In his recent webinar “How Chatbots Provide Real Value for Your Customers and Organization,” Gartner Senior Director and Analyst Brian Manusama discussed how chatbots can improve the customer experience and ways enterprise leaders can determine if chatbots are right for their organizational needs. In his presentation, Manusama explored research statistics on customer acceptance of conversational bots, best practices for implementation, and the expected evolution for chatbots in the future. This article provides some of the key takeaways from his presentation.
In just a few years, it will be commonplace to be asked “Hi, how may I help you?” by a bot when browsing a website. By 2022, Gartner predicts that 70% of all customer interactions will involve machine learning, chatbots, and mobile messaging.
You may recall in 2014 when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his chatbot framework and pivoted Facebook’s future around private messaging. Since then, the interest in chatbots has grown and the capabilities are steadily increasing as we continue to learn more about artificial intelligence (AI).
Why chatbots? They offer a multitude of benefits for both the customer and organization. They allow for a customer to retrieve the information they need in an effortless way and simplify the engagements they are having with an organization; this increases their satisfaction. With simplicity comes speed, allowing a customer to retrieve information on demand. For an organization, chatbots can scale the number of engagements customers have with bots. Since repetitive and manual tasks can be automated, this leads to cost reductions within the company and generated revenue from better leads and relationships with current customers.
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AI is the key component when building a functioning chatbot. Improving customer experience (CX), automating manual or repetitive tasks, reducing costs, and augmenting complex tasks are the current motivators for organizations to invest in AI.
To get an overview of the top AI applications in use in 2019, Gartner asked 2,791 end-users how they’re using AI and 26% said they’re using chatbots. Organizations that have, or are, implementing chatbot(s) are focusing on a bot used for support and self-service. Of the organizations that have implemented a chatbot, 71% have just one and 24% have two to five. These statistics surrounding AI are estimated to increase on average of 15% over the next three years.
Emerging technologies in the AI and chatbot space are expected to have the largest impact on CX projects (Fig 1). According to Manusama, out of all current chatbot services, 80% are aimed at providing solutions for customer service and customer experience.
Along with AI and chatbots, many other technologies are making power moves to enhance customer experience. We can expect to see an increase in real-time, IoT, continuous intelligence, AR/VR, virtual assistants, blockchain, and digital twins (dynamic virtual representations of physical things).
Is society ready for emerging technologies like chatbots? The average person is slowly becoming more accepting of the change and the decrease in human-to-human interactions. Gartner asked 4,019 people if given the option, whether they’d choose AI or a human assuming they could perform equally effectively (Fig. 2).
Most respondents said they would prefer human-to-human interactions. On average, only 33.5% of respondents would choose AI for customer service agents, financial advisors, personal shoppers, career advisors, and fitness coaches. On the other hand, 14% of respondents would choose AI for a lawyer, teacher, surgeon, psychologist, and a doctor. However, if a bot expresses emotion, has a face, or looks like a human, about 34% of respondents said they would feel very uncomfortable.
Paired with extensive research, Gartner created a methodology surrounding the hype cycle (Fig. 3) which visualizes how certain technologies will evolve over time. In February 2014, chatbots started at the beginning of the Gartner hype cycle and are now at the peak of inflated expectations — suggesting they are currently overhyped.
Manusama said that being in the peak of inflated expectations comes with some chatbot success stories, as well as a significant number of failures. Currently, Gartner is tracking more than 2,000 vendors with chatbot capabilities, which makes it difficult for organizations to differentiate and determine which technology to choose.
According to Manusama, almost anyone can make a chatbot with the numerous platforms available in the market today, however, making a “good chatbot” is extremely difficult.
Manusama said there are many reasons a chatbot could fail — some companies create too much development scope, they may not have enough human interaction, they have a poor design with minimal to zero user training, no marketing efforts, or a lack of valuable analytics.
Because AI capabilities haven’t been the easiest for institutions to adopt, it has led to a stall in growth. The adoption of AI is hindered by an absence of proper internal skills and a lack of understanding as to the benefits/uses when it comes to the adoption of AI and machine learning (ML).
According to Manusama, 14% of companies have deployed AI capabilities (a majority being chatbots) and 23% were expected to deploy within 12 months. The statistics for 2020 aren’t very different — 19% of companies will be deploying AI capabilities and 25% plan to deploy in 12 months.
Manusama urges business leaders to not get discouraged as chatbots can succeed. Determining the use case for the company’s chatbot is the first important step.
Determine the processes your organization would like to automate, how complex the tasks are, and the level of dialogue needed to accomplish your goals. A plan for growing and expanding your company’s conversations is important.
It is important to understand your target demographics and add a sprinkle of personality to your bot to improve acceptance and extend your brand. . Finally, have a plan to measure and handle exceptions and lost engagements. If the bot doesn’t know an answer, escalating the customer to a human service agent will lead to a higher satisfaction rate.
Deploying your chatbot
There are self-service, do-it-yourself (DIY) options, managed products with end-to-end solutions, NLP middleware which helps with accuracy, as well as professional services to help combine different technologies and integrate them properly. Make certain to measure the impact of AI within the bot and ensure it is supporting corporate objectives.
While AI helps shift the burden of learning, it is still critical to scale humans along with augmented intelligence to help it learn and evolve. This can be accomplished by breaking down the process into specific tasks, adding humans in the loop, and training your staff to work in harmony with the bots.
Learn more about Ascendum’s DIY chatbot development platform at Botsai.com.
About Ascendum Solutions
Ascendum is a global information technology (IT) solutions company that accelerates innovative technology-inspired solutions to business-driven challenges. Ascendum Digital’s hands-on teams’ ideate, create, develop, implement, and evolve our clients’ customer and employee experiences. Contact us to learn about our end-to-end chatbot development services.
