A (Realistic) Look Ahead at AI, Chatbots, & iMessage in?2017

(I originally published this piece in VentureBeat, in an abridged form)

For mobile messaging, 2016 wasn’t the “Year of Conversational Commerce”… It was “The Year of Infrastructure”. Apple launched the iMessage App Store with the release of the release of iOS10. This opened up an economy of applications within one of the largest mobile messaging applications on the planet. Facebook Messenger grew to over 1 Billion MAU and opened up its chatbot framework. Kik, Twitter DM, Skype, Line, Google and Viber also launched their own chatbot frameworks. Amazon Alexa, Apple Earpods, and Google Home crept into people’s homes, conversations (and ears too) with digital assistants; over 5M devices in market to be exact. The platforms showed up.

More than 30,000 branded chatbots, 1600 iMessage apps, and 6,000 voice-activated skills hit the market. 

I think 2017 is the real time to pay attention to mobile messaging (It’s actually going to be near impossible to miss). For those interested in mobile messaging, 2017 will be “The Year of the Customer”. This year, chatbots and peer-to-peer messaging apps will move beyond last year’s market-entry issues and into mainstream use. This year, chatbots and iMessage apps successfully exit the Trough of Disillusionment and enter the Slope of Enlightenment.

Here’s how it happens: 

1) Chatbot adoption will pick up

This year, every Fortune 1000 business will add a chatbot to their tech and marketing stack, and consumers will finally begin to understand the true potential of chatbots. Previously, chatbots have faced issues with functionality, usability, adoption, discoverability, and monetization; however, this year, messaging platforms will make their products so valuable they can’t be ignored. Bots offer instant access to a brand’s services and offerings, making them a perfect solution for businesses that are looking to reduce spending and increase automation in customer service. Smart brands will recognize the power of messaging and go a step beyond, using it for customer support by creating branded experiences that are enjoyable and entertaining. Think guided mazes, digital scavenger hunts, themed and personalized shopping suggestions, collaborations with friends, and more.

Additionally, brands will promote their bots on various platforms: “Chat with us” will be prominently featured on brands’ websites, and scannable “messenger codes” will appear on physical products. Facebook’s new advertising platform will send users directly from their newsfeed to a relevant chatbot experience with a reasonably priced per-engagement cost. Partnerships (such as Uber offering a $20 free credit for those booking rides through Facebook Messenger) will be used to drive users to chatbots. Because of all of this momentum, the media will begin to highlight the most useful chatbots, not just niche ones. And so the cycle begins…

2) Chatbots will become more intelligent, but not necessarily through AI

Marketers will build context-aware experiences that leverage user data like location and user properties. Think of these experiences as intelligent messages or smart reminders that are personalized, timely, and relevant. These intelligent messages can include a bot offering you tips on checking into a hotel when you enter a new city, alerting you when a change has been made in your favorite sports team’s roster, or notifying you when your prescription is ready for pickup. “Chatbot CRM” will be the buzzword for customer management.

The challenge then shifts from data collection and storage to data synthesis, which requires unified data management platforms and actionable insight generation. There will be multiple AI solutions in this early stage, but 2017 won’t be the year where AI completely breaks through this challenge. Still, intelligent messages will be the underlying layer that can move marketing from mass audience advertising focusing on impressions and reach, to personalized, curated relationship building that focuses on consumer engagement.

3) The iMessage platform expands

Content messaging (GIFs, stickers, emojis, and interactive messaging) will continue to become more frequent in the West and Apple has the largest opportunity to grab this market. Apple has made it easy for developers to build on the platform, but it feels like there is still a substantial awareness problem (first party data shows 75% of branded emoji shares come from OTT applications vs iMessage). This year, Apple will spend a significant amount of time at the next WWDC & Apple Event demonstrating their iMessage platform. While Line (a popular messaging app) did $270M in sticker sales last year, if Apple wants to compete with Messenger, WeChat, and the other players they will need to get developers to build for, and consumers to take full advantage of this iMessage platform building richer experiences beyond stickers.

The one thing that differentiates Apple iMessage from Chatbots is that iMessage is about peer to peer interactions. This means that successful apps on iMessage will remove social frictions. Apple will work with smart brand marketers to build messaging experiences for customers to get access to the services they most frequently use?—?without ever leaving the iMessage app. CMOs will need to market products that help two or more people do something together. The business opportunities could be as simple as selling branded, digital stickers to group shopping applications (ie: two people making a Christmas Wishlist together or two colleagues pre-order lunch together).

4) Platform intelligence will increase

This year, consumers will get their own digital assistant when voice-activated bots like Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, and Cortana further invade our lives (and our text messages). We’ll increasingly see early brand innovators leverage these digital assistants. While there is no clear winner for device (and it will be exciting to see what Apple launches here), brand marketers should leverage a few of these platforms and experiment with creating consumer-centric solutions. For example, a consumer goods brand could look to create a step-by-step recipe experience, and a fitness brand could create a personalized workout routine.

5) Chatbots will find their role at the office

In 2017, we know messaging will make gains on email as the primary communication tool in the workplace, and chatbots will find their place in the office as well. While Slack is experiencing insane growth (3.5x growth as of April 2016), most large enterprises probably still haven’t considered them. Microsoft launched Teams, a direct Slack competitor/knockoff, last year, and other players like Facebook Workplace, Yammer, HipChat, and Skype for Business are all in the enterprise messaging mix as well. Much like the consumer space, these enterprise messaging platforms have been developing chatbot frameworks. This year, brand marketers will build experiences that complement workplace activities. For example, expect hospitality companies to build a chatbot that colleagues can use to book hotel rooms and airlines to launch a flight status search bot for employees to use when assisting customers.

There is no doubt chatbots will see explosive growth in 2017: Chatbots have truly begun claiming their stake as the new home screen. Now that many of the kinks have been worked out, chatbots can serve their role as an unparalleled advantage for B2C and B2B communications alike. While bots aren’t meant to replace humans, they can augment the consumer experience, ultimately bridging gaps between brands and customers in ways that have never been possible before.