Chatbots and the Zero Moment of Truth! FB vs Google?

With the proliferation of messenger bots and bot platforms, the debate on the utility of these cyber critters is slowly ebbing. There are use-cases that have been implemented (like here) which highlight their effectiveness in replacing human interaction for tasks which are repetitive in nature. Advancements in Artificial Intelligence (specifically applied to Natural Language Processing), in terms of accuracy in nailing down user 'intent', along with a tipping point in terms of the reduced cost-of-technology have indeed helped speed things up. However, there's another, bigger context, in which Chatbots might well be the foot-soldiers for the Battle of the Behemoths : Google vs Facebook!

The Battleground : What the customer wants....er..when?

Way back in 2011, Google coined a concept called the Zero-Moment-of-Truth (ZMoT). El Goog defined this for the user as " ??the precise moment when they have a need, intent or question they want answered online."

Being at the top of the user's mind in this ZMoT has been considered to be the holy-grail of marketing in the modern world since then. Much has been written about the strategies required to attain this and continues to be written as ZMoT gains more importance and scale.

Figure 1: All eyes on the Zero Moment of Truth

So far, So Goog

How this works today for most users? You think of a question and you try to 'Google' the answer. This puts Google closest to the ZMoT and potentially in control of the suggestion pipeline that influences the buying decision of a majority of 3,544,847,626 (at the time of writing..for the current number see here) internet users worldwide. As can be imagined, this power is worth a lot of money in terms of advertising revenue ($74.9 Billion revenue with a market capitalization of $373 Billion in 2015 to be precise). This essentially boils down to a single line strategy , that of defending the Search.

What the F******k!

Along comes the challenger, Facebook with a profit margin of 55.6% compared to Alphabet's (Google's holding company) 33.1% (For a complete analysis trawl investors.com here). But wait, FB is a Social Networking site. Then why has it been interested in Messaging (remember the $19 Billion spent for Whatsapp)? And how can it be challenging Google on Search of all things? The answer to the first question is in the graphic below:

(The complete report from Business Insider can be accessed from here)

As for the answer to the second question, the below is what I think is happening.

Battlelines : Drawn on a 5-inch screen.

Customer behaviour is changing rapidly with the evolution of mobile technology. Customer buying-behaviour on a mobile is still evolving. Unlike a desktop (which you still have to boot up, open a browser and type out the search), with a mobile you can either search immediately through a voice command (Google Now, Siri), through an app (hit up the Amazon) or.. ask your friends on Facebook! You message your friends through FB Messenger, or Whatsapp (wait, thats bought out by FB) or search on Instagram (wait, that's also bought out by FB)...

When FB turned of age, there weren't any seats for players at the 'app' table except for the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. In a bid to change the game, FB started allowing developers to build bots inside Messenger, letting them create bots instead of apps, and in some cases , making apps redundant. For e.g. the Uber Bot let's you hail a cab from within your Messenger chat window, without requiring a switch to the Uber App. Two things happen here : 1) the user doesn't have to switch windows while conversing with a friend about meeting her somewhere 2) the cab service provider is closer to the user's Zero Moment of Truth than Google ever has been. The first bodes well for the user, the second bodes well for FB.

In this new paradigm, FB owns the conversation and can potentially wrest control of the ZMoT pipeline from Google. However, FB is a social networking site and hence cannot possibly serve ads as freely as Google does, without affecting the user experience negatively. A possible option could be to allow bidding for 'intent' so that contextual information and market offerings (read chatbots) from the highest-paying business could be offered to users during their ZMoT. e.g. instead of Uber being the default taxi bot, or Dominos being the default pizza bot, the intent of ' going from place A to place B' or ' feeling hungry' could be bid upon by the relevant bots at runtime, akin to a Google AdWords algorithm.All you need is an AI platform like wit.ai to get a clearer intent (wait, that's also bought out by FB)....!

The above is just a conjecture, an attempt at peering into what might be and involves myriad variables. It depends, amongst other things, on whether we would be able to use the bot opportunity to redesign and influence the way the consumer behaves on the mobile , or just continue to view it as a replacement to an app (a very insightful view on this from Venture Beat can be looked up here ). But one thing is for certain. The business model for Search is up for a revamp. Who will finally win this alpha bet, only time can tell.