Bots Without Conversation

Earlier this year, we had seen the hype about bots at its peak when Facebook opened its bot platform for messenger and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella went on to predict that bots will be as big as apps. But today it seems that the hype has somewhat cooled down and people have started asking “What was the big fuss about?”
 
We at ZiPi agree with everyone else so far, there has not been a killer bot uptil now that is even close to what the hype promised, yet we remain bullish and optimistic about bots. It has only been a few months and the technology itself is in its nascent stage, we are doing everything with the best of our capabilities to deliver what has been promised in the least possible time.
 
One thing that has been evidently clear in the learning so far is that the emphasis of conversational commerce has been a mistake and the problem with the conversational aspects of bots is the fact that natural language processing and artificial intelligence are yet not accomplished in handling human like conversations. Industry experts have expressed similar views across the globe and so had Siddharth (our COO) rightly pointed out in his blog ‘AI v/s UI’ on May 11.
 
So Why are Bots the next big thing ? The point is that the time people are spending on chat applications is unparalleled and bots enable people to do more while they are there, creation of these experiences inside the chat for the user is what makes the bots so amazing. Despite of the conversational aspect bots have a lot of value propositions to offer, few out of which are

• Adaptable:- Bots are extremely easy to use as there is no new app to download, no new account to create and no new interface to learn.

   

• Consolidated:- Instead of numerous similar looking and similar working apps on your mobile home screen, you can find all the bots in a chat like interface occupying extremely low storage in a single app on your phone

   

• Apps in Messages:- All have agreed chat to be an indispensable tool for customer service. Rather than adding a messaging layer to all the apps, bots offer a role reversal by adding everyday apps of the user into messaging.

WeChat has completely taken over China. It is not a conversation based service, instead a lot of instant interactions and the reasons for its success as an exosystem are pretty much the same as we offer.

• Frictionless access to apps
• Sharing related discovery (as well as QR codes)
• Standardized UI
• Messaging as the gateway to new digital experience

These are early days and there are still few missing pieces in the puzzle and the Eureka moment for the bots is still to come. Our soon to come developer platform will help us thrust forward towards delivering on our promises. The developers will open a gateway of innovation for the bots.