May 23, 2024
Telegram has become a go-to platform for web3 companies to grow their user base and offer support. However, as your community grows, so does the influx of repetitive questions that flood your Telegram groups daily. This constant barrage of inquiries can overwhelm your team, pulling them away from strategic tasks that are vital for your project's success.
Imagine a solution that not only addresses these repetitive questions but also enhances the overall efficiency of your support system. Enter AI chatbots—a must-have for Telegram support.
From understanding the basics to exploring advanced implementations, this guide will provide you with all the insights you need to make an informed decision.
Content
Bridging the gap: Mobile accessibility and manual support
It's never been easier for your community members to jump into your Telegram group from their mobile phones and ask questions on the fly. This convenience has led to an increase in active users who seek instant responses.
On the other hand, your support team remains bogged down by the manual labor of answering repetitive questions.
This disparity creates a significant challenge: the speed at which users can ask questions is not matched by the speed at which your team can respond. The result? An overwhelmed support system that struggles to keep up, ultimately hindering your community's growth and satisfaction.
AI chatbots are uniquely positioned to match the rapid pace at which customer messages are received through the Telegram app, catering to the needs of millions of people. Here’s how they achieve this:
Unlike human agents, they don’t need to think or deliberate before responding. They provide instant replies, ensuring users receive immediate assistance without dwelling over the best versions of messages before sending.
They don’t tire or become frustrated by answering thousands of questions, which means they can deliver the same high-quality response every time, no matter how many times the same question is asked.
They don’t need to edit or rephrase their answers for clarity or correctness. They are programmed to deliver precise and well-structured responses every time.
With access to your entire knowledge base, they can instantly retrieve and relay accurate information, ensuring users get correct answers right away, as opposed to a team member having to manually double-check the sources when they can't answer from top of their head.
Whether it's handling a few questions or thousands at a time, they can manage large volumes of customer messages without any drop in performance.
They are always online, providing support around the clock without any downtime or need for breaks.
AI chatbots putting conversation history to use like never before
Telegram support AI bots can tap into your chat history, which serves as an organic repository of valuable information, providing a detailed explanation for many topics similar to intentionally created documentation.
Here are some of the ways you benefit from it:
AI Chatbots can answer recent or specific questions not covered in the usual documentation or FAQs because the chat channels often have the latest information before official documents are updated.
They can help improve product or service offerings by highlighting common pain points or areas of confusion and support knowledge management by identifying gaps in existing documentation or training materials.
They can assist new users by answering/referencing common onboarding questions and issues encountered by previous users in earlier messages, providing a smoother and more guided introduction to your service.
Potentially, they could predict issues through insights from the entire chat history before they arise and proactively offer solutions or preventive measures, reducing the likelihood of user frustration.
They can gather user feedback from chat interactions and can help you integrate it into ongoing product development and support strategies, ensuring that access to users' input directly influences improvements.
By analyzing chat logs in different languages, they can improve their multilingual capabilities, providing accurate and contextually relevant support in multiple languages.
Often communities try something like the "Ambassador Program" before giving the new tech a go, putting their advanced users' skills to good use, but is it effective? Let's take a look:
Pros:
Ambassadors can help build a sense of community by being active and engaging with members in customer support channels.
They can often provide quick responses to user inquiries, offering customer care when official team members are busy.
They can share their experiences and tips, helping other users make the most of the service.
Cons:
Without formal training or the ease of full access to messages from the past, they might not fully understand user inquiries, leading to incomplete or inaccurate support.
They may struggle to handle complex technical issues effectively, which can leave users frustrated or dissatisfied.
Without proper oversight or guidelines, user privacy could be at risk. They might accidentally access sensitive information or have interactions that compromise confidentiality, undermining trust.
While well-intentioned, they may contribute to annoying messages. Without clear protocols, their responses might be seen as spam or unnecessary, detracting from the user experience. For example, they might repeatedly answer questions already resolved just to gain recognition and rank.
They may struggle to maintain consistency in their support efforts, leading to different levels of assistance for users.
There's a risk of spreading misinformation or incorrect solutions if there are no mechanisms for verification or fact-checking.
How AI chatbots stand against the cons of their alternatives
Bots can be programmed to access all past messages, ensuring they fully understand user inquiries and provide accurate, complete support.
They are also not designed to handle complex technical issues but do a better job in terms of accuracy. They only engage with such questions if confident in their response, otherwise leave them for the team to handle. Ambassadors might take a shot at these questions anyway, sharing inadequate information and confusing users even more.
They follow strict privacy protocols, minimizing the risk of accessing sensitive information or compromising user confidentiality, thereby maintaining trust.
They operate based on clear guidelines, ensuring their responses are relevant and necessary. They avoid spamming users with redundant answers, enhancing the overall user experience.
They provide consistent support by adhering to standardized responses and procedures, ensuring all users receive the same high level of assistance.
They have built-in verification and fact-checking mechanisms, significantly reducing the risk of spreading misinformation or incorrect solutions.
What about the internal support team?
Your teams are, of course, the most important players in customer support for various reasons. Their expertise, dedication, and direct connection to your company make them invaluable assets. But should they be left to handle the Tsunami of questions alone? Let's explore:
Pros
They have a deep understanding of the company’s products and services, so they can provide accurate and thorough responses.
