BRANDS THAT ARE USING BOTS FOR THEIR BUSINESS

Mohit Dua
AI Timey
Published in
5 min readJul 31, 2019

Text or voice bots are computer programs that help in simulating a conversation to achieve a specific goal. They provide automated, swift and intelligent responses that increase customer satisfaction. Today, the chatbot market has achieved a high level of share in different industries. It is clearly visible in the Google trends that the interest in chatbot technology has increased by almost 600%. Brands are using bots for their business to grow.

These bots are now using artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to learn from and improve upon past interactions. In fact, Gartner predicts that 25% of customer service and support operations will integrate virtual customer assistance or a bot (text or voice) channel for customer engagement by 2020. Gartner research also reveals that organizations report increased customer satisfaction and a reduction of up to 70% in call, chat and/or email inquiries after implementing a VCA or chatbot solution. Check out the best voice bot and its success stories.

As per research by Hubspot, 47% of consumers prefer buying an item from a chatbot without any intervention from humans. All these stats clearly show the high demand for this technology in different industries. Since the businesses want to provide the best-personalized service to their customers, in this competitive world, they are readily adopting this. So is this technology really getting up and is there any thoughts for brands using bots for their business.

Here are a few examples of brands using bots for their business:

1) Starbucks

The famous coffee shop has made it extremely easy for its customers to place an order of their favourite drink or snack. The Starbucks chatbot is inside the Starbucks app and you can find it for iPhone, windows and android. Once you place the order it will tell you when your order will be ready and the total cost. It allows the user to skip long lines for morning coffee via messaging or voice. It helps the customers to engage and place multiple and specific orders. The interesting part of the bot is that it saves the customer preferences and habits based on their previous orders. This has helped Starbucks in delivering unparalleled speed and convenience, enhancing customer loyalty and engagement and further extending the accessibility of the Starbucks app.

2) Spotify

Spotify’s Facebook Messenger bot makes it easy for its customers to search for, listen to, and share music. Once you start using this, it will get you playlist recommendations based on your mood or the genre you want. The tool can also recommend music based on previous search history and users’ preferences — the one to one conversation adds a personal connection between the consumer and brand.

The technology makes use of Facebook chat extensions to provide music suggestions, search tools, and sharing functionality. Users can send 30-second audios to their friends on Messenger via the chatbot as well.

3) Uber

With the help of Uber chatbot, customers can book a ride on messenger without downloading the Uber App. For viewing receipts and updates of rides, you can view a private chat with Uber on Messenger. This feature provides a lot of convenience for tracking payment and ride history. Apart from all this it also has the ability to share details of your current Uber trip with your friend son messenger for tracking. You can send a location on Messenger and your friend can book a ride for you. You can also go for a group chat through Uber. Uber has also activated its voice feature which allows the customer to book a cab by Siri. Apart from this, you can also use your Google home to call a car by simply asking one.

4) Paypal

PayPal uses voice assistance and has launched its update on iPhone and iPads for payment transactions via Siri. This allows the users to send and request money in 30 countries around the world with voice. With a simple voice command like ‘send $50 to my sister using PayPal’, Siri connects with the PayPal service and pulls up a custom sheet with details of your transaction before you authorize it.

5) Dominos

The famous pizza chain is also in the line of providing its customers with the quick service. It has its voice ordering system which sits alongside its virtual assistant ‘the Dru assist’. It makes ordering more efficient and accurate for customers.

6) Mastercard

Mastercard’s Facebook Messenger bot makes it convenient for customers to check on their payment transactions. With the voice assistant, they just need to ask a simple question and they will get the personalized results. For example: how much did I spend on shopping in June? Such a question can be very easily answered with the help of this technology.

7) Johnnie Walker

The whisky giant, Johnnie Walker has a collaboration with Amazon Alexa and has created Johnnie Walker skill that guides the customers through a personalized tasting, recommended blends, anecdotes from the Johnnie Walker history. It also gives practical whisky tips and unique cocktail recipes which can be downloaded electronically in the Amazon App. With this enhancement, Johnnie Walker has made the whisky world fun and more engaging just by using voice. Now our customers can entertain at home in a unique way with the hands-free convenience of Alexa.

This shift in technology provides a natural and seamless flow to work processes giving more mobility to employees. With the help of these employees will be able to access information and communicate in an integrated manner. It is expected that by the year 2020, 50% of searches will be voice-based. If that is where customers are heading, companies need to be on that platform as well. Thus, brands using bots for their business are actually getting benefitted.

--

--

Mohit Dua
AI Timey

Chief Business Officer at Triny | Helping brands connect with customers effectively using AiTimey & AiSensy