B2B Chatbots: Examples, Benefits, and Use Cases

An Outgrow study says that 58% of B2B companies have implemented a chatbot to drive their processes. This number is set to grow further as AI-powered technology has tremendous potential and can help drive marketing and sales efforts.  

In fact, more companies in the B2B space are turning to chatbots to address the various challenges they face. From automating tasks to providing instant support, a B2B chatbot can add value to different aspects of the business. 

Needless to say, these bots have the power and features to transform the way B2B entities go about their business. That’s why they are now integral to the industry.

In this blog, we will explore B2B chatbots in detail, understand their benefits, see some examples & use cases, and also discuss strategies for using them. 

But, before moving further, let’s first start with the definition…

What is a B2B Chatbot?

A B2B chatbot is a software application primarily used for customer communication and customer service delivery tasks. It’s powered by artificial intelligence technology and can facilitate interaction between businesses and their customers. 

B2B chatbots can be integrated into various digital platforms such as websites, business apps, or messaging apps and enable engagement with users in real time. They are used for facilitating conversations with users through speech or texts.  

These bots can understand complex inquiries and provide relevant information.  They can even automate various business processes. By using chatbots, B2B companies can improve customer service and enhance user experiences, resulting in efficiently meeting customer needs.  

Why Use Chatbots in B2B? 

Chatbots are now integral to successful B2B operations. More companies rely on them to boost efficiency and productivity across sales, support, and marketing. From customer engagement to lead generation, they can enable tasks that may otherwise require intensive manual efforts. 

Here are the key reasons for using chatbots in B2B – 

• To enhance customer service – Chatbots are advanced with the capability to handle customer inquiries of any nature and provide 24/7 support. That’s why B2B companies use them to offer timely assistance to customers which results in improved overall satisfaction.  
• To automate routine tasks – There are many routine tasks that a chatbot can easily automate such as handling customer queries, order processing, appointment scheduling, etc. Their automation capabilities free up employees and save their valuable time, resulting in improved productivity. 
• To support lead generation efforts – B2B companies can leverage chatbots to engage website visitors, qualify leads, and gather key information. This is why bots prove a key tool to support lead generation efforts. 
• To collect customer data and insights – Chatbots can help businesses collect valuable data and insights about customer behavior and preferences. They are a very helpful tool to get actionable intelligence for driving decisions and strategies.  
• To deliver personalized experiences to customers – Chatbots today are equipped with machine learning algorithms that help them analyze customer data and tailor communications based on individual preferences. This can help you deliver personalized experiences to customers. 
• To achieve operational efficiency – B2B enterprises can use chatbots to reduce or minimize the need for human effort in repetitive tasks. This can lead to cost savings as well as operational efficiency, resulting in profitability. 
• To help achieve scalability – Chatbots are capable of handling multiple conversations and customers simultaneously. This enables businesses to successfully manage fluctuations in demand and achieve scalability as they grow. 

Chatbot Benefits for Business: Key Stats   

Chatbots are now indispensable to business operations across industries. Be it offering quick replies to automating tasks, scheduling meetings to generating leads, they can do a whole array of tasks and add value to organizations of any type and size. 

Let’s look at some key stats highlighting chatbot benefits for businesses – 

• Chatbots can answer up to 80% of routine questions which can lead to significant time and cost savings for businesses. ( IBM) 
• Businesses can save an average of $0.70 per interaction by using chatbots for customer service inquiries. ( Juniper Research )
• 80% of businesses currently use or are planning to use chatbots to improve various processes. ( Oracle )
• Chatbots can lead to higher customer satisfaction rates by reducing the average customer response time to just 2 minutes. ( SalesForce ) 
• The increasing demand for scalable customer solutions is set to drive the global chatbot market size to $1.25 billion by 2025. ( Grand View Research ) 

Business Use and Best Practices of B2B Chatbots  

Leveraging chatbots for business use requires careful planning and meticulous execution. A strategic approach is needed to get the most out of the chatbot for your B2B business. This is how you can achieve optimal performance and effectiveness as well.  

