Chatbot Report 2018: Global Trends and Analysis
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Why do we really think, that a bright future can be expected by the chatbots? Even following all the multiple experts’ prognoses and marketologists promises it is rather difficult to make the real situation clear. Along with that, a lot of people really do believe in the chatbot industry strength and opportunities.
The idea of chatbots appeared first in the 1960s. But only after more than half a century passed we can confess that the world is ready for their implementation into the real life, being a result of the rapid progress in natural language processing, AI, and the global presence of text messaging applications. Considering the eMarketer distant view more than a quarter of the world will use messaging apps by the end of 2019.
The tendencies in the communication technologies indicates, that the text communication became the socially acceptable form of personal interaction. People increasingly prefer chatting rather than personal contacts or even making phone calls.
All the technology high rollers have created open platforms and interfaces for the chatbot acceptance by society to pass easier and faster. Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, IBM, Apple, Samsung etc. — they all have worked to create their own chatbot.
Moreover, we should pay attention to the time, when everything started: Siri was introduced in 2010, IBM Watsons started in 2011, the pilot version of the Bixby Samsung voice assistant appeared in smartphones in 2012. Alexa have been learning to answer the questions since 2014, and the Google Assistant have gained its modern shape in 2016.
It’s 2018 now, so we’ve decided to make the profound analysis of chatbots development tendencies: are they still being the key-trend in personal and business communication technologies?
The good news is — The excitement about chatbots is not weakening. Online users keep being interested in this topic according to Google Trends.
The popularity dynamics for search terms “chatbot” in Google trends (worldwide, 02.01.2016–01.03.2018) — https://g.co/trends/7tkFb
And what is going to be the query result that a netsurfer will achieve? A universal statement, usually, aka:
A chatbot (also known as a talkbot, chatterbot, Bot, IM bot, interactive agent, or Artificial Conversational Entity) is a computer program which conducts a conversation in natural language via auditory or textual methods, understands the intent of the user, and sends a response based on business rules and data of the organisation.
Can a firm conclusion be made based only on search queries? Especially considering the fact that communication is represented by both messengers and social networks in 2018.
According to the data of the Facebook IQ, here is the activity of chatbots discussion in a period from January 2017 to January 2018.
What are the characteristics of the viewership, most interested in chatbots discussions?
It is not a simple curiosity that makes people tend to find out more about chatbots. That is because they’ve discovered, that a real problems can be solved by using chatbots.
Chatbots and Business
The real time message exchange vigorous growth resulted into radical changes in people’s communication preferences not only in their personal life, but also in business relations.
More than 2 bln business-related messages are sent through Facebook Messenger chats according to Facebook IQ. 67% of study participants expressed expectations of having the possibility to get in touch with the sellers and service providers by means of chats. And their expectations have materialised completely!
In 2016 the number of clients-to-business messages was twice as little, so the Facebook’s focus on chatbots justified their hopes. More than 100,000 bots are being functioning at FB Messenger by now, affording the business to contact consumers in real time mode.
Why do consumers choose the online chatting? “Ovum”performed the research in 2016 among US and Germany consumers to define eight basic reasons:
AI is being used in business more and more frequent, together with chatbots, and this is what does change the interaction between clients and service providers.
According to 2017 worldwide Statista questioning, 34% of respondents declared they would prefer to answer the questions from AI by means of a chatbot or a virtual assistant in regard to e-commerce.
Acceptance of artificial intelligence chatbots by customers worldwide, as of 2017, by service
Healthcare and telecommunications were detected to be the second and the third correspondingly. Every fifth respondent stated he is ready to deal with chatbots on banking or financial advice.
There is a huge potential for business to assure the fast respond to customers inquiries. According to InsideSales and Harvard Business Review researches a five minute delay can result into your chances to attract lead decimation. In ten minutes the delayed answer will reduce your chances to get the effective contact up to 400%.
Chatbots are really the simplest way solve the problem. As when the consumers expect to get an immediate response, the chatbots can offer it. Phone calls, emails and even beautiful web forms will not be able to afford a split-second reaction, which is given by majority of present-day chatbots.
Of course, an online chat can be considered as the web site communicative channel, but eventually the chatbots can be active through it.
Any business that uses online chats along with chatbots will resolve issues faster than ever. Being online, the team members can take up the running to respond the income messages.
Here are the BI Intelligence questioning results represented. Chatbots are the new applications, frequently used, but still they can not totally substitute the need in the phone call or an email when it comes to interaction with business.
One of the basic reasons of chatbots expansion is so called “being tired of apps”. Consumers are annoyed by the need to install special applications to their mobile devices.
Many consumers showed reluctance to use new applications. Along with that, it is clear, that it is unprofitable to create, promote and bring into operation some new application, that will ultimately make no use.
Being able to function at different planforms, chatbots deals with this issue by their multichannels. The general quantity of different messengers users is up to 4.1 billion people, so the business in conjunction with chatbots can take the advantage of it.
3. Blockers to Using Chatbots
There are some inaccurate inferences, that can lead astray the one, who’s enquiring the success of chatbots:
“Chatbots will be able to execute all kinds of interactions that are currently being performed by humans regarding online business”. Well, maybe it will happen in the future, but certainly not in the closest one. Even the most advanced chatbots abilities will be limited by pretraining models, as until some revolutionary highly skilled AI appears they are not capable of cognitive perception.
“Chatbots can be used only for the first line customer support and that’s the extent of it”. This cliche is surprisingly prevailing among business holders. But it is so easy to discover hundreds of factual chatbots to ascertain that the customer support is the one but not the only of their possible appliances.
“Chatbots are new apps”. Well, it’s not that right. While competing with apps to retain customers’ attention, chatbots are still being the program interface, that works overriding existing apps (either messengers or social networks aka we can see it at Facebook Messenger). Separate chatbots versions are usually less known and popular in comparison to their mobile analogues.
