Chatbots. The mind is everything.

The rise of mobile, always-on consumers sees more than ever increased demand for immediate responses from organisations. Companies are expected to deliver fast, reliable customer service across channels with individually personalised experiences. But what channels, for which interactions?

In recent years smartphone apps have been all the rage however this trend is in flux with ‘app fatigue’. A quarter of all downloaded apps are now abandoned after a single use, download numbers are still growing but the app economy is clearly maturing. Interestingly in 2015 mobile messaging platforms overtook social networking platforms in terms of monthly active users. 

While voice is the obvious interface for human-machine conversation (Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant), human-to-human conversation has shifted to messaging platforms with chatbots on many websites and virtual assistants on multiple devices. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and Viber combined in 2016 have 2.125 billion monthly active users globally; social media has the same number.

Think for a moment - chat interfaces are homogeneous and simple; you type at the bottom, it appears on the right, their reply is on the left.

‘The mind is everything. What you think you become.’

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) supported chatbots endeavour to replicate human interaction which is a challenging task since it is not enough that they simply perform, they must be likeable. It is therefore the chatbots mind which is all important. Natural Language Understanding (N.L.U.) seeks to understand the intent behind questions, it is fed by the big data organisations have been gathering from every touch point with their customers. More specifically A.I. tools such as ‘deep learning’ analyse public-customer information to ultimately tune bots for customer service. 

Chabots today are able to ‘think’ rather than regurgitating pre-assigned answers, therefore they can assist in solving simple, quick-response needs, leaving more time for customer service representatives to focus on complex customer demands and high-touch interactions.

Engaging customers on their messaging platforms

Jason Alan Snyder, C.T.O. at Momentum Worldwide, underlines the experiential nature of bringing brands to messaging. “Machine intelligence makes conversational commerce possible even in a ‘private’ conversation,” he says. “It is all about timing, so it makes sense to use data around location, weather and sentiment to determine the right opportunity to engage.” Crucially, personalisation must be subtle and appropriate.

No matter how good the technology is, people won't use it until they trust it

A free chatbot service called ‘DoNotPay’ has successfully contest parking tickets appealing over $4m in parking fines in just 21 months, which is a 64% success rate. Its 19-year-old creator, London-born second-year Stanford University student Joshua Browder used artificial intelligence to enable the chatbot to ‘think’ for itself answering questions through an easy to use chat-like interface.

Browder’s next challenge for the A.I. lawyer is helping people with flight delay compensation, as well as helping the H.I.V. positive understand their rights and acting as a guide for refugees navigating foreign legal systems.

A step too far?  The world’s largest hedge fund to replace managers with artificial intelligence

The Guardian, Friday 23rd December 2017 – [The world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates has a team of engineers working on a project to automate decision-making to save time and eliminate human emotional volatility. The firm, which manages $160bn, created the team of programmers specializing in analytics and artificial intelligence, dubbed the Systematized Intelligence Lab, in early 2015.  The unit is headed up by David Ferrucci, who previously led IBM’s development of Watson, the supercomputer that beat humans at Jeopardy! in 2011. 

The company is already highly data-driven, with meetings recorded and staff asked to grade each other throughout the day using a ratings system called “dots”.]  Continue reading here...