Are Chatbots The New Black Of Business In 2018?

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Maybe it is not only orange that is the new black! Did you know that 59% of Americans firmly believe that customer service is enhanced via social media channels? Facebook business page admins answer faster than customer support departments, contact forms or email submissions.

People requiring faster, better service have a point and those businesses capable of delivering it gain the upper hand over competitors. Sounds good, right? But what if I told you that “fast” is not enough anymore? What if I told you that your clients require instant access to services and, more importantly, that you can deliver it to them?

This leaves us with two options: You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

The red pill is obviously the buzzword of buzzwords in 2018 – chat bots.

Why bots?

Chatbots are the new black of service delivery. But how’d they get so big? This question requires more than an answer. I will need an example to show you the power of AI and Facebook combined. Luckily, we at SimplyBook.Me have designed just the thing for our clients.

Say hi to SimplyBook Play Bot. How may the little fellow be of service to you? That’s how:

Now that the date was chosen all was left for me to do is enter some personal details. And so I did.

All in all the process took me less than a minute from the initial message and up to the confirmation button. No staff involved, no working schedule issues, no maintenance. I came whenever I wanted and got what I needed from the service provider in an instant.

This is why chatbots are hot!

But bots are not people!

No, chatbots are most certainly not people and they will always lack the creativity and adaptability of a human mind. However, a cleverly designed chatbot will have what it takes to do its job.

Here’s yet another example. Did you notice how the bot answered “I didn’t get that. Can you say it again?” when I typed in “222-test-333” as my phone number? That’s because Play Bot is smart enough to know that phone numbers are composed of digits, not letters. Not only that, but Play Bot is human enough to ask for more details nicely, instead of shutting a complex error window that makes no sense to a living person.

That noted the general public while being fascinated with the advances of AI and machine learning development, still have their concerns. For once, people prefer interactions with a living person over a chatbot. This is happening because the bots we have today are not clever enough to understand the subtext and hidden meaning the human speech is capable of.

Or so we believe.

Real world examples like the Woebot prove us wrong once again. Woebot is a Facebook chatbot designed for cognitive-behavioral therapy. It can track the mood of a person it speaks to as well as ongoing changes. The bot can also indicate patterns that affect one’s mood in a good or a bad way giving the $300 per hour shrinks a run for their money.

Projects like Woebot help robots get the attention they deserve in the complex race of budgets in modern-day business. And the slow but steady approach works in almost every niche from the Real Estate businesses and their Apartment Ocean to healthcare with Health Joy.

Yes, there is still a long way the bots have to conquer in order to become an undeniable staple of social interactions but hey, no one believed in the mobile revolution 10 years ago. Let’s give the little guys some time while grabbing our chance to become a pioneer in the industry.

What do you guys think?