Chatbots and Their Implication for Your Healthcare Marketing Campaign

1. Chatbots and Their Implication for Your Healthcare Marketing Campaign Chatbots could go on to outsmart mobile apps and make them outmoded. Chatbots would then become major digital marketing tools favored by search engines. Due to the rising competition in the medical industry, healthcare businesses are looking for new ways to enhance their healthcare digital marketing techniques and reach out to more number of people. Chatbot is one such tool, which is a computer-based program designed to stimulate conversation with humans users using the internet. It is a powerful tool to reach out to, stimulate, and engage potential patients, and has been extolled as one of the most advanced and promising expressions of interaction between humans and machines. Online chatbots save time and effort by automating the customer support system. According to Gartner’s forecast, by the year 2020, 85 percent of customer interactions can be done without the help of humans. Chatbots can not only give answers to customer inquiries but can also be used for tasks such as collecting information about users, helping to organize meetings, and so on.

2. Chatbots are a good alternative for carrying out routine tasks and simultaneous processing of multiple requests from users. A chatbot has tremendous speed processing capability that would help gain potential patients’ satisfaction and loyalty. A study presented at the 4th International Conference on Internet Science in November 2017 identified reasons why people choose to interact with chatbots. According to this study, the main factors that motivate people to use chatbots are: •The novelty of chatbots generates curiosity among users that make them want to explore more. •They provide quicker or greater assistance to information. •They fuel conversions and enhance social experiences. Healthcare chatbots come with functionalities such as caregiver, listener and assistant, as an article in chatbotslife.com highlights. Caregiver:Chatbots create a conversational environment, encouraging the patient to talk about his/her health and related concerns. Chatbots can be put to use by a nurse or physician by taking inputs from multiple sources such as fitness trackers or other tests, extracting valuable insights from the data obtained and making recommendations over the chatbot. A good example of a chatbot with the caregiver functionality is the Medicine Reminders chatbot offered by Haptik’s Personal Assistant app. You can chat in the Reminders channel and ask the chatbot to remind you about your medicines. The chatbot takes details regarding the medicines prescribed, their dosage and frequency. Then it would notify and call you to ensure that you take the medicines at the proper time. Listener: Chatbots are excellent listeners and are very useful when users have to discuss mental health and other sensitive topics. People may feel a sense of security in disclosing their information to a non-human entity. A good example of a listener chatbot is Woebot, built by a Stanford research team. It is an automated guide to a self-guided programme, according to Woebot Lab’s founder and chief executive. This chatbot works by creating a patient profile by asking basic questions to the patient about his/her mental health and energy levels. Then the bot occasionally checks in with the patient to understand his/her mental makeup. It suggests necessary steps to take in case any disturbing trends are noticed. Assistant: Chatbots act as excellent assistants, responding to your queries immediately without any wait time involved. Haptik’s Lal PathLabs chatbot is a good example that is available to users on a 24/7

3. basis. It allows users to check immediately the status of their pending reports, find nearby centers, displays test results, and enables speedy resolution of queries, guiding the user at every step. The following are some major advantages of using chatbots for healthcare marketing. Improve leads: Users can access Chatbots at any time as they are available 24/7 and more than 69 percent of consumers see 24-hour service as the biggest advantage of chatbots. Using chatbots through messaging apps, websites and landing pages can increase leads and conversions. The chatbot works by answering prospects’ questions, and advances the most qualified leads to a sales call. According to research studies, 35 to 50 percent of business goes to one who responds first. In the present competitive world quick response can give you an advantage over your competitors. Launch products: When a new service or product is launched, it is difficult to get immediate feedback from your consumers. But launching a product through chatbots is an excellent way for healthcare businesses to get in touch with consumers and introduce the new product or service. Healthcare marketers can market their products or services, videos or interactive quizzes or games on the web and engage actively with the target audience. This kind of engagement will create a new interest in consumers regarding your services or products. This could in turn increase leads and conversions. Gather data:Using chatbots on social media can lead to the generation of huge volumes of data. With innovative chatbots like Dashbot and Chatmetrics, marketers can analyze both functions and conversations. The information gained can be used to improve customer experience and gather insight into the current marketing strategies. Checking the chat history reveals commonly used keywords and phrases that can be used for marketing campaigns and online content to improve SEO and connect with potential patients. Improve brand loyalty: Chatbots engage patients in a two-way conversation that is useful for the patients. Chatbots provide information that the users ask for and this improves trust and creates a powerful bond between the provider and patients. A study by Harvard Business Review found that minimizing patient effort can increase loyalty among patients and chatbots are a way to minimize customer effort and maximize patient satisfaction.

4. There is no doubt that chatbots can improve customer experience to a great extent. A McKinsey report points out that B2B businesses that have actively modified their customer experience benefited in the following ways: Increased client satisfaction scores 10% - 15% increase in revenue 10% - 20% cutback in operational costs IBM says that by 2022, $8 billion will be saved from businesses using chatbots. Gartner says that by 2020, chatbots will power 85% of all customer interactions. Chatbots have advanced technology that would help increase overall marketing efficiency, and free up healthcare marketers to focus on other important activities. Medical chatbots can be used for scheduling appointments with physicians, monitoring health status, and notifying a human nurse immediately in case of emergencies. Chatbots provide great user experience. A professional medical SEO service provider would agree that chatbots are a great way to showcase a brand’s individuality and be available to users whenever they need your service. Chatbots may go on to be an important SEO factor if search engines decide to include this in their algorithm. Mobile apps and responsive web design are important SEO factors at present. However, mobile apps have to be downloaded and stored locally in your mobile device. Chatbots exist on messenger apps and you only need to communicate with these bots when you want to do so. They are simple tools that do not involve downloading or getting familiar with a new UI design. Other advantages of chatbots are the values offered such as automation and customization. In the future, chatbots may even outsmart mobile apps and make them redundant. If this happens, search engines may also favor chatbots more than mobile apps. 800-670-2809