chatbots are more human-like and intuitive than they were even just five years ago.

While it’s true that the old chatbots had severely limited responses, produced clunky dialogue, and were more prone to error, that is hardly the case now.

Modern AI and chatbot technology has ascended to a new level entirely. These chatbots can provide more responses (and more detailed responses, at that), interact with people in a more conversational way, and typically possess a much smaller margin of error — all attributes people would come to expect from a conversation with a human customer service representative.

In fact, one study reports that 27% of consumers were unsure whether their last encounter with a customer support team was with a human or a chatbot!

2. Chatbots Don’t Let People Slip Through the Cracks

Artificial intelligence (AI) is automatic. Humans, on the other hand? Not so much.

Even your very best, most reliable employee is prone to make mistakes from time to time. While you may have a top-notch dedicated customer service team, things happen. A chat gets missed. A wrong answer is given. An answer takes too long.

When properly deployed, chatbots can help you create and maintain a system by which no prospects, leads, or paying customers are kept waiting or get lost somewhere within your overall marketing or sales funnel.

3. Chatbots Improve the Quality of Customer Service While Keeping Costs Low

While chatbots may not provide quite the same level of human interaction as one of your employees might, they more than compensate for this shortcoming by improving the quality of customer service in a handful of areas.

First and perhaps most importantly, they’re faster! As chatbots don’t need to “think” or “troubleshoot”, your customers will enjoy a shorter response time to all chats.

Unlike humans, chatbots are also able to provide 24/7 support. This allows your business to provide solutions to people all over the world — even as you sleep!

What’s more, is that humans are also prone to making some very embarrassing mistakes. Whether it’s the occasional typo or poor grammar all around, these are the kinds of mistakes you won’t have to worry about with a chatbot.

Last but definitely not least, they’re cheaper! You may pay a fixed or monthly fee for the technology, but it’s not at all comparable to paying full-time customer service staff. In fact, chatbots can help businesses reduce customer service costs by 30%!

4. Chatbots Alleviate Your Staff

In that same vein, your staff might not be able to keep up with the growing demands of customer support —particularly if you have limited staff, or if your staff has other key duties and responsibilities.

By using chatbots in place of traditional customer service or management, you’ll free up your employees to stick to what they know and handle only what is on their plates.

The result? You’re more like to get better performance from your team across the board, as they focus on their normal duties!

5. Chatbots Help Build Brand Trust

Remember, a person’s interaction with your site’s chatbot may very well be his or her first or last interaction with your business.

You can program your chatbot in such a way that it does what all customer service is supposed to do but perhaps doesn’t always have the time or sense to do —educate.

When people see that they’re going to get quick, relevant information and professional answers from customer service, it shows that your prospects, leads, and customers are all top-priority for your business.

This alone will do wonders for your brand.

6. Chatbots Don’t Have to Be the Be-All and End-All of Your Customer Service Strategy

Transitioning between technologies can yield growing pains, and your business is likely to experience a few hiccups along the way.

If you’re not ready to go all-in on chatbot customer support, or if you’re uncomfortable with making such a drastic change, guess what? You don’t have to —put chatbots at the forefront of your customer service strategy, but use human support as your fallback.

The mere addition of chatbot technology will allow you to provide a more customized support experience