Smart chat bots, where is the money for businesses?

The first obvious application of smart chat bots (machine-learning powered bots) for companies is customer support. I am sure, soon we will interact with bots when contacting banks and airlines customer care. Why? Outsourcing customer care market is huge.

Global Outsourced Customer Care Services Market is projected to reach USD 84.7 billion by 2020.

Major companies may drastically cut the costs on customer support systems if they automate them by implementing AI and bots into messenger platforms as Facebook Messenger, Telegram or their native apps.

Businesses, especially banks, are already experimenting with bots for customer support and messaging with real people to cut down the time of issue solving. I was writing about it in my post Russian companies use messaging platforms for support.

56% of consumers want the ability to text back to customer service agents via SMS but many brands only offer one-way texting (brand to consumer). Bizreport.com

Major use cases for bots and companies experimenting in this area:

• Banking. Unblocking card without calling a bank in case of potential fraudulent activity and many other issues. Companies: Rocketbank.
• Airlines. Checkin, luggage issues, itinerary changes etc. Startups: App in the air.
• City guide. Restaurants recommendations, traffic, weather conditions also considering patterns of personal preference. Startups: Luka app.
• Office management: meeting rooms reservations, supply / inventory management. Startups: Mod.
• Utility companies: change or add name on the contract.
• Information retrieval: news updates, weather. Startups and companies: Luka, Yandex etc.
• Mobile operators: change payment plan, add money, solve any mobile coverage issue. Company: Yota.

If you know any companies or startups who carry on live experiments with bots and smart bots for customer support or any business area mentioned above, DM me on Twitter @marysam or Facebook.

Read more about smart bots:

This recent “bot-mania” is at the confluence of two separate trends. One is agent AIs steadily getting better, as evidenced by Siri and Alexa being things people actually use rather than gimmicks. The other is that the the US somehow still hasn’t got a dominant messaging app and Silicon Valley is trying to learn from the success of Asian messenger apps. This involves a peculiar fixation on how these apps, particularly WeChat, incorporate all sorts of functionality seemingly unrelated to messaging. They come away surprised by just how many differently-shaped pegs fit into this seemingly oddly-shaped hole. The thesis, then, is that users will engage more frequently, deeply, and efficiently with third-party services if they’re presented in a conversational UI instead of a separate native app. Source.