What is a chatbot and how can it help you in business?
In December 2916, Business Insider reported that 80% of respondents said they already used or planned to use chatbots by 2020. This statistics shows that companies & business leaders are open to new innovative technologies and the capabilities of automation. So, is it a good idea to implement chatbot in your business?
What is a chatbot?
A chatbot can be characterized as a computer program that simulates human conversation through text chats or voice commands or both. It can be a program that uses an artificial intelligence and is designed to convincingly act as a real person.
This technology is built on so-called machine learning. It is a type of artificial intelligence that is inspired by the human brain and consists of different layers for analysis and learning. Each layer consists of its own artificial neurons, which are interconnected and react to each other. Each interconnection is influenced by the previously learned formulas, thus improving the learning process continually.
Facebook Messenger Chatbot
In April 2016, Mark Zuckerberg introduced a new feature to FB Messenger — chatbots. You will have an access to a huge audience (more than 2.3 billion active users) and can achieve many new customers. Based on the right keywords, chatbot can estimate what customers want, lead the whole conversation and the customer's behaviour to the desired actions.
It is a great way for customers to communicate with the company, get answers to their questions, get to the offers they are interested in and so on. Through FB chatbot you can easily buy tickets for a particular event, check out the menu of a restaurant and much more.
So, you can create your own Facebook chatbot and connect with him in three ways:
- Using the specific URL
- Directly on the FB page
- Scanning QR code
In what areas is it good to use a chatbot?
E-SHOPS
Chatbot is “a gift from the heavens” for online stores, as it can facilitate a lot of processes, save time and bring customers exactly where you want. It can also help your customer support to quickly answer questions or resolve customer complaints. Of course, chatbot will not know the answer to anything, and in such cases the real person can enter the conversation and continue to talk with the customer.
Example: There are a lot of consumers who come to the e-shop, want to buy boots, but they do not know exactly what type of shoes. At that point, a chatbot comes and help them to choose the most suitable ones and turn the visitor into the customer.
Even the fashion brand H&M uses its chatbot:
FINANCE INDUSTRY
Is it true that AI chatbots will change the way we bank? Well, no one can say that yet, but it is possible. Chatbots can track your personal finances, send you notifications about changes in stock markets, or help with finding a mortgage. Banks are starting to gradually develop and implement chatbots that allow you to sign in to your account, track your current balances and overall status, and guide you in dealing with finances.
Example: HSBC bank created a virtual assistant chatbotnamed “Amy” which provides 24%7 support on desktop and mobile and answer all your questions. It was launched in early 2017 and in December it had more than 97,000 questions with 90% success and led more than 38,000 conversations with clients.
INTERNET OF THINGS — IoT
Chatbots and IoT are two areas that can really work together. Imagine that you have smart lighting in the house and want to activate it. With chatbot, you just need to use common, spoken words (slang, synonyms) that suffices to launch it, you do not need to remember any exact command structure.
It may also look like this:
TIME MANAGEMENT
Nowadays, it is challenging to effectively spend your business hours and do not forget about any meeting. So, why do not use a chatbot for this?
A great example is Meekan —a scheduling robot assistant that knows your calendar and learns your habits and preferences to help you schedule all the meetings on a day-to-day basis. This chatbot is available for Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Hipchat.
HUMAN RESOURCE
Even in HR industry, chatbots can find their place & meaning. A great example is a recruitment chatbot “Mya” (debuted by FirstJob). Mya communicates with thousands of people at once via SMS, FB, e-mail, Skype, or chat, answers questions of candidates, provides them with advice and guidance, manages their ratings and provides useful information to managers. It automates as much as 75% of the recruiting process.
Are Slovak clients interested in creating chatbots for their businesses?
Every month here at Touch4IT, we have at least 10 requests for designing and implementing chatbots, which is almost 100% more compared to last year. We develop chatbots mostly for Facebook Messenger or Viber platform, but if that makes sense, we also create & implement chatbots independent from any these chat platforms.
These requests have also increased thanks to Viber. They’ve chosen our firm as the preferred software study of their chatbots on the Slovak market 3 months ago.
Do you consider a chatbot for your company? Contact us at hi@touch4it.com and we can arrange a personal (or skype) meeting to discuss all options and show you how a chatbot can help you.
