Chatbots will be as essential as email this year. Simple chat interfaces used to be a clever way to funnel hesitant customers directly to sales or to provide fast answers for common customer service questions. Those chatbots look like a 1980s fax machine to the agile businesses of today.
At last year's F8 conference, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated how the company 1-800-Flowers.com built a chatbot that can walk any customer through the process of ordering flowers with a natural, conversational interface inside Facebook Messenger.
Zuckerberg also pointed out how CNN is using its chatbot to boost engagement and pick up finer grain user data. Users can talk to the CNN bot using natural language and it will answer in the first person. CNN's Samantha Barry explained, "You'll see that we are using a lot of personal pronouns 'I, me, you' because it's fitting with the messaging space."
What Chatbots Can Do for Business Now
The broader implications of chatbots across industries was covered by Bill Boden, CTO of Kony. He offered a vision for retail banks of chatbots running "what-if" investment simulations as part of the client's self-serve portfolio analysis. Although that's just a possibility for the future, Boden also went on to lay out the actual business role chatbots will assume in 2017:
"There is tremendous opportunity and interest in creating holistic conversational solutions that can strengthen the ability to do business on mobile and connected devices. These dramatic improvements can be made on the backend of the mobile app and can transcend onto the user experience and allow companies to expose capabilities that don't exist from a glass perspective. Like retail banking, we'll begin to see the adoption of chatbot technology and conversational interfaces in more and more industries. It will be interesting to see the different approaches and applications as this type of technology provides endless opportunities."
3 Ways to Start Building Chatbots
Building your own private chatbot this year is easier and probably less expensive than you think. Here are some resources to get you started.
- Converse.ai represents the new cottage industry of companies that help you build your own intelligent bots with drag-and-drop simplicity. These bots can operate inside a variety of platforms, from text to Slack to Twitter. If you want to include transaction functionality, it integrates smoothly with electronic currency processors like Stripe. If you want to pull in marketing data or CRM info, integrate your new bot with HubSpot or Salesforce.
- Api.ai became part of Google's AI initiative last year, in a move away from text-based chatbots and into voice-driven assistants. As IoT shrinks or eliminates interfaces, voice will become the primary way of communicating with many devices in the very near future. Api.ai will continue to offer a PaaS full of advanced tools for developers and enterprises building conversational commerce into apps.
- Spend some time with the Complete Beginner's Guide to Chatbots at Chatbots Magazine. You'll get ideas on what to do with your chatbot along with a host of other resources, video and tutorials. You can also join the online chatbot forum here or meet others in person through the Silicon Valley Chatbot Meetup.
Connecting With Users
No matter what you choose for the internal structure of your chatbot, don't neglect the front end. The world's smartest bot can't learn anything unless users want to engage with it. Work with professional UX partners who understand how user interface design principles have changed over the past few years. Many web design agencies are good at mechanics, but you need one that can adapt the product design process for your target audience. Look for high marks from former clients in creativity, technical skill and design experience. The best part about machine learning tools is that once you engage users, the chatbot never stops improving its own performance.
Sources
http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/8-takeaways-facebooks-f8-mark-zuckerberg-reveals-companys-10-year-plan-170773
http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/12/technology/facebook-messenger-bots/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomaslaurinavicius/2016/12/04/ux-trends-2017/#a9edf2a7c940
http://venturebeat.com/2016/10/25/5-bots-to-try-this-week-obie-reddit-bot-george-takei-converse-ai-and-betalist/
Google acquires API.AI, a company helping developers build bots that aren’t awful to talk to
https://chatbotsmagazine.com/the-complete-beginner-s-guide-to-chatbots-8280b7b906ca#.77xd3ulk0
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