Let’s look at some chatbot for business use best practices – 

• Define your business goals – A chatbot can handle many tasks and serve a variety of purposes for your business. However, it’s important to first clearly define your business goals for deploying a chatbot. Whether you want to improve customer service, boost sales, or streamline processes, make sure you have a clear vision of what you want to achieve. This will help you find the right type of chatbot for your business.   
• Identify the needs and pain points of your audience – The chatbot you’re planning for your business must resonate with your audience. If it does not, how can you offer value with engagement and interactions? It’s therefore vital to identify the preferences and pain points of your audience. Based on that, you can tailor your bot’s functionality, feature, tone, and responses. 
• Design conversational flows – A quality chatbot is one that can guide users through interactions seamlessly. However, to design such a chatbot, you first need to design conversational flows aligning with user information and inputs. Make sure the chatbot uses a combination of open and close-ended questions to offer relevant responses. 
• Use context-aware responses – Chatbots can add value to conversations only when they are capable of delivering contextually relevant responses. Such responses are not delivered unless the chatbot leverages user data and past interactions. The key is to rely on dynamic content and offer personalized recommendations to users.  
• Regularly update your chatbot’s knowledge base – Irrelevant and meaningful responses are delivered when a chatbot’s knowledge base is not regularly updated. This can dilute user experience in a big way. The right approach is to equip the chatbot with accurate information and update the database frequently, resulting in accuracy.  
• Provide a seamless handover to human agents – Chatbots can’t resolve issues 100% of the time, no matter how advanced they may be. There will always be scenarios when a bot might fail to handle complex inquiries or issues. That’s why providing clear escalation paths with a seamless handover to human agents is essential for maintaining continuity of service. 
• Optimize the chatbot for different channels and devices – Customers can use any channel or platform to connect a B2B business. This makes it essential to optimize the bot for multiple channels and devices such as websites, social channels, etc. This is how your business can maintain consistency in user experience across channels. 
• Monitor the chatbot’s performance – Keeping a chatbot relevant to the time is always a big challenge. That’s why you should monitor its performance regularly and identify areas for improvement. It’s equally important to collect user feedback and make changes to the design and functionality of your bot over time.  

Strategies for Using AI Chatbot for Sales in B2B  

AI chatbots can add great value to various aspects of business operations, and sales are no exception. You can deploy an advanced chatbot and complement your sales activities in a big way. 

Let’s look at some strategies for using AI Chatbot for sales in B2B – 

1. Initial Engagement and Qualification

Engagement is always at the core of sales. The better you engage with your customers, the more chances of sales it can produce. Keeping this in mind, your B2B business can always benefit from the bot and drive engagement. You can use it as the first point of contact and engage website visitors. 

Using the chatbot, your B2B business can also qualify leads and better understand customer needs and pain points. You can always collect key information from customers and understand their preferences. You can then use the data to route leads to sales teams. 

Key Strategies 

• Deploy chatbots to start conversations with website visitors and ask qualifying questions 
• Offer dynamic and tailored responses based on the buying intent of customers. 

2. Lead Nurturing 

What after the initial engagement and qualification? The next stage is to focus on engaging your prospects over time. To achieve the goal, you can focus on providing helpful information to leads. You can always leverage their interest and buying stage to provide valuable content. 

After all, a study by Outgrow says that 36% of companies turn to chatbots to improve their lead-generation effort. So, you too can follow the same practice. 

It’s, however, important to analyze the stage in the buying journey and then make the content align with their interest. Case studies and industry reports are two valuable forms of content you can provide and build trust with your audience.  

Key Strategies  

• Implement an automated follow-up to nurture leads over time  
• Utilize the prospects’ previous interactions and personalize offers  
• Keep adjusting your nurturing strategy based on the prospect’s engagement with the bot  

3. Product Demos and Trials

Gone are the days when your sales teams had to manually schedule product demos and trials. Today you can automate this important sales task and add efficiency to the entire process. Your prospects can now schedule demos or appointments directly through the chatbot. 

