The future looks bright with Chatbots on your side
It’s no surprise how robots have managed to penetrate people’s subconscious so strongly. They started early!
From cartoons to live action, robots have always been a human fascination. Be it the Rosie the Robot Maid in Jetsons, WALL-E the trash compactor robot, Optimus Prime in Transformers, or the ultimate Robocop all them have been the best visualizations in human imaginations.
We always saw a future with bots around us and bots making the lives of humans easy.
And now is the time when the chat bots are here to do it !!
Where do the bots stand today?
Before we get into the future of the chatbots, let’s take a pulse on where do the chatbots stand at the moment. Frankly, the launch of the chatbots have been really shaky and drowsy with bots only being assumed as FAQ substitutes, too buggy bots which annoyed the customer rather than helping them.
But this doesn’t stop the bot developers and neither did it stop Facebook from doubling up on planning to develop chatbots faster, better and more powerful!
The promise, the speed, and the optimization that this technology gets along with it is what makes people look up to it. With more well-trained bots in the market, we see a bot as human replacement in the many industries saving great costs, time and improving efficiency.
Where is the future driving us?
Facebook is making huge investments in providing a rich environment to the developers and businesses to develop, explore and expand in the fields of chatbot. Neural networks would become way easier to understand and tap into, making APIs of their own and allowing developers to pipe in and hit the ground running with their own contextual apps without all of the NLP hassles.
With all this we have Juniper Research in the U.K. suggesting on how from 2017 and businesses saving $20 million would move down to businesses saving $8 billion in 2022, all by leveraging the magic of chatbots. In fact theses are not just the cap for numbers, the numbers might increase exponentially as the bugs are worked out and the chatbots are able to provide more and more of customer service. After all, each chatbot inquiry saves 4+ minutes of customer service time and most of the cost associated with the service.
How can industries benefit from the use of chat bots?
Industries which need staff for performing repetitive processes are the best ones to utilize the benefits of a chatbot. Though certain communications can only be taken by only human touch, the chat bots can still overtake industries like marketing, sales, e-commerce, customer support and management, talent and employee engagement. In all practical ways, this allows a reduction in overhead expenses and an increase of efficiency.
Entertainment – So, far the entertainment industry is the largest industry to privilege a chatbot. Starting from the news and media publishing companies who have been using chatbots to share their content based on customer needs to a Doc Brown bot which was developed to promote the movie’s anniversary. Publishers and big media brands could share sponsored and branded content through bots.
Health Care – Chatbots need integration with the e-health records to get started with the basic patient data and then use the data to provide patients with information that covers medications; reminders; appointment and surveys. Basic symptom determination and matching to known ailments is also something that bots will become more adept at.
Automobiles Industry – Automobile is one more interesting industry where a chatbot can show high levels of efficiency and save expenses. The industry is very customer-centric and is based on queries ranging from very basic ones to important issues. A chatbot can very help a customer solve such queries such as car price and features inquiry, scheduling a test drive, scheduling a service, insurance reminders, payments and customer feedback surveys on services performed. Moreover, automobile recall notices now have a chance of being delivered direct and hired chance of being read and acted on with the help of bots.
E-commerce – Customers expect lightning-fast responses and want the purchase process to play out nice and easy. Moreover, the surge in mobile E-commerce has raised the bar as organizations need to accommodate ever higher volumes of traffic. Chatbots come as an indispensable tool here, one that allows businesses to attract clients one-on-one, in a personalized manner. For regular purchases without the need for too much browsing but something that is personalized bots tend to be the perfect ordering and fulfillment notification channels. They also do away with the problems of app uninstalls that most mid and small sized online retailers face in the world of eCommerce today.
Endless Possibilities with a chat bot
At the end it’s all about the benefits you can get from a chatbot – businesses wish to move towards high ROI, always on 24×7 service which is cheap, intelligent and effective.
In summary – chat bot platform development is fluid and rudimentary at this point and the market for AI is still nascent. Currently text-based customer service solutions offering question-based responses are a big driver for bots. There is massive opportunity to take consumer friction points found in customer service processes, and port them to interactive bots that help consumers work through the most common decision steps, as well as building in engines for cross-sells and up-sells. On the user side, voice and proactive AI will be changing our interactions; bots will read out emails or heart rates and make recommendations about meetings or health suggestions. Enterprise chatbots will similarly pull in data from across businesses and external sources to make intelligent business management suggestions.
The boom is here and it’s the right time to leverage it!
By Priyanka Arora
Engati – www.engati.com – A Coviam technologies platform
Coviam Technologies
www.coviam.com