Are Instagram chatbots useful for providing Chiropractor customer service?

Using Instagram Chatbots in your Chiropractic practice

Consumers are now making buying decisions online more than ever before. Even if they come across a service or product that they’re interested in at a store, they’re more than likely to look it up online to find reviews or experiences from existing patients before they spend their money on it. This has made it imperative for chiropractors to establish an online presence that provides the information that their patients might be looking for, and chatbots can help automate and streamline that process.

That’s why you see a lot of brands interacting with questions, queries, and concerns about their products through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. They set up dedicated support and customer service teams that are tasked with helping existing and potential customers.

It goes without saying that this is a massive endeavor and certainly not one that a lot of small businesses, particularly chiropractors, can afford. That’s why there are so many social media automation tools that use the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence to streamline customer service tasks that might otherwise require a substantial human team.

What are Instagram chatbots?

Instagram chatbots are a tool used by brands to provide customer service. They’re able to handle queries, questions, and concerns from humans by providing appropriate automated responses by relying on artificial intelligence.

Chatbots have become quite advanced now. They’re able to answer questions, make recommendations and even help connect the patient to a real human if their query has not been resolved.

It must be clear to the patient that they’re communicating with a bot. The chatbot would be integrated into the chiropractor’s official Instagram account, so users don’t have to go out of their way to interact with it. They have now become a legitimate customer service tool that’s in use by some of the world’s top brands, and gaining traction with chiropractors and other medical service providers.

Why Instagram chatbots make sense for chiropractors

Instagram is widely used by patients to learn more about a practice and the products and services they want to buy. They’re more often than not likely to reach out to the chiropractic practice on Instagram to get more information about the service, because they’re already on the social media app.

Implemented properly, chatbots make the entire process very streamlined. There are many queries that can easily be answered through automated responses. For example, questions about appointment or treatment policies, pricing, treatments and treatment packages, and availability can be handled by chatbots.

There’s no limit to the number of patients chatbots can cater to at any given time. A human customer service rep can only attend to one person at a time. With chatbots, chiropractors no longer need a massive customer service team. Chatbots will filter out many of the queries that can be handled with automated responses, directing only those that genuinely require human assistance to customer service reps.

How Instagram chatbots can improve your customer service

1. Reduce wait times for patients

reduce wait times for patients

Patients today lack patience and expect things to move quickly online. They will not appreciate having to wait for a long time until a live  representative gets free to attend to them. At times when there are a lot of patients requiring support, wait times can increase significantly and lead to a negative user experience. This can lead to bad reviews (even if they don’t do business with your practice) and affect the online perception of your practice.

Chatbots fix this problem as they’re instantly available to attend to all patients. An extra advantage is that while humans take time to type out answers, chatbots are delivering automated, pre-configured answers which means they can reply almost instantly.

2. Leverage data to make informed decisions

Chatbots are also a great source of data to find out exactly what your patients are asking about. Keeping an eye on the type of questions they are asking can provide valuable insights into your treatments and service and let you know if there’s something that needs to be improved.

For instance, if the vast majority of patients are asking about details of a specific treatment, it might be because the treatment detail page doesn’t contain enough detail. This would only require a simple tweak to the page’s content, leading to an improved user experience for patients shopping for services and treatments on your website.

3. Lead generation automation

Your lead generation efforts can also be automated using chatbots on Instagram. When they’re interacting with a patients, they can also pitch other products directly to them in the chat. This surfaces additional related products or services to the patient, even those that they may not have known about.

Since they’re powered by AI, chatbots can make personalized recommendations based on the services or treatments the customer is interested in, leading to a higher chance of a conversion from a prospect into a patient.

4. Provide support in multiple languages

If you have a diversity of patients that speack different languages, this adds a level of complexity to your customer service operations. There may be a need to provide customer service in local languages and that would require hiring a lot more resources, which will be an immensely expensive endeavor.

Instagram chatbots eliminate this hurdle as the technology has evolved enough to support multiple languages. A multilingual chatbot will deliver automated responses in a variety of languages, enabling you to provide improved and personalized service to customers that speak different languages. It requires a bit more time and expense to establish, but can be returned in dividends quickly.

5. Improve Your Practice’s reputation

Chiropractors that provide customer service better than their competitors gain an inherent advantage through word of mouth. Patients are likely to talk about their positive experiences with others, thereby improving your reputation.

Deploying chatbots has multiple benefits and chief among them is the speed at which queries can get resolved. When patients don’t have to wait to get the answers they’re looking for, they will view the brand favorably and would likely return to purchase services or treatment from it in the future as well.

Don’t fire your customer service team just yet

Pair your support team with chatbots

Given the benefits of chatbots, it might feel tempting to transfer the entire customer service operation over to them, but that would be a mistake. You should keep a dedicated team that will handle all of the complex queries that the chatbot is unable to handle, and provide the tools that will smoothly transition the chatbot conversation to your live service team.

Furthermore, it’s also imperative to keep checking up on the chatbot’s activity to ensure that it’s working within the scope that has been defined to it, the automated answers are being delivered as desired, and that there are no technical issues that could negatively impact the user experience.

What’s Next?

Overcoming the challenges of digital marketing can seem formidable, but the right team can help crush the challenges of self-marketing. There is one strategy that we specialize in that can quickly breakthrough the limitations of the marketing techniques described here, and increase appointments, and revenue, quickly: patient database reactivation. Using this strategy, we help well-established Chiropractors add 40-100 appointments to their practice in 90 days or less with this strategy. This strategy can stand on its own, or can be used to generate additional patient appointments and revenue while other, long-term marketing strategies are implemented. To find out more, contact the author with a direct message, call 614-503-4950, or visit our website at invisionstudiosllc.com to learn more.