Chatbot - a significant leap for conversational commerce

The technology to simulate conversation with computers has been around us for some time now. But the gradual transition of the Software Conversational Bots from Weak AI category (rules based) to Strong AI category (machine learning based) is making these Chat-bots increasingly popular software technology trend in this current era. So in this blog I will focus on Chatbot which is going to disrupt the way we service our customer.

But what are Chatbots? These are the interactive software which are powered by artificial intelligence. They are designed to simulate human conversation and often house inside messaging apps thus giving us an impression as if we are chatting with humans. Moreover, as these cognitive systems continue to learn over a period of time, organizations will be able to expand Chatbots’ capabilities into more complex areas of personalized customer service.  

How can it impact us? It can help us to find and book a hotel, flight based on our convenience. It can help us to order a dish of our interest. Chatbots can advise banking customers on things like investments and savings. It can also be your friend with whom you can have endless conversations at any point in time and on any topic. Sounds interesting. Isn’t it?

Let’s talk about some of the early adopters of Chatbot. A Domino’s bot now allows you to order a pizza by tweeting a pizza emoji. Taco Bot released by Taco Bell helps you to order and pay for tacos through an automated chat conversation. Customers of Sephora can now get makeup suggestions from bots launched in Kik Messenger. Royal Bank of Scotland is coming with an online chatbot which will answer customers’ questions online and guide them to the right places. Booking.com, the largest travel company in the world, has announced a chat communication service recently that allows its millions of users to effortlessly interact with the hotels before and after their stays. Students of Georgia State can now register for classes, apply for student aid, and housing, all by using a simple chat interface. List of such fascinating examples is growing every day.

Platforms to build chatbots like Slack, Discord, Kik, telegram have already gained traction. With 900 mn active users in FB Messenger and over a billion in Watsapp, Facebook is also investing heavily on Chatbot platform for developer community and Chatbot for the businesses and us. Other tech heavy-weights like Google, Apple, and Microsoft are not far behind. Moreover, some of the great services which are in use for building chatbots are Chatfuel (Ycombinator company), IBM’s Watson, Motion.ai, api.ai (raised $8.6 mn in funding), wit.ai (bought by facebook), Gupshup etc.

Gartner has predicted that 85% of customer interactions would be managed without a human by 2020. About 2.5 billion people have already registered to use at the least one messaging app and this figure would reach 3.6 billion by 2018 (according to Activate, a technology & strategy firm). Therefore, in today’s digital world where messaging is going to be the most widespread digital behavior, Chatbots will definitely play a game changing role in providing a smart customer service across businesses.    

Thank you !