Chatbots in Commerce

With the great advancements in natural language processing it sometimes feels like Siri and Alexa are taking over - at least in the IT-News. In the customer facing area the term “Conversational commerce” is becoming more and more popular and also in the Business software industry bots are on the agenda for different use cases. In this article I will try to give a brief overview of current scenarios.

Customer Facing:

A large portion of the time I spend on social media is within messaging apps. This leads to the first great advantage of bots: There is no need for a separate app and a very low barrier of entry. A key goal of Conversational commerce is maximizing profits. Retailers are experimenting to make personalized offers and allow 1-1 conversation e.g. when you enter the store or respond to a content email. Such bots will become increasingly popular when we as consumers develop a better acceptance of the benefits of automating aspects of our lives. I doubt that ordering pizza through a messenger app will become the standard; but customers are in power to choose their preferred channel and this is one of many. At the same time chatbots can be used to increase efficiency e.g. when they process inquiries about delivery and returns. But to be honest I has been a while since I really had a question during an online shopping process. Successful shops are optimized for usability and often include a FAQ or Self-Support portal. When I contact the customer service I am truly desperate and I expect professional support. I believe customer service is too valuable to be fully outsourced to robots. I see great chances to have chatbots answer simple questions; but as soon as they are stuck there is a need for a smooth transition to a human expert.

For Internal Use-Cases:

The big advantage – no need for a separate app- also applies internally. If you have to create a service ticket only once a year it really helps if you can simply chat with your facility management bot that will guide you through the process. For many office workers software is omnipresent. One trend is that boots and voice control seamlessly integrate into the user interface of operating systems and also into business software. Generally, there are two main use cases: Action tasks and alerts. A typical action could be to create a follow-up item in your CRM using chat or voice control on the way from your customer’s office to your car. For more sophisticated actions like route planning or developing a close plan a bot can perfectly open the right screen and provide smart hints. In the actual process I would personally prefer visual support through an intuitive interface. Another interesting scenario for bots is the alert use-case. The chance to configure the chatbot to send a brief message e.g. when the status of an opportunity changes or a customer gives feedback on a social channel allows to react immediately. With the help of Artificial intelligence bots will be able to create a list of individual tasks and become a true office co-pilot. Based on patterns and context the system can act proactively and allow me to focus on high-value work.

Both scenarios – internal as well as external - show great opportunities to make use of chatbots. In the near future I believe more and more chatbots will take care of light-weight tasks so that humans can focus to foster meaningful, long-lasting customer relationships. The ever increasing predictive capabilities and improved Artificial intelligence allow even broader use-cases.