Benefits of Chatbots: 13 Reasons Why You Must Use Them in 2025

Imagine a customer visits your website at 11 PM with a simple question about your return policy. They type their message, wait… and wait. Five minutes pass. Ten minutes. They give up and leave, probably heading straight to a competitor who can answer faster. 

Chatbots solve this timing gap completely. They provide instant, accurate answers, 24/7 support, reduce support costs, and handle thousands of conversations simultaneously. 

In this article, we’ll explore the specific chatbot benefits for both customers and businesses, and how different industries use them.

Table of Contents

• What is a Chatbot?
• Benefits of Chatbots for Businesses and Customers
  • 1. Boosts Operational Efficiency
  • 2. Reduces Costs
  • 3. Enhances Lead Generation
  • 4. Increases Sales
  • 5. Gathers Customer Insights
  • 6. Improves Brand Engagement
  • 7. Always-On Instant Support
  • 8. Personalized Experiences
  • 9. Multilingual Support
  • 12. Delivers Reliable Support at Scale
  • 13. Omnichannel Availability
• Make Your Customer Support Smarter with Chatbots
• Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate human conversation through text or voice interactions. 

At its core, a chatbot processes what you type or say, understands the intent behind your message, and generates an appropriate response. It’s kind of similar to how you’d interact with a customer service representative, but automated.

Benefits of Chatbots for Businesses and Customers

1. Boosts Operational Efficiency

Customer service teams spend countless hours handling the same questions over and over: “What’s your return policy?” “Where’s my order?” “What are your business hours?” This repetitive work drains resources and prevents agents from tackling complex problems that actually require human expertise.

Chatbots change this by handling up to 79% of these routine questions. This automation frees human employees to focus on tasks requiring creativity, empathy, and complex problem-solving.

DNB Bank, Scandinavia’s largest bank by market value, demonstrates this operational efficiency boost clearly. The bank implemented Aino, an AI-powered chatbot, to manage high volumes of customer inquiries across digital channels. Within just six months, Aino automated 50-60% of all incoming chat traffic and approximately 22% of the bank’s total customer service traffic across all channels. The chatbot now handles over 10,000 fully automated daily customer interactions, covering 2,500 relevant topics from day one.

2. Reduces Costs

Support operations are expensive. Human agent interactions cost between $3.00 and $6.00 each, including all operational expenses (salaries, benefits, training, and management). Providing 24/7 coverage further drives up costs, requiring multiple shifts and premium compensation for nights and weekends. 

Chatbots slash these expenses dramatically. Chatbot interactions cost around $0.50 or less, which is nearly 90% cheaper than human-handled inquiries.

A Forrester Consulting study found that large organizations using IBM Watson Assistant saved an average of $5.50 per contained conversation. This means every inquiry resolved without a human agent generated real savings. These organizations also achieved a 64% containment rate, with AI chatbots independently resolving nearly two-thirds of customer inquiries.  

3. Enhances Lead Generation

Most website visitors leave without converting, not because they aren’t interested, but because their questions go unanswered. Static contact forms wait for visitors to take action, while competitors with faster responses win their attention.

Chatbots change that. They proactively start conversations the moment visitors arrive, answer queries in real time, and collect contact details through natural dialogue. By asking the right qualifying questions, chatbots identify high-intent prospects and pass them to sales teams with complete context. It’s no surprise that 55% of companies using chatbots report an increase in high-quality leads.

A great example is AdmitHub’s chatbot. The company uses its own chatbot as a lead generation tool. The bot engages prospects in real time and collects key information about their goals. It qualifies leads based on their responses and shows off the product’s conversational skills at the same time. In short, it works as a smart, always-on sales assistant that proves its value while generating leads.

4. Increases Sales

When potential buyers have questions during their purchase journey, delayed responses mean lost sales. They’ll either abandon their cart or buy from a competitor who answers faster. Traditional sales teams can’t monitor every website visitor or respond to inquiries instantly.

Chatbots guide customers through the sales process in real-time. They can answer product questions, offer personalized recommendations, and even process purchases directly in chat. They can remind customers about abandoned carts and suggest complementary products.

Luxury Escapes, an Australian travel agency, deployed an AI chatbot to personalize the holiday shopping experience and help customers find deals faster. The chatbot achieved a conversion rate 3 times higher than their website, generated over $300,000 in revenue in the first 90 days, and delivered an 89% response rate on retargeting efforts. ​

5. Gathers Customer Insights

Customer research takes time.  Surveys get low response rates, focus groups require scheduling and incentives, and analyzing feedback is time-consuming. Meanwhile, valuable insights about customer needs, pain points, and preferences remain hidden.

Chatbots automatically collect data from every single interaction: common questions, buying triggers, pain points, feature requests, and behavioral patterns. This happens naturally during conversations without requiring customers to fill out separate surveys.

You can use these insights to refine products, improve services, and make smarter strategic decisions. The data is immediate, authentic, and scales automatically as conversation volume grows.​

6. Improves Brand Engagement

Static websites and one-way marketing messages can’t always hold attention. Customers scroll past ads, ignore emails, and bounce from websites within seconds. Creating meaningful engagement requires active, personalized interaction. But doing this manually doesn’t scale.

Chatbots drive engagement by initiating conversations, asking relevant questions, and responding in a friendly and consistent manner. They use rich messaging formats like images, carousels, and videos to make interactions dynamic. 

For instance, H&M’s fashion chatbot on Kik achieved an 86% engagement rate with an average interaction time of 4 minutes, which is dramatically higher than their 2% email click-through rate. 

