2018: The Year of the Chatbot
- By Kyle Coghlan
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- 18 Jan, 2018
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Chatbots Will Reign This Year as More Companies Put Them To Use
The article details some great points of how businesses & agencies are strategically using chatbots now & in the future.
-Technologies such as Natural Language Processing (the ability to reply to natural and free-flowing human dialogue), Machine Learning (the chatbot gets better the more it’s used), & sentiment analysis (detecting human emotions and responding to it) are a vital part of the powerful '18 bot.
-Karim Sanjabi, a newly appointed artificial intelligence officer of an ad agency says, “If agencies don’t make this kind of change right now, and really understand they have to really commit to it, we’re going to have an evolutionary separation.”
We’re going to have two different species of agencies: One that evolved with AI and one that didn’t.”
-Chatbots are a critical business decision in 2018. Like Devin Wenig, CEO of eBay, says, “If you don’t have an AI strategy, you are going to die in the world that’s coming.”
Those companies that are moving into this innovative space early will reap the benefits while other companies miss out on this great opportunity and will most likely be displaced by their competitors.
Here's the link to the original article by Chatbots Magazine https://goo.gl/qhWEPe
Chatbots are changing the way consumers interact with organizations. This technology is transforming current business systems into smart reactive systems using Artificial Intelligence. They have the ability to efficiently solve problems many business owners face -- that is, having the right information available to the right people all the time, having someone available to supply this information and able to scale it.
There are countless use cases for this technology as it can apply to essentially any industry. These bots can be used in sales, customer service, entertainment, events, restaurants, HR, health care, real estate and shopping.
According to a recent study by Oracle in regards to chatbot usage, the report polled 800 senior marketing and sales professionals across EMEA and revealed how the use of emerging technologies is set to surge by 2020. Eighty percent of respondents expect to serve customers through chatbots.
It's no surprise that these will be used in vast amounts in the coming years as they have the capability to handle a wide variety of tasks simultaneously at scale. Tasks such as handling customer inquires, sending relevant information on a daily basis and automating tasks once held by humans are just a few of the processes these bots can handle.
A customer using a bot can essentially ask a question using natural language and the bot will respond appropriately with the proper information requested. Live human customer service agents can still chime in if need be, but for the most part the bots can operate with minimal human supervision.
Sending daily information to users of bots can be of high value to a lot of businesses. Companies can now automate updated website content to bots to push out to users at a certain time of day, on a daily basis. Essentially any time a website is updated with certain content, this content will be distributed to anyone using a bot, if they choose to opt in.
I've created a bot on facebook messenger for my client Indian Motorcycle of the Twin Cities. The bot greets users by their first name when they first interact with it by sending the company's facebook page a message. From there, the user can ask it a wide variety of open questions and also includes built in buttons that allow a user to call the store, search the website or ask a question. So far the results thus far have been impressive as engagement has increased as more users send messages and receive the proper information right away.
Major media companies are starting to use them as well - TechCrunch is one such company, where they send out daily tech articles when users opt in for the subscription, which is free via facebook messenger.
Other industries such as Real Estate companies can send out automated messages with new properties based on location to prospective buyers. News companies can send out instant updates such as weather updates, amber alerts and other important information that needs to be sent out in an efficient manor.
The possibilities are quiet endless for automated messaging bots. It's still very early on in their usage across many industries but will continue to rise in the coming years.
Thank you for reading - please like and share amongst your peers.
Interested in building a bot for your business?
Send an email to kyle.coghlan@gmail.com for a free consultation.
About the author: Kyle Coghlan is a Digital Marketing Professional with Chatbot Technology as his main focus. He's built a wide variety of chabots using various 3rd party software. His latest client is Indian Motorcycle of the Twin Cities.
