In 2017 we saw chatbots rapidly becoming an important part of digital marketing strategy. Working as an effective way of getting never-before-seen amount of information from customers and of simplifying the customers’ journey on the website, they serve to make online business as client-oriented as possible. If you are still planning to build a chatbot and adopt it into your website, here is a short article to give you some ideas.
Chatbots: Why your business wants it
Chatbots, a chat based automated interface that clients can get in conversation with, are said to be getting more and more ubiquitous for online business. According to Gartner’s report, by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human.[i] This tendency makes the adoption of chatbots inevitable. And the advances in natural language processing and artificial intelligence, i.e. AI, facilitate the overall introduction of chatbots into our lives. At the same time, we see that only 13% of e-commerce companies use chatbots nowadays.[ii] They still remain a new issue for e-commerce, a wise usage of which gives a strategic priority to an enterprise. New as they can be, they have seriously changed the way of how brands are interacting with their customers. Effective chatbots, if set up correctly, serve as a real helper for potential buyers when they are trying to get a whole array of tasks done. The customer doesn’t need to dig deep into the website – a chatbot will provide an up-front solution. Now mobile apps are considered the best solution to simplify the way customers need to act in order to get the desired result, be it a product order, information search or anything else. But now some specialists see chatbots as a competitor to mobile apps: with a smart bot running, it will be possible to stay in a chatbot message window and get what you are searching for with a text message or (and the technology is on the rise) with a voice command. The chatbot lets business be present online 24/7 and able to communicate with customers with quick answers, complaint resolution or product search. Installing a chatbot is getting a more and more attractive idea for business, which is searching to increase customer satisfaction through better customer experience. 51% of customers demand business to be online 24/7 thus making the ‘opening hours’ term a notion from the past.[iii] Chatbots are supposed to be a solution for companies hiring a phone live customer service. Those who are seeking ways to cut costs of are considering chatbots which are capable of answering questions more quickly and at any time. Marketers admit chatbots’ usefulness in generating leads. If located on a website correctly (neither an intrusive pop-up message nor a hidden button), so that its presentation coincides with the visitor’s moment of confusion or inquiry, it will become a serious competitive advantage. Chatbots are already used for distributing content via messaging apps. No wonder that in September 2017 30,000 chatbots existed already in Facebook Messanger.[iv] The interest of business in chatbot development is clear. And more probable than not, this interest will be on the rise. UX and UI issues of chatbots There are two types of chatbots: the first one’s functioning is based on rules (i.e. rule based bots) and the second type uses artificial intelligence, or AI. Rule based bots respond only to specific commands and act as smart as they are programmed to be. Rules can be very simple or very complex – but the chatbot doesn’t step off the programmed path. Once a question posed to the chatbot goes beyond the hardcoded ones, he replies with a ‘I am sorry, I didn’t understand the question’ type of response. Hence, chatbots powered by AI, that learn continuously from the conversations they have with people, are much more flexible and their functioning resembles a human conversation because they are supposed to understand the language, not just commands. AI-driven chatbots are becoming dominant, with tech giants like Google, Apple or Microsoft investing into their development. Conversational interfaces (or interface-based chatbots) are quickly progressing, and now conversational UI doesn’t present anymore a simple question-response chat: the main idea of chatbots is getting to understand the customer and to reply instantly or make an appropriate action by the request. The conversation with a chatbot will be getting away from direct commands into a casual language driven talk. Making the chatbot’s behavior as natural and human-like as possible is an important part of UX. By learning from conversations, the bot is supposed to lead a chat in a natural manner, with a humor when it is appropriate or in a business-like manner when it is demanded. That’s why anonymous conversations will be getting into the past: the chatbot is supposed to know the name of the customer it is addressing or, if not, to ask for it. The main limitation to these aspirations now is the current state of AI sphere nowadays which hasn’t received the level demanded for a completely natural chatbots’ behavior. But 2017 has shown that key companies are focusing on artificial intelligence, which makes the appearance of the efficient AI-driven chatbot a question of time. Otherwise the predictions of the chatbot market reaching $1,25 billion by 2025 wouldn’t have come to life.[v] Chatbots: And what about customers? According to the 2017 SnathBot stats, about 12% of conversations with a chatbot were abandoned, while 80% of them ended with the words ‘thank you’, thus indicating a customer’s satisfaction with the chatbot experience.[vi] No wonder that chatbots are getting so much attention not only from businesses but from customers. Nowadays people tend to spend more time in messaging apps than on social networks: the top four messaging apps (Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat and Viber) have more monthly active users than the top four social networking apps (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+).[vii] 63% of customers indicate their willingness to get in touch with a brand via an online chatbot.[viii] According to the customer experience company [24]7.ai survey, 26% of respondents called an online chat as their preferred way to connect with an Internet retailer, with 3% preferring messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp while making a purchase.[ix]
No wonder that progressive social networking development companies are integrating chatbots into the backend programming: the customer support section is evolving before our eyes, and it is necessary to consider this evolution.
Customers are clearly showing their willingness to use chatbots to get what they need from an online retailer. Now the main challenge for e-commerce businesses is to get how to build a chatbot that will provide customers with what they need in the most effective and pleasing way. Conclusion It seems like the days when customers have to call in during office hours to get some assistance are going into the past. The overall exposure of both customers and businesses in the Internet gives much more efficient means of interaction between them. Chatbots are one of the ways on which big companies are focusing now. Empowered with the AI advances and heated by the customers’ interest, chatbots are getting into the light – and planning to stay here for long.
[1]https://www.gartner.com/imagesrv/summits/docs/na/customer-360/C360_2011_brochure_FINAL.pdf [2]https://www.mobilemarketer.com/news/study-14-of-chatbot-conversations-lead-to-human-based-chat/512811/ [3]https://insights.ubisend.com/2016-mobile-messaging-report [4]https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/12/messenger-bot-payments/ [5]http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/Chatbot-Market-Size-to-Reach-1-25-Billion-by-2025-CAGR-24-3-Grand-View-Research-Inc-1002381903 [6]https://www.mobilemarketer.com/news/study-14-of-chatbot-conversations-lead-to-human-based-chat/512811/ [7]https://insights.ubisend.com/2016-mobile-messaging-report [8]http://www.mindshareworld.com/sites/default/files/MINDSHARE_HUDDLE_HUMANITY_MACHINE_2016_0.pdf [9]https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Chatbots-Akin-Real-Life-Customer-Service/1015022
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
February 2018
Categories
|