7. Always-On Instant Support

Customers don’t restrict their questions to business hours, and they don’t have patience for long wait times. They research products at midnight, encounter problems during weekends, and expect immediate answers whenever it’s convenient for them. Yet maintaining round-the-clock human coverage is prohibitively expensive. Also, traditional support channels, like email, take hours, and phone calls, which require hold time, create frustrating delays. In fact, 39% of customers express dissatisfaction over long wait times.

Chatbots eliminate these constraints completely. They operate 24/7/365 without breaks, respond in under 30 seconds, and empower customers to solve problems independently without waiting for agent availability. Whether it’s 2 PM on a Tuesday or 2 AM on Sunday, chatbots provide instant access to information, troubleshooting guides, and self-service options that would otherwise require navigating complex help centers or explaining issues to multiple support agents.

For example, HDFC Bank’s AI chatbot EVA (Electronic Virtual Assistant) perfectly demonstrates always-on instant support in action. EVA operates 24/7 across the bank’s website, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa to handle banking queries without human intervention. It has been configured to handle more than 7,500 FAQs covering account balances, statements, credit card information, bill payments, and product details. Most impressively, information that typically takes 8-10 minutes to obtain through traditional channels is provided by EVA in seconds.

8. Personalized Experiences

Generic, one-size-fits-all support feels impersonal and often misses the mark. Customers want interactions that acknowledge their history, preferences, and specific needs. They don’t like canned responses that could apply to anyone.

Advanced AI chatbots analyze customer data, past interactions, and behavior to tailor every conversation. They remember preferences, suggest relevant products, and provide recommendations that actually fit individual needs. 

Sephora’s AI-powered Virtual Artist exemplifies this. It uses facial recognition to map 100+ facial points, analyzes skin tone with Color IQ technology, and provides personalized makeup recommendations from 1,800+ brands. Customers who used Virtual Artist saw products matched to their exact features, leading to 35 million try-ons in the first year and a 25% reduction in product returns.​

9. Multilingual Support

Language barriers frustrate customers and limit business reach. Hiring multilingual support teams is expensive, and translation services create awkward, slow interactions.

Chatbots can detect the customer’s language and respond fluently without hesitation. They can support dozens of languages simultaneously, providing the same quality experience to customers worldwide. This breaks down barriers and makes businesses truly accessible globally.​

For example, Airbnb uses a sophisticated multilingual chatbot for customer support that handles inquiries in over 40 languages. The AI-powered assistant helps users worldwide with common questions about bookings, cancellations, payments, and account issues in their native language. According to industry reports, Airbnb’s multilingual chatbot deflects around 30% of support tickets by automatically resolving routine inquiries.

12. Delivers Reliable Support at Scale

As your business grows, so does the volume and complexity of customer inquiries. And that’s when teams face the challenge of scaling up. More agents mean higher costs, and surges in demand can quickly lead to long wait times and inconsistent answers. 

Chatbots eliminate this constraint entirely. They can manage thousands of simultaneous conversations without any degradation in quality or response time. Whether you have 10 customers or 10,000 asking questions at once, chatbots handle them all instantly.

For example, Bank of America’s AI-driven virtual financial assistant Erica demonstrates scalability and reliability at an extraordinary level. Since launching in 2018, Erica has assisted nearly 50 million users and surpassed 3 billion client interactions, now averaging more than 58 million interactions per month. Clients have spent more than 18.7 million hours conversing with Erica, with more than 98% of users finding the information they need.

Platforms like Hiver are designed for this exact challenge. It helps you deliver reliable, consistent, and scalable support that doesn’t break down under pressure or compromise on quality, even during your busiest seasons. Hiver’s AI-powered chatbots automate routine queries instantly, no matter how many customers reach out at once, while maintaining accuracy by pulling information from a unified knowledge base.

13. Omnichannel Availability

Customers use different platforms for different purposes: websites for research, Facebook for social interactions, and WhatsApp for messaging friends. Being forced to switch to a specific channel just to contact support creates unnecessary friction.

Chatbots work seamlessly across all platforms like websites, mobile apps, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, and more. Customers can start conversations wherever they’re already spending time, creating smooth experiences regardless of channel.​

Flipkart, for instance, implemented an omnichannel chatbot across its website and mobile app to handle inquiries related to order tracking, returns, and product information. The chatbot handles over 70% of customer queries while maintaining conversation context, allowing customers to switch between channels seamlessly. This resulted in higher conversion rates as customers could quickly resolve doubts in real-time.

Hiver makes true omnichannel support easy by unifying conversations from email, chat, calls, and WhatsApp into a single inbox. With Hiver, you can respond instantly wherever your customers reach out without losing context or missing a beat.

Make Your Customer Support Smarter with Chatbots

Getting started with chatbots doesn’t require months of implementation or technical expertise. Start by identifying the most common, repetitive questions your team handles daily, like password resets, order tracking, return policies, and business hours. 

Next, choose a platform that fits your team’s workflow and technical comfort level. Look for solutions that connect smoothly with your existing tools, support easy customization without coding, and offer clear performance analytics so you can measure impact from day one.

If you’re looking for a fast, practical way to deploy chatbots, Hiver makes it simple. You can launch an AI-powered chatbot in under 10 minutes and connect it directly to your existing support workflows. 

Hiver’s AI agents automatically answer customer questions by pulling information from your knowledge base, internal documentation, website, and past conversations. Common queries get resolved instantly, while complex issues get routed seamlessly to your human agents. The result: faster responses, consistent customer experiences, lower support costs, and a team that spends time on work that actually requires human judgment.

Frequently Asked Questions