Day Two Updates from the Talkabot Conference, by Todd Odess
Shocking news alert! With each passing day, consumers are interacting with robots everywhere they turn; so much so, that we may soon have bots talking to bots to perform daily tasks.
Even though I am being tongue in cheek about it, it will be a reality in the very-very-very near future. Robots are taking over consumer interactions for companies, both large and small. These “chatbots” are allowing companies to deflect questions, reduce the throughput on service desks, complete sales, and gather information. Why are companies investing in this arena so heavily?
The Talkabot Conference
I’m currently sitting at Day 2 of the #Talkabot Conference in Austin. It is a “convergence where we will explore the past, present and future of bots in commerce, journalism and entertainment, ” where the creators of chatbots on Slack, Facebook Messenger, Kik, and other platforms come to discuss new techniques, see new technology, and potentially find funding from the few VCs in the crowd.
One chatbot after another is displaying their capability to understand and contextualize queries and field comments from humans that they are interacting with, and respond in a “human-like” manner. This is all well and good, but let’s talk about some of the challenges that face chatbot adopters:
- Not many are platform agnostic because it costs a lot of money and time. (Message.io has solved this problem for some bots, but there are many more platforms awaiting tools.)
- Very few, if any, are monetize-able. For the most part, chatbots are hyper focused on daily chat and notification style functionality, like daily weather forecasts, or restaurants nearby).
- Platform-based chatbots are limited in functionality to the whims of the platform they are created on which can limit capabilities and the spectrum of use-cases for enterprises. This will only create a market for customer engagement machines (think campaign-based chat sessions with customers for consumer packaged goods companies) unless the platforms open themselves up.
- Enterprises will need to capture the lessons learned from these platform-based bots and integrate it into their websites or internal bots.
Key Lessons from the Conference
Chatbots are ubiquitous already but the most pervasive bots (customer representative — internal or external) are creating the least amount of buzz. Platform-based chatbots are paving the way for enterprise-grade robots by being their testing grounds; this testing includes contextualization, interaction handling (e.g. A blinking cursor or suggested prompts), and uses (within the limits of what humans are willing to divulge). Enterprises are looking for the best way to provide convenient, capable touchpoints for their customers.
Questions Left Unanswered
Despite answering a lot of questions, the conference also spurred quite a few:
- Are bots the new app?
2. Do customers really care if the bot provides a “human” conversation? Do I really care if it asks me how I am doing?
3. Do customers need to be led through the conversation to make sure they know what to ask and how to navigate through? Ted Livingston, the CEO of Kik, is a firm believer that it’s better to provide choices rather than allowing the human to respond however they want.
4. Are chatbots really monetizeable? Are they just another connection point for customers or a cool toy?
5. Will bots fully replace human customer service reps? Or will we always be stuck yelling at our phone “Talk to an agent!”?
6. How does a bot really help companies triage calls, deflect easy to answer questions and, most importantly, help a customer accomplish what they were trying to accomplish?
The Future of Bots
Bots have come a long way, from SmarterChild to ubiquitous tools, so much so that AI, ML, and semantic networking are all important words that add clout to your services (i.e., “Intel Inside” equivalent). In the near future, chatbots will become the face of companies by carrying on intelligent conversations with customers and providing answers to their questions. Bots will link to the enterprise knowledge-base for answers, create tickets so the company can audit the process, and provide a “smart” handshake with a human, to seal the deal.
Interested in talking about it more? Have your chatbot talk to my chatbot.
Opinions expressed in this blog are of the author and may not represent Cognizant’s point of view.
Todd Odess
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Originally published at digitally.cognizant.com on September 30, 2016.
