Chatbots in the World of Marketing

The American Marketing Association defines Marketing as 'the activity, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.'

From the definition, it is clear that a large part of Marketing is to communicate the value of the product or service that is being marketed. Companies are trying innovative means to reach out to the end customers. they want to differentiate themselves from their competitors but want to maintain the cost advantage. And with the increase in penetration of mobile devices and the internet in general Chat Bots provide a great opportunity. They are cost effective in terms of the volume of users they target.

What are Chat Bots?

According to NBC, Chat Bots are “simple artificial intelligence systems that you interact with via text. Those interactions can be straightforward, like asking a bot to give you a weather report, or more complex, like having one troubleshoot a problem with your Internet service.” Think of it as an automatic conversation machine that can talk to people in a relatively human-like way about limited subjects.

Since technology is advancing at an unparalleled rate the function of chat bots will not be just restricted to texts and with knowledge of limited subjects. Amazon Echo, Google Home and the recent Google Assistant are examples of that.

They provide the convenience to the companies who want to reach to their customers. A couple of use cases of chatbots are:

Bank of America

This banking giant has created a bot named Erica, that can provide service to customers across a variety of platforms, such as Facebook Messenger and SMS text messaging. Users can use this to receive detailed information on their bank account and spending habits.

Pizza Hut/Domino's

Domino's has been using bots for over a year now. It allows users to order via voice, Amazon Echo, Google Home, as well as through text messaging, Twitter, and even on smartwatches and television. Pizza Hut also has started using bots as an extension of their social media strategy to receive food orders for delivery. Customers can order from Facebook Messenger and Twitter.

Companies which are looking for Below The Line (BTL) marketing can also benefit from the use of chatbots. Since the usage of a bot is not restricted to just ordering food or getting banking details, they can be customized for a number of offerings that will save the company a lot of resources. Senseforth's Chief Executive Sridhar Marri, which builds intelligent bots for enterprises, said that one of their bots has handled over 6.5 million queries in the last 9 months. He believes if they were to engage agents for this task that would have been very expensive and not at all cost-effective.

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