If you're just using your mobile app to reach customers, you're missing out
In this series, retail experts at Shoptalk discuss the most pressing issues facing their industries today.
Mobile apps are a relic of dated technologies and programming techniques. They are essential, but force consumers to engage with brands through pre-determined paths. A host of new technologies from natural language understanding (NLU) to machine learning and artificial intelligence are ushering in new interfaces including the use of conversations to get information and services or to complete tasks.
Consumers’ Expectations Of Conversation Are Growing Quickly
Consumers don’t expect to use natural language to engage with machines today, but it is only a matter of time – especially for simple tasks. Mobile apps and browser-based experiences still offer the most convenient means to complete complex tasks from tracking workouts to browsing a brand’s collection to managing a retirement portfolio. When consumers do use voice, it tends to be for simple tasks such as quick questions, making lists or looking up directions, or turning on music. They are also purchasing voice-controlled devices such as TV’s and virtual assistants that introduce them to more opportunities.
The challenges of offering a natural language interface to information and services combined with nascent consumer demand is driving brands to start their journey. Unlike with mobile optimized web sites and apps, a few hundred thousand dollars and a few months will not allow you to catch up if you get left behind. By definition, cognitive systems must learn so you must teach them. This takes a lot of data (e.g., photos, text), needing time and patience. Therefore, you should start the journey today even if it is only to pilot or explore simple use cases. What we know today:
The hype is huge. Independent developers, startups and brands have built more than 50,000 chat bots since Kik and Facebook Messenger opened their platforms in the past 12 months.
Your competitors are piloting conversations as an interface. Forrester’s most recent executive survey shows that 4% of digital business professionals are using chatbots and 17% have a presence on Facebook Messenger.
Too Many Conversational Interfaces Fall Short Of Potential
To better understand current activity on Facebook Messenger, Kik, Alexa and Google Assistant, Forrester Research benchmarked a sample of 128 commerce-focused companies from the Fortune 500 in retail, hotel, airlines, credit cards, banking, quick service restaurants, travel, telecom, utilities and logistics industries. We asked a basic industry-specific question between December 14th and 25th – noting whether each brand had a presence, tracking their responses and monitoring response time. Most struggled with the basics — failing to help chatbot users complete tasks or failing to provide human responses promptly. We found that:
Instant messaging support is rare and mostly powered by humans, not chatbots. A presence on Facebook Messenger or Kik does not equate to operating a chatbot, it just means that customers can message the brand through that channel. Among the 128 companies Forrester benchmarked across Facebook Messenger, Alexa, Google and Kik, only 9% had chatbots while 30% primarily used humans within the platforms to handle customer care.
Human-powered messaging presences don’t respond in the time promised. Just like with the early days of email, brands look to set customer expectations within these platforms by letting customers know how long they can expect to wait before receiving an answer. Among the 66 with a presence on one of the platforms, only 12 responded within their promised time and 44 never responded to the question posed.
Brands don’t focus on true utility – repeating an early mobile app mistake. Instead of solving important or unique customer challenges, early attempts to create mobile apps simply for the sake of having an app resulted in shallow knockoff games and photo filter apps.
This article was first shared by Julia Ask