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A chatbot has the advantage of being present and giving a personalized human-like response at any point of time
The digital world is increasingly becoming smarter. For example, product and service recommendations are going from being responsive to intuitive—instead of digital platforms providing recommendations based on your search query, they can now give recommendations based on your location, demographics, past history and various other parameters.
Messenger and chat applications today are going through a similar transformation. With these apps becoming some of the commonly used apps and with the growing demand for better user experience, they are going through a transition from being a graphical user interface to conversation user interface, with chatbots leading the way.
Chatbots are not only creating buzz in the technology industry but also in the user experience (UX) design circle. Why? Because, earlier, it was all about a responsive design, but now it is all about providing more human touch and mimicking a real world conversation.
So, what are chatbots?
In simple terms, a chatbot is a technology program that operates by a set of rules and often, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). A chatbot usually resides in a chat platform and looks to converse with humans by responding to their queries and questions in a way that is as close as it can come to a real conversation.
Chatbots were first conceptualized and created by scientists Alan Turing and Joseph Weizenbaum in 1950s and 1960s. However they were popularized by Facebook and similar platforms in 2016 when they allowed developers to create chatbots for their brands and services so that they could help their customers carry out a few regular activities through their messaging platforms and websites. Once popularized, chatbots started finding their use in chat platforms, providing suggestions for queries.
However, with the increasing popularity in machine learning and AI, chatbots are now finding their applications in various industries, from grocery shopping to weather-related queries, and from news to personal finance and healthcare. Enterprises are now using chatbots to perform various activities such as providing 24/7 customer service, push notifications or vouchers to their customers, provide personalized recommendations and help in discovering content.
Chatbot technology is now going beyond mere text messaging services. They have also found their applications in mobile devices in the form of popular voice-based personal assistant services. For example, Apple's Siri, Google (Android) Assistant and Cortana by Microsoft Windows can be considered chatbots as they respond to queries based on machine learning and AI. A new breed of chatbots can not only carry on a human-like conversation, but also sounds and looks human.
Why are chatbots disrupting UX?
The real potential of chatbots lies in its ability to simulate human conversation. It learns and improves through its interactions with humans. What has aided the popularity of chatbots is the proliferation of smart mobile devices and the human need to converse.
Humans are naturally wired to have real conversations. Conversations are part of our daily lives and we expect devices to help us communicate. Messaging platforms are increasingly becoming a platform of choice for people to have conversations. In fact, the top four messaging apps have more active users in a month compared to the top four networking apps. They also witness longer periods of activity.
It is only natural that enterprises need to build their businesses where their consumers are more active than create new ecosystems and expect their consumers to join them. Messaging apps just happen to be the new place for businesses to be. The reason for the popularity of chatbots is that they are easy to use for communicating with consumers in these communication devices and platforms, and they seem promising in improving customer experience.
Why is it imperative for brands to deploy chatbots?
Consumer behavior is constantly changing. Customers expect continuous access to a brand's services throughout the day. Moreover, despite having the best company website, people still want to 'talk to someone'. A chatbot has the advantage of being present and giving a personalized human-like response at any point of time, which means a 24/7 experience to customers. Moreover, chatbots can address multiple people at a time, making them more efficient.
Additionally, the digital landscape is rapidly evolving. Industry leaders are leveraging the machine learning and AI capabilities of chatbots to collect customer data such as their interests, habits and even identities from thousands of digital touchpoints. This knowledge is being used to provide customized offerings and communication to these customers within fraction of seconds, as well as increase in sales. All this means that chatbots provide better business efficiency by reducing the need to hire customer service representatives or freeing resources for other tasks. Financially, it implies reduced labour costs and increased profits.
Though the chatbot technology is in its early stages, it is considered the next big thing in the web UX technology. As per technology advisory firm Gartner, more than 85 per cent of customer service centers will be operated by bots by 2020. Given this scenario, several industry leaders feel that chatbots have the potential to open up whole new opportunities for customer engagement and satisfaction
