Acceptance of chatbots

Artificial intelligence (AI) has not only touched several aspects of human life, but also landed in a consumer’s grip in the form of chatbot, encompassing his or her daily life with stability and reliability. Chatbots and virtual assistants are new tools designed to simplify the interaction between humans and computers. Chatbots have been accepted widely, due to usage of chatbot backstories while creating it. Thus, eliminating the user’s skepticism towards its adoption, making it more relatable in the real-life scenario.

Chatbot developers focus on creating unique backstories to give their finished product a distinct level of reliability and relatability. An effective chatbot development often depends upon creating a chatbot personality with unique traits, values, speech pattern and dialogue engagement so that a comfort zone can be woven around the concept of AI-driven chatbots. With massive evolution in the arena of service delivery, consumer expectation is growing which can be met only with innovative technologies, and chatbots are considered as one such innovation, that can render customer satisfaction.

What is a chatbot?

A chatbot is an AI software that can generate a seamless conversation with a user using Natural Language Processing (NLP) through messaging applications, telephone, websites, mobile apps or voice applications. A chatbot primarily executes two tasks, analyzing the user’s request and creating response to that request. Response can either be generic or predefined or it can also be based on information retrieved from data stored in enterprise systems. Apart from enhancing customer experience, chatbots improve the operational efficiency by reducing the cost of customer service.

Importance of chatbot, powered by AI

As we know that AI helps a system perform tasks like human, it provides a human touch to the conversation a chatbot strikes. AI ensures that the user’s query is understood, and an accurate response is triggered. Without AI, a chatbot will not be able to understand a unique query which will defeat the personalization of the conversation with an end user. The following are the importance of chatbot driven by AI.

Enhance customer service experience

AI-powered chatbots can keep customers engaged in lively and interactive conversation to solve complex queries. AI assists chatbot to learn from past conversation with customers to understand consumer’s choice and preferences. This approach also saves time, making the process more efficient and dependable. As per research, 83% of online shoppers need assistance to choose product that fits their budget and need. Chatbots can fill in missing information about the product a customer is interested in.

Proactive customer interaction

Chatbots can handle large number of requests at the same time. The ability to continuously learn and adapt while interacting with the customer in natural process has opened new prospects for enterprises. Especially with proactive customer interaction, a company can create an immense brand visibility in a competitive market.

Improve customer engagement

A humored and lucid flow of information can keep customers engaged with the brand. Through chatbots, the interaction can be more interactive and fast paced. In fact, research confirmed that by 2020, 85% of consumer interactions will be managed by companies through chatbots without human intervention.

Gauge product and service

Chatbots can be of great help in collecting feedback from the users which can be utilized to improve product and services. This kind of insight can improve business decisions.

Improving sales

Presence of a chatbot in an online store expands the overall experience of the user. It also allures the potential buyer to become an actual buyer. One cannot deny the fact that it is an overwhelming experience in interacting with a virtual store assistant who also suggests new products based on user search history and help the buyer make the purchase and the payment.

Cost saving solution

It definitely saves cost to implement a chatbot powered by AI rather than hire an individual and train him or her to operate as a support to customer service. Gartner predicted that by 2020, 40% of mobile interactions between consumer and store will be managed by smart agents.

Operational benefits

  • 24*7 customer support at low cost
  • Accurate and proactive assistance with empathy
  • Customer satisfaction
  • Accessibility to visitor’s data
  • Improved marketing and sales strategy
  • Mobile friendly
  • Updated service

Popular chatbots

Few of the popular chatbot driven by AI that deserve mention are:

  • IBM Watson chatbot
  • Amazon Lex chatbot
  • LivePerson chatbot
  • Dialogflow Chatbot
  • Bold360 chatbot
  • Microsoft Bot Framework
  • Spotify

Conclusion

Chatbots are dramatically impacting business. Apart from IT enterprises that readily adopted chatbot are e-commerce, retail, banking, leisure, travel and healthcare. According to market research, the chatbot market is rapidly expanding and it is predicted that by the end of 2020, 85% of the online interactions between customers and the online retail stores will be accomplished by chatbots. Research also suggests that 6 billion connected devices will need AI powered chatbot support by end of 2019.