The Chatbot Story - How did they grow? How will they grow?

Looks like chatbots are here to stay after all. After a terrific run in 2016, they have become a household name in several industries. The presence of chatbots reeks through enterprise models, sales practices & business processes of companies big & small. But this diversification was not a standalone achievement, and neither were chatbots an overnight success. Truth be told, it was a combination of a shift in technological trends & changing user preferences.

The Dominance of Messaging Apps

There’s no doubt there. Messaging apps are currently hot tech property. According to a Pew Research report, 36% of smartphone owners use their mobile messengers regularly. WhatsApp has a billion active users every month, and it’s surpassing social networks by a mile. With chatbots disseminating through these apps/platforms and using them as a medium, the reach is phenomenal.

The Involvement of Major Players

Once the traction for chatbots gained momentum in 2015, major players like Facebook & Microsoft jumped in on the trend. Within a month, both players expressed support for the movement - with Microsoft announcing its chatbot Framework in March 2016 & Facebook messenger supporting chatbot features in April that year.

The Downfall of Apps

With the gargantuan number of apps being rolled out year on year, exhaustion was a given. While there are already millions of apps till date, there were 50,000 iOS apps being rolled out per month in 2016. The scene is rather saturated and too late for some to join. Many moved on to Chatbots, owing to the multifaceted potential they were endowed with. Be it a marketing tool or as efficient customer support, chatbot platforms double the productivity, while lowering costs & hires.

Easy Chatbot Development

The costs are now dramatically lower. Several automated tools to build and disseminate chatbots are now readily available online. Then again, this depends on one’s requirement & usage. Deep customisation with AI, if built in-house, requires proper infrastructure & able minds.

While these were the social/technological factors that rendered the success rate of chatbots, the opportunities & avenues that they have opened up are also aplenty.

Chatbots - The Present & Beyond

Chatbots have found their stronghold in three main areas - customer support, internal business assistance & data management. After all, AI & Machine Learning is designed to absorb from the environment, or more so from the ones they interact with.

Gartner predicts, that only 1/3 of customer service interactions will be human by the end of 2017. Be it helping a customer navigate through a website, or an employee through a massive database, Chatbots are already doing a phenomenal job. Enterprise-grade chatbots are even equipped to perform & automate menial, time-consuming tasks like ordering supplies or invoicing customers etc.  

With further advancements in Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Understanding & Speech Recognition, Chatbots are predicted to evolve & even come close to the real thing - human intervention.

While tier-3 customer support/administration jobs are already in contention, it’s only a matter of time before they start making business decisions. So, start your chatbot journey with http://www.avaamo.com/ today!