Life is Better with Bots
Bots have officially taken over, and they’re about to make our lives a whole lot easier. In April, Facebook introduced bots for Messenger, but the world’s most popular social media platform is not the only company to open a “bot store” with consumer functions, and virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa are steadily increasing in both popularity and functionality.
With Kik, you can chat with Michelangelo and see the climate conditions through Yahoo! Weather. With Operator, shopping is as easy as sending a text, and Pana, the online travel agency, turns a simple chat conversation via text into real bookings. In fact, everyone from 1–800-Flowers and the NBA to Taco Bell is jumping on the chatbot bandwagon.
What is a bot exactly? In short, it’s software. More specifically, it is technology you chat with to buy things, answer questions or interact with for fun. Chatbots might even replace all of the individual apps we use for entertainment and purchasing. For example, instead of downloading an airline app to purchase a plane ticket, you would chat with a bot via messaging to select your flight. If you wanted to find out the score of a game or an update on a breaking news story, you would simply ask a bot for the answer.
According to Facebook’s newsroom announcement, its bots will offer “anything from automated subscription content like weather and traffic updates to customized communications like receipts, shipping notifications and live automated messages all by interacting directly with the people who want to get them.”
The big thing here is automation. Consumers are tired of downloading new apps for every company they purchase from or source they engage with for content. And they certainly don’t want to struggle through five minutes of downloads and setup procedures. There’s even a name for this growing dissatisfaction: “app fatigue.”
Bots have the potential to influence how people buy and interact, especially when it comes to speed and accessibility, and they might eliminate “app fatigue” altogether. What’s more, the user experience for apps is particularly narrow, with consumers downloading an app once for immediate use and then quickly deleting it from their phones. From chat interfaces to back-end technology that delivers content, as well as bots that provide actual services and customer support, the scope for chatbots is one of the largest we’ve seen since mobile technology, and it allows consumers to connect more directly and continuously with brands and content.
Chatbots enable consumers to interact automatically and more directly with brands and content.
Think of it this way. Bots could schedule your doctor’s appointment and arrange your car rental. They could submit your beverage order at a concert without you standing in line or downloading an app. They could initiate a “happy birthday” chat between your toddler and her favorite cartoon character. They could also tell you when your dry-cleaning is ready. These functions may not always include artificial intelligence features, but they’re still set to transform the way consumers interact with businesses.
It’s well known that many consumers, especially younger ones, tend to communicate through messaging apps and texts. Messaging apps are already overtaking social network apps, with more active user engagement (nearly three billion users on the top four messaging platforms, according to BI Intelligence). So, not only are the digital possibilities significant, the consumer audience is as well.
The massive popularity of WeChat in Asia is particularly notable, reaching a monthly active user base of 706.7 million in March of 2016 in China alone. WeChat’s all-in-one communications have not only taken over the way people there converse, the company is actually imbedded in the cultural experience. That’s something no one should ignore, especially brands and marketers. In May, CMO by Adobe called WeChat “the center of your 2016 digital strategy in China.” WeChat is in no way unique in its popularity, however. Chat platforms (soon followed by their legions of chatbots) will play a central role in how the average consumer interacts with the world.
Chatbots might be the future of communication and the consumer-brand connection, but their impact is only as strong as their service. As Amir Shevat from Slack pointed out on Medium, “bots are a means to an end, and that end is a great product or service to the end user. Done wrong, bots could be as useful as blinking text in old websites — a gimmick that no one remembers.” Shevat went on to explain that “bots are useful in cases where it is easier, and more productive, to provide the service via a conversation with this software-based user.”
Beyond the service level, intrusive spam and the safety of shared information are other concerns about bot technology, but these considerations are relatively common in the digital space. With so many applications and a growing audience, bots might be the key to a more connected future.
Walter Delph is an entrepreneur and now a partner in BCGDV’s Manhattan Beach headquarters. To learn more about corporate investment and incubation and how DV brings together corporate partners with the passion, pace and capabilities of the startup community, please visit https://www.bcgdv.com/.
