A chat bot is a machine that can have a conversation with a human via voice or text. In fact, many of us already having a conversation with bots this day. We as a user send some request and the bot virtually assists us by identifying our request. They assist us in retrieving the information. A chatbot is a service powered by rules, and artificial intelligence, that we interact with via a chat interface. The services provided by a chatbot could be any number of things, ranging from functional to fun, and it could live in any major chat product like Facebook Messenger.
Why chatbot?
In an era of the internet, there is too much information available online so it is very difficult to find the relevant data. In the past, if we had to fetch some information, we used to call to call center. At the back end, the Tele caller used to refer Google or visiting the website to reply our query. Now the generation has changed, people they do not want to call to call center, they want to use some other new technology to get the information. New technology has evolved in recent past i.e. artificial intelligence. Now a machine can talk to a human, can recognize the face of people.
This artificial intelligence has given the edge to the business by using this technology a business can interact with the customers and give the relevant information to them. Some people still prefer to call a call center to get the information, but the new generation is very smart. They don't use a smartphone for just calling, they want to use a smartphone for the smart purpose. So we have to look the solution for this preference changes. The artificial intelligence is able to do a job that is not currently done by a human.
The two main reasons for chatbot
Just Too Much Information Online
If we have to search information then we have to go to the different data warehouse to fetch the information which is very time-consuming, so we search the information on google and in return, we get a junk, unwanted and unrealistic information. As it stands today, most of us spend a lot of time looking for things to find a medical diagnosis online, searching for vacation spots, or searching for restaurants, or searching salon...we all waste a lot of time on Google to get irrelevant information.
In future, we no need to waste our precious time to get irrelevant information, thanks to chatbots. In fact, in almost every industry there is an opportunity to make things more efficient by providing chatbot technology that can get us to our answer more quickly. To overcome these a new technology evolved which is artificial intelligence. An AI can understand what a customer wants and fetch the required information for users? An artificial intelligence is a machine language which can recognize the voice and face of a human. This is used in chatbot.
Let's take an example to understand how does it work: suppose if we have to buy a jacket the AI will ask a question when and where we have to use it, next it will ask is it for man or woman. After these questions, we are presented with a few products that meet our criteria. We need this technology today because there is just too much content on the internet, and it can be overwhelming to the user. These chatbots will make customers lives better by finding what they need faster. Customers can then spend more time doing the things in life they’d rather be doing than sifting through information.
Scaling Engagement
The advantage of chatbot is to get the customer engaged in conversation. Through chatbot, a more personalized information can be sent to the customers. As email click-rate has been steadily declining. Whilst open rates seem to be increasing - largely driven by mobile - the actual engagement from email is diving. Not only that, but it's becoming more and more difficult to even reach someone's email inbox Google's move to separate out promotional emails into their 'promotions' tab and increasing problems of email deliverability have been top reasons behind this. In such seen the chatbot is the best tool to reach the customers.
The benefits of chatbot
1. As soon as someone engages with the chatbot, we have the ability to push messages to them.
2. We can use input from users to dynamically segment them into groups and serve different content to them.
3. We can set up automation workflows so that a customer can get the relevant information without any delay.
4. Click-through rates and general engagement is very high at this stage. It is very high in compare with any other source of customer interaction because the communication is 1:1 and we are not competing with others in the newsfeed.
5. Facebook has opened up the ability to run ads directly to Messenger. This means that anyone that engages with our ad can now be followed up with directly within Messenger (this is incredibly exciting).
Unfolding future of chatbot
Chatbots will advance very quickly
Integrating chatbot with new technology will be able to create distance between competitors as the technology evolves. To make a chatbot's dialogue to become more informed and conversational a business can use AI, leveraging massive data sets, will quickly allow a chatbot’s dialogue to become more informed and conversational. Innovation will be a key factor in this field, so marketers should ensure they are positioned to take advantage of these continual improvements.
Deploying of chatbots will give advantage over competitors in term of strong connection with new generation
Chatbots create strong relationships with consumers and make it easier for them to do the things they’re already doing during the buying process. Marketers must get up to speed on this technology quickly or risk losing market share. Chatbots can and must be used to deepen relationships with the new generation that is the most difficult to engage yet has the most spending power of new generation.
Commercial evaluation of a chatbot
Adding commercial capabilities to a chatbot is very new, but it represents perhaps the most significant development. To buy something, the customers who used mobile no longer have to navigate the site on a mobile device or install the app. Instead, they would prefer to complete a transaction as they are interacting with a chatbot. A business need not restrict the chatbot only for the interaction to the customer. we need to integrate the payment gateway with the chatbot so the customer can do the transaction.
Note: The year 2016 was an experimental year for chatbot but it captured the attention of marketers and gained interaction with consumers. In 2017 we can expect both marketers’ chatbot strategies and the technology powering these mobile bots to mature considerably.
How can a business go for a Chatbot?
The perception in the market is to get a chatbot for the business is very costly and technical in nature, this is entirely untrue. There are many startup companies like us Nextbrain who provides it at the affordable cost and the way chatbot works, it is very simple. I guide the basics how it works:
The first thing to do when mapping out our own chatbot is to figure out what unique value it could add to the user. When we're thinking about designing our chatbot we should have a very clear answer to "Why would someone continue to get value from this?"
Blocks and Rules:
The chatbot works on "blocks" to "AI Rules". Each interaction that we plan to make with the user should be built out of an individual block. Based on the user's input, they will receive different blocks afterward. Here I explain the function of chatbot with the above example about the jacket purchase online, how it works:
A simple way to explain by blocks how a customer by a jacket online:
The rules can be set up so that if a user responds in a certain way, they'll be served a specific block. In my product demonstration example, if a user types first answer " summer" and second answer “man” they'll be served up a selection of appropriate summer man jacket. If the customer type yes in the answer to the question to see another product the customer will be redirected to the display the Garment lists block.
The illustration of example
Limitation
Consumers Have Concerns About the Accuracy, Security, and Privacy of Chatbots. For customers to feel comfortable using chatbots, developers need to take steps to safeguard sensitive information such as credit card numbers. The responsibility doesn’t just lie with the developers, however. The platform on which the chatbot is hosted also plays a part in keeping a customer’s information secure. If our business is thinking about creating a chatbot and we have access to sensitive information, make sure we do plenty of research into which messaging platform has sufficient security protocols in place.
The fear that chatbot will take away the job
There is a fear in the marker that chatbots will take away jobs from those in customer service and sales, however, same fear wads in case AI which has proven wrong. Technology always helps people to have a better experience and creates a new type of jobs in marker. We just need to learn the new way and new technology. We need to be optimistic.
In Conclusion: Bots Are very Cool And Helpful
The bottom line is a computer is a machine it can not replace the human supremacy of reasoning but it will become smarter with more human interaction. I believe bots will help us with a role that no one is doing right now, so it doesn’t take jobs away from people, and it adds a lot of value to society overall. With machine learning, chatbots can better understand customer intent. What is it that the customer actually needs? A chatbot can search a very large database of information and identify what a customer wants which is very difficult in the case of human.
Saran
Author
Views : 2688 | Posted on September 15, 2020