All you need to do is integrate the bot with your calendar system. When you automate demos and trials, both your prospects and sales representatives can experience a seamless experience. This will also help streamline the process, resulting in improved efficiency with your sales process.  

Key Strategies 

• Use your chatbot to provide key information about your products and services
• Provide answers to common questions
•  Collect feedback using your chatbot and move on to the next steps in the sales process 

4. Objection Handling 

A sales process is complex. Prospects may have some concerns or issues that you need to solve at this stage. Since you’re using the chatbot, make sure it’s well-equipped to handle those common concerns. 

You must equip the bot with prepared responses to common concerns. This can help you address issues in real time and remove any doubts. Successfully handling objections and concerns can prepare you to move the conversations forward. 

Key Strategies 

• Analyze common objections that prospects often raise and prepare responses accordingly 
• Provide informative resources to address issues in real and quick time  

5. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Outreach 

Personalized interactions are key to driving sales. They can influence key decision-makers of target accounts. But how can you personalize engagement? Well, you can customize the bot’s messaging in alignment with the specific needs of target accounts.  

You also need to tailor all your content and recommendations in a way that they resonate with the people who make decisions. This is how you can drive engagement and facilitate personalized interactions, resulting in more chances of sales. 

Key Strategies 

• Focus on customizing chatbot messaging and content for an ABM outreach 
• Personalize the communications to suit the goals of the target account 

6. Post-Sale Support  

Customer relationships should never end at the purchase stage itself. It rather should stretch way beyond that. This is why offering post-sale support is key to building long-term rapport with customers and winning their trust for life. 

A chatbot can prove very helpful when it comes to offering post-sales support and following up with customers. This way you can use the bot to identify chances for upselling and referrals as well. With post-sales support, you can also gather feedback and foster customer loyalty.  

Key Strategies  

• Use chatbot interactions to identify upselling opportunities 
• Understand customer’s needs and usage patterns for additional offers 

B2B Chatbot Examples 

Bank of America Using IBM Watson Assistant  

IBM Watson Assistant is now a top choice for many banks and financial institutions for providing financial guidance and support to customers. Bank of America uses it to power its chatbot, Erica – a virtual assistant. This way, BOA can help customers with account and banking inquiries of various natures. The use of IBM Watson Assistant has helped the bank enhance the overall banking experience for B2B clients.

Vmware Using Salesforce Einstein Bots 

Tech and IT companies are redefining support interactions with the help of advanced Salesforce Einstein Bots. VMware is a great example of how to use AI chatbots and help B2B customers with product inquiries and technical support. It has integrated the Bots with its Salesforce CRM to enhance productivity for the sales teams. The integration has also helped it streamline customer engagement. 

Siemens Using Ada’s AI-Powered Chatbots 

A lot of companies use AI-powered chatbots to improve customer service and support operations for B2B customers. Siemens is one of them as it uses a powerful Ada chatbot to assist customers with technical documentation. It also relies on the bot to offer troubleshooting guides. The company automates routine queries and also offers self-service options to customers. All this helps it enhance the efficiency of its B2B sales and support processes.  

Oracle’s Supply Chain Chatbot 

Streamlining supply chain management processes has become easy due to Oracle’s Chatbot. It’s developed as a solution for supply chain processes. A business can use it to provide real-time information on delivery schedules, inventory levels, and shipments. Tracking orders and resolving issues in the supply chain is also effortless.  

Use REVE’s B2B Chatbot and Drive Your Business Growth 

Engagement drives business growth. The more you engage with your customers, the better you understand them, resulting in business growth. 

At REVE, we realize the huge value that a chatbot can add to your B2B business. That’s why we offer a range of engagement tools for you. 

You can leverage our AI-powered chatbot to speed up responses. The bot can also be used to automate a variety of tasks. 

The bot and live chat software can be paired together to offer hybrid support to customers. 

With us, you can sign up and explore tools for customer engagement on any scale.