As companies increase their capital and expand their horizons, there is a natural tendency for them to divert their attention from what matters most: their customers. Unfortunately, increasing capital and pleasing shareholders will often be more beneficial than providing a stellar customer experience.
However, more and more companies are taking advantage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications, such as Chatbots, to make up for this lack of attention to their consumers. The signs of growth in the Chatbots market are everywhere. In 2019, Google claimed to have more than a billion Google Assistant devices in the functioning market.
Chatbots, beyond humans
Today, Chatbots are believed to be able to change and redefine the way organizations conduct business, especially in their focus on customer service and the customer experience. Specifically, by 2022, 70% of office workers are expected to interact with conversational platforms on a daily basis.
Although, to date, no Chatbot has passed the Turing test, there are great advances in the development of AI. For example, Artificial Intelligence developed by Elon Musk competed against the world’s best players in Dota2 and won with ease, in 2017.
Artificial Intelligence along with Machine Learning is improving at a rapid pace. It is expected that advanced capabilities will be developed to allow Chatbots to run thousands of algorithms in real time and help them establish a customized marketing strategy for each user. In the coming years, Artificial Intelligence will not become a special feature in a Chatbot checklist, but a basic and indispensable element.
The Workforce and the Chatbots
Thanks to their ability to use natural language processing to map both spoken and written communication, Chatbots are rapidly entering the workplace.
It should be noted that, during 2018, interest in these devices skyrocketed by 160%, highlighting the importance they could have in different areas such as customer service, knowledge management and user support.
Chatbots can help solve triaging problems, and can even solve them quickly, allowing workers to focus on more complex problems that require their attention.
This growth is on a par with the incorporation of the Millennial generation into the labour market. Because Chatbots satisfy Millennials’ demand for instant digital connections that keep them up to date at all times, the workers belonging to this generation will bring greater benefits to companies, which will speed up the acquisition of these technologies by companies.
The challenges
Despite its many advantages, this technology is not without its challenges. Currently the Chatbots market is full of more than 2,000 suppliers, many of whom are not prepared to maintain a good level of delivery and maintenance.
To ensure that Chatbot is effective for all stakeholders, interested companies must implement new corporate governance policies. While improving the overall strategy, including the conversational platform, taking some points into account.
- Avoid Chatbot that malfunction or overlap. Many providers cannot offer enterprise-level Chatbot solutions. Carefully analyze providers, avoid single-use providers, and make sure Chatbot guidelines are set.
- Reduce the risk of failure when obtaining Chatbots from external vendors. Companies should only attempt to create their own conversational tools if they have the right data science and Machine Learning resources.
- Secure monitoring resources for ongoing maintenance. Chatbots require continuously active operatives who can periodically evaluate model performance and add specific expertise.
- Anticipate the need for voice-enabled Chatbots from users. Although today there are not a large number of Chatbots that support voice-enabled features, the demand for such features will increase in the short term, as they are devices that provide a natural way to interact.
- It incorporates tone, emotion, personality and other “human” characteristics. Human-like functions are critical to Chatbots’ success.
Users and Chatbots
Just as employees expect Chatbots to help them improve their work, customers expect the same. As new technologies take root, customer expectations grow rapidly.
Consumers demand real-time interactions, which is exactly what Chatbots offer. According to the latest surveys, given the choice between completing a website form or getting answers from a Chatbot, only 14% of customers would choose the form.
The biggest fear that users who interact with Chatbots have is that they make a mistake, this is an understandable fear, however, it is important to understand that humans also make mistakes. This will always be a concern, but will become less important as the number of consumers interacting with Bots increases.
There is some reservation about using Chatbots for tasks such as paying bills and buying items, when it comes to money, people are often more hesitant about new technologies. It is a natural part of the adoption of new technologies, looking back on the beginnings of e-commerce, the same concerns occurred.
While it is too new for most consumers to participate in these uses of Chatbots, that does not mean that companies should not innovate in this area.
Consumers love Chatbots because of their ever-active nature and instant response time. Beyond that, the experience must also be accurate and better than any other alternative. If those conditions are met, it will be considered a good experience.
Conclusions
It is only a matter of time before consumers prefer to speak, rather than write, their question. Looking to the future, as voice becomes a common interface, Chatbots must evolve from pure text to a combination of text and voice for both input and output.
On the other hand, it is expected that the most advanced AI Chatbots will begin to automate the process of data collection and analysis. And over time, they improve by using the knowledge gained from past conversations and increase their ability to answer more questions.
With the use of AI-enabled Chatbots, the availability of Big Data is expected to change the way companies interact with their customers. Each conversation will be evaluated to increase business growth and improve customer engagement capabilities.
