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Chatbots – What are they and how can we use them?

As the apps were a paradigm shift of customers going more towards mobile solutions, the chatbot hype shows similarities to such a shift. With app downloads and retention decreasing, not to mention the fact that a user uses only a few apps per day, companies are looking for creative and innovative ways to engage customers better, provide improved customer service and to analyze and respond to trends in real-time.

Enter the chatbot. These conversational agents, software programs use messaging to carry out simple and even rather complex tasks. Most of them can interpret and respond to plain text and voice questions with contextual and actionable information.

Chatbots that are integrated into complex management dashboard tools can provide data-driven decisions, chart analytics enabling users to quickly make informed, accurate decisions all through a natural interaction by simply asking. The most simple way to think about chatbots is them being automated conversational agents, assisting users and create relevant information. This covers tiny apps that live inside chat apps like in WeChat, Facebook or iMessage, as well as voice assistant services like Alexa, Cortana and alike. Chatbots are not necessarily text only, they aim to cover all forms of conversational user experiences from purely semantic, text or voice only interfaces through hybrid text and button input chatbots to pure button driven apps that live inside chat interfaces.

Bots surpassing apps in usage

According to a recent study carried out by Business Insider, the top 4 messaging apps are passing even the top 4 social networks in terms of monthly active users, time spend within the app and engagement (source). Not to mention that out of the top 10 apps used globally, 6 are messaging apps and services, looking even deeper at the top apps by number of sessions, we find that messaging apps take up most of the session times. Foreseeing such immense potential, businesses started to invest heavily in the blooming bot technologies and their AI capabilities. A number of brands and publishers have already deployed bots on messaging and collaboration channels, including retailers, banks, and news channels.

While the bot revolution is still in the early phase, we believe 2017 will be the year these conversational interactions will see a bigger take off. Artificial Intelligence, in its current state, already empowers chatbots to have increasingly human and engaging conversations, hence creating an opportunity for businesses to take advantage of this wide-reaching and inexpensive technology to improve their internal services and engage with more customers.

At Attrecto chatbot development has remained one of our main focuses for 2017, while engaging with chatbot projects for energy provider, fintech and healthcare companies, all within their digital transformation efforts.

If you are interested in how chatbots and AI can be of use within your company, take advantage of the complimentary discovery session with us, only provided to EACCNY members

For more information please contact Mark Engelhardt via email  mark.engelhardt(at)attrecto.com or Lannie Moore under +1 (347) 573-2796.

Compliments of Attrecto – a member of the EACCNY