For software applications today, announcing that you have AI doesn’t mean anything to consumers.
First of all, everyone has AI now. Second, AI has so many forms and use cases, what does that even mean? And third, not many people understand what AI is. You likely have the main idea, but not the level of knowledge needed in order to feel confident about implementing it for your business.
That’s why we’ve written this post. We’re going to cover what Hatch AI is, how it benefits your business, how it compares to other AI offerings, and more. Use it to get a better understanding of Hatch AI as well as AI in general.
Hatch’s AI offering is called Hatch Assistant. With it, you can customize AI agents that converse with your leads, prospects, and customers over text and take the appropriate admin action in the back end in Hatch.
Hatch Assistant is a generative AI tool, powered by OpenAI (which also powers ChatGPT). We talk more about generative AI here, but what this means is, while prescriptive AI can make suggestions and predictive AI can make forecasts, generative AI can produce its own content.
And in the case of chatbots, generative AI means that while traditional chatbots require you to program responses, these bots can come up with their own responses based on your rules and instructions.
While most AI tools equip agents to better communicate with customers, Hatch AI actually converses with customers for you—following customer communication best practices. Let’s look at some examples for comparison:
Each of these use cases empowers agents to communicate effectively with leads and customers, but none of them actually converses with your customers.
This is what Hatch Assistant does. In other words, it doesn’t simply recommend responses or provide coaching; it does the conversing for you.
You configure your bot with a name, a personality, and a set of rules and prompts, and it will talk to customers for you, pleasantly and professionally, following all the best practices. (And don’t worry, it won’t replace your job! We’ll get to that in a bit.)
While Hatch AI bots take hours of work off your plate, there is some configuring you need to do at the start. And once you do, it’s smooth sailing from there. Here’s what that looks like:
While you’ll train your bot with a specific set of questions to ask the customer, customers can also ask your bot their own questions (like “Do you offer window repairs or just replacements?” or “What are your hours?”). The bot will use the information in your business profile to answer these “off-script” questions.
Persona refers to the way the bot behaves and interacts with customers. It’s the bot’s personality. The persona consists of the bot’s name, tone, and persona instructions.
Note that you can combine tones, like “professional and empathetic” or “witty but professional.”
Each bot you create has one directive (like to book appointments or follow up on quotes). Prompts (also called interactions here) are the questions that your bot is responsible for asking the customer and getting an answer to, to achieve that directive. It’s your scripting! You can also tell the bot what constitutes a valid response to a question (for example, address must include zip code).
Once you have your prompts set, you can then set specific rules. These tell your bot how to detect certain scenarios and what to say and do in response to them, such as with objections, unqualified leads, or the customer needing to talk to a human rep.
You have a chat window with your bot right there in the platform so you can test as you make changes and refinements. Once it’s ready to go, publish your bot! Then use the reporting feature to monitor conversations and its overall performance, and make adjustments as needed.
This is a common concern—and a valid one! After all, appointments, sales, and reviews are on the line here. There are a few different answers to this question.
For starters, your bots talk to your customers like any human agent would. Since Hatch AI uses natural language processing (NLP), they can understand conversational language and respond in conversational language.
Actually, Hatch AI bots have been known to converse with customers better than human agents. After all, they don’t get burnt out, stressed, or take things personally.
Kaitlyn Rencher, who is using Hatch AI for Renewal by Andersen, says that her AI bot Lance “Handles our customers with empathy, grace, and care. I can’t count the number of times I’ve thought to myself, ‘How would Lance respond?’ when I am typing out a response to a customer.”
In one example, a customer asked about Section 8 Housing and Lance responded empathetically. Kaitlyn actually sent us a screenshot
Read more about Lance in this Renewal by Andersen success story.
It’s one thing for your bots to be polite and professional. But it’s another thing for them to be successful at their task. The first thing to know here is that Hatch AI bots are designed to take on the initial top-of-funnel conversations so that your sales reps are freed up for those bottom-funnel conversations—the ones that require more complex problem-solving and advanced communication skills.
So you’re not relying on a bot to close deals for you, but rather to answer questions, set appointments, and sift out unqualified leads. Basically, they take on all the simple and repetitive tasks for you so you can focus on the more complex ones. And they are very effective at these tasks. For example, Renewal by Andersen trusts their Hatch bot Lance to handle 1,500+ inbound leads a month.
Learn more about this data in the Renewal by Andersen success story.
Not only can you trust Hatch bots to get the job done and be pleasant to your leads and customers, but you have full control. Here are some ways in which you have full control:
There are several benefits of AI, but while Hatch Assistant can take on responsibilities of contracting sales and marketing reps, it is not designed to replace their jobs. Rather, it equips you to augment their performance while alleviating workload. Here’s a deeper dive into how Hatch Assistant works alongside humans:
Too many incoming contacts is the top stressor among contact center agents—something that Hatch Assistant solves for.
Hatch automates your outreach to leads and customers. You program it to keep track of who needs what outreach and when, and it will then carry out that outreach, following up until the customer responds.
This saves you hours spent building lists and doing outreach while also increasing response rates. Now, all you have to do is jump in and engage when the contact responds. And since you’re no longer burdened with reaching out to leads, you now have the time to do this, and to do it well.
The only problem is, you may have more time now, but you also have lots more responses coming in. And it’s not easy to keep up with all of those conversations.
This is where Hatch AI comes in. It takes on the conversations so that you can keep up.
In short, Hatch automation handles your outreach so you can create more opportunities and increase response rates, and Hatch AI handles the conversations that result from those increased responses.
Together, Hatch’s automation and AI work together to drive your revenue goals while saving you time.
With Hatch automation taking care of your outreach and Hatch AI handling responses, every opportunity gets seized and opportunities stop falling through the cracks. Here are some of the many benefits:
If you think that Hatch Assistant could be a good fit for your contracting business or call center, we invite you to learn more. You can converse with a Hatch AI bot here or if you want a personalized tour of both our AI and our communication platform, you can book a demo with one of our team members here.
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