The chatbot is basically an artificial intelligence program that is helping in the conversation via textual or auditory methods. It is used designed with perfection to stimulate the behavior of humans in certain situations and making it a conversational partner. Since the inception of chatbots, they have revolutionized the customer service, where real humans are getting spontaneous answers and personalized solutions that a human being can reply. These responses are always as per customers’ expectations that is also saving businesses thousands of dollars and time for them too.

2019 is standing to bring in more innovative chatbots. All the developers are working hard to make the lives of the businesses long and easy. They are working for the voice search along with personalized voice assistants and even augmented reality. The world’s expert on chatbots, voice search and voice assistant, Christi Olson, head of the search at Bing says, ‘Gartner is predicting that by 2020 there would be more conversations with chatbots as compared to their spouse’. He further added that ‘the futuristic chatbots won’t be able to respond to your answers only, but they can talk, think, and develop emotional relationships with customers’.

Let’s try to understand the power of chatbots with the review of the experts in this field and analyze its potential for revolutionizing the world.

Power of Chatbots as per Expert

As per Virginia Nussey, who is a famous chatbot marketer, ‘Chatbots are software that sends some programmed messages to the users of that software, in a conversational interface’. She further added, ‘there was a time when chatbots were developed using some software, which was hard for anyone to make. But from the last few years, since the technology has taken a big leap jump, chatbot building platforms offer visual drag and drop option and has opened a new door of opportunities for every marketer for enhancing the interface of technological communication. With this new intervention, it is now easy to send messages on a massive scale through popular means of communication’.

The head of technology innovation and security, James Melvin, at Rattlehub Digital said, ‘Chatbots are designed for not simple messaging service, but for understanding and performing natural language understanding with cognitive service utilities namely; speech to text, computer vision, language recognition and translation, content moderation, speaker recognition and text analytics. Chatbots are revolutionizing and with the passage of time, you will realize that these bots are offering futuristic services’.

Power of Chatbots as per Marketers

The well-organized use of chatbots is found in customer service and online ordering services, where the automated chatbots help in solving every problem of the customer or taking the order precisely without any human interaction. Chatbots are redefining customer experiences upside down. Gartner predicts that by 2020, nearly 85% of the enterprise-customer relationships are going to be managed without human intervention and interference. The recent survey clearly indicates that there are 89% of online customers who love to engage with businesses via text whereas 64% of customers leave the text for communication with an optimistic impression.

The chatbot named as Restobot is helping a steakhouse in the USA for getting online orders. The customer clicks on the message button, immediately the menu pops up where the customer is asked to select which flavor of steak he is looking for. Once it is selected, upon the selection of the type of steak, the bot offers a wine that will suit with the entrée. Gives the option of the flavor of the wine, then gives some fun interactive answer, like a human being. Later, gives the choices of brands and once all the order is processed, greets the customer warmly.

Larry Kim, the famous marketer talks about chat blasting stating, ‘just like an email blast, with powerful messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, conveniently get 60-120x higher user engagement for your business’.

Are Chatbots Great for your Business?

There are many latest technologies that are prevailing in the market, but are all those new techs make sense? Brooke Robinson says, ‘any technology that makes sense to customers, only then a brand is going to invest in that new technology for their customers’. This is so true if the business already knows that the latest tech is good to have but our customers won’t find it friendly and easy to understand, then no matter what, they are not going to invest in it.

She commented, ‘all those brands that are looking to add some new and innovative technology for interaction between them and their customers, they must sit and think deeply that are these new tech going to add some value to the customers and is it going to drive greater efficiency to your business or not. With the involvement of chatbots, a business can only save their time in resolving conflicts and issues, as the programmed bot is likely to resolve the problem more quickly as compared to human intervention’.

Chatbots – Scope in 2019 and Beyond

There are some renowned experts who have shared their ideas and views on the usage of chatbots and its future in this modern era.

Larry Kim
CEO, MobileMonkey

“Since customers are favoring chat communication over email procedures in the businesses, future of chatbots in 2019 is brighter and shiner. The messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Google RCS etc. are paving the way towards advanced high-tech development”.

James Melvin
Head of Technology Innovation & Security, Rattlehub Digital

“Messaging apps are becoming the revolutionizing points for businesses and customers to engage and chat at the same time. I envisage that companies are going to invest heavily on messaging apps and with help of bots, they will strive for excellence and associating with customers.”

Christi Olson
Head of Evangelism for Search, Bing

At Build 2018, CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella quoted that, ‘in the next five to ten years, every brand is going to have their very own digital assistant that will represent them’.

In March 2018, a survey called Consumer Adoption of Digital Assistants and Voice Technology from Bing Ads, gave an insight of future when asked do they as a customer eager to engage in the one-to-one answer of the questions for their favorite brands? The result found was, more than 60% or the responders expect to have their very own personal assistant in the next 5 years.

This is really huge! It is expected that there would be personal assistant bots, who when encounter a question will provide insightful answers to the queries of customers. If the brands chose open frameworks such as Microsoft Bot Framework, the brand will get the ability to code their own chatbots that can be extended across a dozen of platforms such as SMS, Facebook Messenger, Kik and Microsoft Ecosystem (Office, Skype, Bing & Cortana).

Jessica Scholz
International Digital Director, Ringier

With the revolution and indulgence of Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, the digital community is beginning to comprehend the power of natural language processing and what miracles it can perform.

With the fluid conversation concept, with the latest AI understanding, you can control the bots with voice or the chat.

The concept of conversation with bots is new and valuable as same as navigating the webpage and looks for solutions. If this concept is livened by the brands with full potential, there is a bright future of chatbots in 2019 and beyond.