Are chatbots replacing apps?
Several days ago, I had the chance to participate in a panel on the subject of chatbots as part of Pioneers Conference 2017 held in Vienna, Austria.
Today, I want to share with you the top 3 questions asked in the panel, and my key takeaways after listening and participating in it.
On stage we were 7 chatbot advocates, including Efrat, co-founder and CEO of Bonobo.ai, Mike, president at Statsbot, YuHsuan, co-founder and CEO of Botimize, Artem, CEO of VisaBot and 2 panel moderators David, co-founder of orat.io and Natalie, UX & chatbot engineer at Craftworks, and myself, Product Manager at Viber.
Question #1 — Why are chatbots replacing apps?
Let me start with some hard facts — chatbots are not ready to replace apps. The way I see it, chatbots are a new and improved medium for businesses and users to interact with each other. Chatbots are more personal, don’t require installation and come in a familiar UI.
When apps were introduced, they demonstrated a better experience than websites. Compared to websites, they were new and improved medium for businesses and users to interact with each other. They were more personal, they did not require to navigate outside of your phone to the web. But apps never replaced websites. That is why my claim is that chatbots will not replace apps.
Question #2 — Is the chatbots industry hyped?
In my opinion, the chatbots industry is not hyped. The industry is fairly new and young, thus holds a lot of exciting and prolific opportunities. Almost all major messaging apps have recently introduced an API for supporting chatbots, and this is where the users are (source).
But, as Efrat said during the panel, even if it’s hyped — so what?
Question #3 — What are some problems that chatbots have?
As I suggested in my previous article on chatbots, not all chatbots meet user expectations. Chatbots ‘break’ during a regular chat, they get creepy by asking for personal details with no good reasoning, they operate based on scripts and almost never improvise. A chatbot, compared to an app, can’t compensate for bad user experience with fancy UI.
Another problem that is important, in my opinion, came up during the panel — monetization. Sure, some chatbots manage to make money but the majority so far can’t.
If you want to see the rest of the panel in action, follow this link (questions starts around 07:00).
I’d also like to give a special thanks to the organizers that made it all happen — Jakob, David, Thomas, Barbara, and Natalie — thanks a lot for hosting and taking good care of us, showing us the good work you’re doing on chatbots and the beautiful city of Vienna.
Thanks for reading — follow me for my next gig!