“All the chatbots should be fitted with AI”. That is not true. Somany types of business just do not require such a complicated functions. A target can be met after responding to a couple of fixed inquiries, and the inquirer itself can be set by means of the solution tree or the rule-based mechanisms. Such a chatbots will have the possibility to be improved by AI in some later stage, bettering their answering abilities.
“Chatbots and smart assistants are the same sort of thing”.
Well, there are many cases when it is commonly held that “chatbots” and “smart virtual assistant” are being mentioned as interchangeable concepts, but still their basic principles of work may critically differ. Being usually built-up upon modern messengers, chatbots are convenient for definite problem solutions, such as customer support, service providing automatization and, of course, answering questions. Chatbots are eventually ad-hoc, despite thousands of use cases. The smart assistants are usually created to solve more complicated tasks, so not each chatbot can be defined as a smart assistant and vice versa.
The most common reported complications occurred while using of chatbots are shown in the subscriber polling performed by Drift, SurveyMonkey Audience, Salesforce and myclever:
The basic reasons mentioned were as follows: an intention to deal with a real life assistant (43%), possible algorithm mistakes worries — 30% and finally — the platform limitations (27%), as Facebook Messenger is not suitable and acceptable by all internet community members as the one and only way of interaction with bots. And even though Facebook is universally acknowledged as an industry leader, the chatbots access through an independent channels and other social media resources should be preserved.
The chatbot business investment growth increased by 229% IN 2015–2016 according to ROKO Labs & BI Intelligence co-research. The “stable” mobile apps investment grew by 66% only during the reporting period.
It’s plainly seen out of the Business Intelligence research that a significant cost saving yearly occurs courtesy of chatbots implementation up to 29% — 46% (depending on business dimension).
Business bots are essential investment targets (B2B). Fund clients prefer to make investments into inner business processes optimisations, such as HR-department chatbots, despite media exclusionary scrutiny to “user” chatbots.
Actually, bots have strengthen their role in workforce automation. According to McKinsey research in almost 29% of US customer care could have been automated by means of chatbots or their counterparts.
Chatbots: Insights, Cases and Benefits
Comparing fashion purchase journeys that start on a mobile app versus on desktop, Facebook IQ
Year by year net surfers become more critical to instantaneous forms of communication while using different messengers. Any business that still manages with emails or phone calls is considered to be outdated. Chatbots really can close the gap between business and consumers.
Scalable chats can offer performing customer service round the clock. THe reliability, accuracy and failure-free performance are fundamental advantages of chatbots. The development of the effective bot will result into stable and constant task solution.
Eventually chatbots give the business the conception of how exactly their clients talk, that will improve the respond to their requirements in the subsequent. While gathering the unique answers and clients’ cases a credible business model can be built, safe for possible replication by competitors.
All the advantages mentioned are attested by Drift, SurveyMonkey Audience, Salesforce, and myclever research:
24/7 access is preferable for over 64% of customers, more than a half of respondents care for the answer bit rate — 55%, and answers to simple questions are relevant for 55% of customers.
Along with that we can see that preferences vary depending on respondents’ age. The younger the respondent is, the more benefits he can appraise. There are still reserved results as for intelligent functions.
GumGum made a poll among North America Marketing and Advertising executives in June of 2017 to find out their chatbot relation: 27% of respondents declared the impactful chatbots implementation, 28% used chatbots just a little.
According to 2017 Global Human Capital Trends Report, 41% of companies chief executives claimed to have implemented chatbots already either to have prepared cognitive AI-technologies to be implemented in some close future. Other 34% of respondents have launched the pilot prototypes.
According to Gartner и Juniper chatbots will be involved in 85% of all types of business-customers interaction by 2020.
What are the basic reasons for consumers to trust chatbots, favouring them amongst other ways of communication?
1. In comparison to the traditional graphic interfaces, chatbots have a variety of advantages as for end customer. Chatbots can simplify the apps, offering them just to say or type something rather than to switch to another page in the browser to search for some essential information.
2. Chatbots dialogue interfaces are being constantly perfacted — they make an interpretation of user’s natural language and can react immediately.
3. Users can implement a chatbot to regulate several business apps at the same time. The concurrent ring up to a couple of chatbots while communicating with other participants.
All this advantages can give an incompetent consumer a chance of intuitive usage of the complex applications in the familiar interface. Chatbots automatisation opportunities are huge, as they can conduct processes by means of the natural language dialogue.
What it will mean for business? A lot of pleasant benefits such as funds saving at the cost of increased self-service rates, improving the experience and the target users accomplishment, fastening the information delivery and even internal regulations correspondence enhancement.
What exact conclusion can be made out of plentitude of positive business and consumers signals? As rate of response time rises constantly.
Chatbots are ready to respond to a challenge being measured up to exacting standards: they are fast and 24/7 accessible, and they can give answers.
The times changed, and the chatbots are no more being the prerogative of the youngsters, they are being accepted by different age groups. Business can provide an actual high-class service using chatbots together with online chats.
Chatbots haven’t yet become a clear and present threat of employee termination, as by now they are not capable to give detailed answers to technical questions.
Along with than chatbots have an edge over mobile apps in numerous scripts: throughout feedback communication or even citizens petitions or complaints registration.
Surprisingly, not only the the 2017 positive prediction of a chatbot successful usage was verified in every detail, but also considerably surpassed analytics expectations Chatbots can become an effective remedy for retardation in business communication.
We hope BRN Chatbot Report 2018 was really useful as we are going to trace all the trend in chatbot business thereafter.
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- Alex Galert CEO BRAIN (brn.ai)
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