Trained support staff can maintain a consistent tone and quality in their interactions, providing a uniform customer experience.
Issues and feedback from customers can be quickly communicated to other departments, facilitating swift improvements and updates.
They are more likely to adhere to company policies on user privacy and data security, protecting sensitive information.
They are typically more professional than Ambassadors in their interactions, which can enhance the company’s image and customer satisfaction.
They can tailor their support strategies to align with specific company goals and customer needs.
Cons
As the community grows, the internal team might struggle to handle the increasing volume of inquiries, leading to slower response times.
They can be resource-intensive, diverting attention from other critical areas of the business.
High volumes of customer inquiries can lead to employee burnout, reducing the effectiveness and morale of the support team.
Providing 24/7 support can be challenging and costly, potentially leaving customers without assistance during off-hours.
Continuous training is required to keep the team updated on new products, features, and support techniques, which can be time-consuming and costly.
They might still face delays in resolving complex issues that require input from other departments or specialized knowledge.
Offering support in multiple languages means hiring staff who speak those languages. This often requires overseas hiring, leading to challenges like different time zones and higher costs.
It can be difficult to assess the quality of support in international channels.
Combining AI chatbots with internal support teams
Here’s why this hybrid approach is effective:
Chatbots can identify when an inquiry requires human intervention and seamlessly transfer or leave the conversation to or for an internal team member, ensuring efficient issue resolution.
With bots handling routine queries and peak times, the internal team can manage their workload more effectively, preventing burnout and maintaining high-quality support.
The combination of instant chatbot responses and personalized human support creates a balanced and comprehensive customer service experience.
Utilizing chatbots for basic questions reduces the need for a large support staff, lowering overall support costs while maintaining service quality.
Chatbots can learn from past interactions, and internal teams can use these insights to continuously improve their responses and support strategies.
Chatbots' ability to handle multiple languages complements the internal team by addressing diverse customer needs without requiring extensive multilingual hiring. This ensures consistent and accurate support across different languages and time zones.
And the good thing is that you can measure the effectiveness of the AI and Support teams duo and see for yourself if it's worth it.
Metrics to track and measure effectiveness
Understanding the key metrics will help you ensure that your customer support system is meeting its goals and continuously improving.
Key Metrics to Track:
Response Time: Measure the average time it takes for users to receive a response before and after the chatbot integration.
Resolution Rate: Track the percentage of inquiries that are successfully resolved by the chatbot and by the internal team.
User Satisfaction: Use surveys and feedback tools to gauge user satisfaction with the chatbot and human support. Chatbot's built-in feedback features can also provide you with insights into satisfaction with its answers.
Volume of Inquiries: Monitor the number of inquiries handled by chatbots versus the internal team to understand workload distribution.
Cost Efficiency: Calculate the cost savings achieved by using chatbots for routine tasks and multilingual support, and the impact on overall support costs.
Error Rates: Track the frequency of incorrect responses or misinformation provided by both the chatbot and the internal team.
Employee & Community Engagement: Measure the impact on internal team morale and burnout rates by analyzing workload and feedback. Plus, the prevailing user sentiment in your community group.
Unanswered Questions: Monitor the number of questions that remain unanswered by both the chatbot and the internal team to identify gaps in support coverage and areas for improvement.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if the AI chatbots also provided you with these reports? They do actually.
How to get started with AI for Telegram Support?
You can continue to read about it for days, but nothing can paint a better picture than trying it out yourself.
Which one to try? Well, you can start with AwesomeQA, chances are you might not need to do further exploration. But feel free to.
AwesomeQA is one of the main AI chatbots that you can use for your Telegram group. To get started, follow the steps outlined here. The whole process will take only a few minutes. If you like you can also check out this bot in action in some of the popular web3 communities like Sei, Manta Network (all international groups), ParaSwap, UX, HyperCycle, SingularityDAO, and Ocean Protocol.
How does AwesomeQA work?
Here's a quick overview:
After the setup and installation, the bot will automatically start answering questions in your community group without needing to be triggered by a custom command.
It will check messages, identify questions, and respond instantly when it's confident using your knowledge base in a concise manner so it doesn't take up too much chat screen.
As a team member, you can interact with it's generated responses
a) By rating them,
upvote to certify answers with a badge to show they are trustworthy.
downvote to remove unwanted messages and send feedback to us for improvements.
b) Trigger bot to force reply by tagging it to your question to identify gaps in your knowledge,
it will inform you that the info is missing and provide you the link to add that info to the dashboard
Besides that, the analytics page on the dashboard provides insights into key metrics, such as:
Total and daily number of questions asked.
Number of questions answered by the bot daily/total.
Upvote ratio to indicate user satisfaction with the bot's answers.
Also, you can manage the knowledge base through the dashboard anytime you want, using advanced tools. So don't worry about getting everything right during the onboarding, as you can always go back and do things like:
Adding new data sources by uploading URLs on the 'web pages' section.
Deleting specific knowledge items from the bot's memory just by searching for the keywords.
Adding FAQs to answer specific questions in a specific way.
Configuring permissions for sending messages in a specific channel for questions + adding/removing specific channels for the bot to learn from.
There's other cool stuff and advanced features this AI customer support tool holds for you, get started to check it out.
Plus, we're a young startup, so you can always ask us for additional features and we'll build them for you! :)