Chatbots for your business
The fast pace development of new technologies like chatbots has changed the way we do business today. It is easier now to create, to communicate and engage leveraging computer mediated strategies. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now the technology trend. AI is a computer science subset, created to do things normally done by humans, like acting intelligently. AI is the smart piece of technology analyzing contextual situations, allowing it to become more intelligent.
AI Chatbots represent one category of smart technology, lately there is a surge to use this in business. A chatbot could have different results, especially because it is personalized for the companies that use it. For example, a chatbot can be used for conversational purposes, scheduling meetings, assisting consumers in the buying process of a new gadget, reporting temperature, etc.
How can AI help your business?
You don’t need to be a fortune 500 company to use a chatbot. Small business owners can now leverage AI technology. According to Gartner, in 2020 consumers will operate 85% of their relationships with businesses by using this kind of technology and without much human interaction. Narrative Science predictions about AI say that 62% of enterprises will adopt it in their strategy by 2018.
If you still are not sure how you would use Chatbots, here are some examples:
Company assistance
Instead of using multiple apps to manage tasks for your business, you can text your digital assistant instead. Niki.ai is a personal “attendant” chatbot that can do various things like scheduling your dinner order or your laundry pickup for example. Need a business scheduling assistant? There is a chatbot created especially for scheduling business meetings: x.ai bot. The author of this app has been inspired to create it because he consumes up to 10 hours a month scheduling meetings.
Conversational Advertising
Advertising via direct messaging is used mainly to increase business visibility. Small businesses use these chatbots to spread the word about the new promotions, sales or discounts. Even if conversational advertising hasn’t surpassed the direct email marketing or websites yet, it is a good way for small businesses to diversify their marketing strategy.
Customer Service
Enterprises invest in chatbots to interact with their clients, answer the most frequent questions or process payments. Instead of spending a lot of time and money to answer individual questions for every consumer, the business owners have customized chatbots that act as the first line of the communication process. Converse and Zendesk are great examples of using Chatbots in this way.
Personalized shopping
Consumers use chatbots to help them make better decisions. For example, Expert Personal Shopper utilized by The North Face asks multiple questions and then uses the responses to help the customer make a rational decision.
These are just some examples of artificial intelligence tools and how they used in the business industry. As you may have noticed, in each case the tool focuses on providing a personalized solution to automatize the work flow, and in the end to have more satisfied consumers. These AI tools not only change the way consumers act and react to a brand, but also changes the way a business functions. So, chatbots are starting to be a “must have”, opening new doors for many opportunities for the multiple industries.
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Stefanie Niemann (Steffi)
Hi Rick,
thanks for all these information which are really helpful.
I do hope that by 2020 AI will work nicely without annoying people. Today, some of us still prefer to call a human at the other end of the line.
Having said that, I am certain that AI can help to answer the most common questions a customer has. Looking at the large telephone companies today, they use AI or similar programs to guide you through the most common issues a customer can face.
But with all the technology we should forget how to interact with people face to face as this is still an essential skill to be used.
Best,
Stefanie
Rick Blaisdell
Hello, Stefanie! We are actually very close to the moment where people won’t react negatively to machines, and that’s because they won’t even recognize them. New AI robots use artificial neural networks to work, which means they are able to understand unstructured data in the same way as humans, and that can maintain that human touch. It is only a matter of time since this technology will be widely available.