12/31: Chatbots

Yeah, I know. Chatbots. Either you love them or hate them, but they are real, and like it or not they would be part of your daily life.

Chatbot

NOUN. A computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the Internet.

Wether you are using Facebook, WeChat or Kik, chatbots are real. They have been living among us since long time ago. If you were a member of the old chat rooms, I’m sure you dealt with a chatbot at least once. They would be the ones welcoming you to different halls, help you to get information or change some configuration. These were simple chatbots, they would read the literal string and look for keywords in order to know what to do.

But as computers evolves so did the chatbots. They started to having a persona, a behavior, they started to react to their environment in order to feel more human.

But then the chat websites lose their popularity, little by little there were less and less users active in these pages. Moving towards social network or forums, the room for chatbots to keep growing was suddenly abandoned.

Chatbots were still used by companies to solve simple questions or process really simple, they would guide users step by step to configure something, they would be available in that small button at the bottom saying “Chat with us”.

Now with the revolution of messaging apps chatbots have a new playground, a place where millions of users enter every day to keep in touch with their families, friends, to buy things, do business and more.

Chatbots were the most logic solution, a way for companies to be in contact with their clients without the need of hiring multiple community managers. They help the user to do things like check weather information, order a pizza, make a doctor appointment, register for a marathon, buy a new green sweater, ask how they can arrive to some location, answer their FAQs or just talk for fun.

Facebook started they platform with very limited functions but right now they have a really decent platform that you can use to develop your own chatbots. While there are some limited functions, like buying through the platform which is only available in the US, every day it feels like bots came here to stay.

WeChat, on the other hand, has a more robust platform, with multiple functions and chatbots being able to launch and work with the called mini apps, and thus offering a more complete and involving function to the user.

Wether you like it or not bots are here to stay, in the future it would be the first (and maybe) only way to talk with companies and they would be intelligent enough to fool us wether we are talking to a human or a bot.

This story is part of my 31/31 challenge. Following a friend’s idea I will publish at least one story every day for the next month.

If you see any error please let me know, the idea is to stop over-reviewing my stories before publishing them.

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