As businesses are increasingly depending on mobile footprints, competition is getting fierce to remain visible and discoverable in the app marketplace. Effortless and smooth user experience remains to be the key for most apps to stand out in the competition. This is why intelligent Chatbots equipped with the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have emerged as the most important mechanism for superb user experience.
AI-powered Chatbots continue to make a transforming appearance for an increasing number of mobile apps across the niches. AI as a deeply embedded technology fetches most relevant business data and insights that businesses can use for replying to customer queries in the most contextual and relevant manner.
As per the reports of Gartner, the use of smart virtual assistants and Chatbots is steadily increasing. According to the latest Gartner prediction by 2021, at least 25% of digital employees all over the world will use virtual assistants and bots communication. With the combination of AI technology, Chatbots will have more impact on the mobile app market than ever before.
Chatbots: An Introduction
Let’s introduce the Chatbots first. A Chatbot is nothing but a messaging app that can engage in conversation with the users based on either prefixed answers to queries or on the basis of understanding of the user intents and user data. While the first type of Chatbots are simple answers to relevant questions presented in a conversational manner through a Chatbot interface, the second one is an intelligent bot that by using the latest technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) can grab and analyse lot of relevant customer data, understand customer behaviour and intents and accordingly adjusts replies to customer queries in different contexts.
Voice conversation, natural language processing to decipher queries in spite of the vocal and tonal differences and linguistic decoding of the intents are some of the latest capabilities of the modern Chatbots used by major brands and leading companies. Chatbots with the capability to work in response to voice commands are sometimes also referred as smart digital assistants or voice assistants. A few of the authentic examples of intelligent Chatbots and voice assistants include Google Allo, Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, etc.
Why Chatbots are so Important for Businesses?
According to a recent survey, a whopping 71% of millennials aged between 18-34 are interested to buy their basic consumer goods through Chatbots. In fact, millennials and young audience are most comfortable with the Chatbots for all their digital interactions and for making purchases. Naturally, business brands are increasingly embracing intelligent Chatbots to stay relevant to their target audience. This is precisely why Chatbots are not going to lose relevance anytime soon.
If chatbots were available (and working effectively) for the online services that you use, which of these benefits would you expect to enjoy?
Let us have a look at the key advantages of Chatbots for digital business brands.
Enhanced User Experience:
Chatbots – especially intelligent ones powered by smart AI and Machine Learning based algorithms – are prompt in understanding customer needs and answering their queries. This promptness and individual focus on users help Chatbots enhance the user experience to a great extent.
Easy Product and Content Search:
AI-based Chatbots can make searches easier than ever before. Users just need to speak a voice command, type a search term or upload an image and the AI-powered bot will come up with the appropriate search results taking user-intent and behaviour into consideration.
Personalized Experience:
Thanks to AI and Machine Learning brands enjoy a deeper command on user intents and user preferences. An intelligent Chatbot based on user intent and behaviour can offer highly customized product recommendations and deliver suggestions that typically fit customer needs and contexts.
Improved Onboarding:
According to many studies, a considerable portion of users never return to an app after the first time. This happens particularly because of confusing onboarding experience. In this respect, an intelligent Chatbot can play a really effective role in making the value proposition clear and engaging the user at the first instance. A Chatbot can clearly guide users through all app functions without leaving any room for confusion.
Some Inspiring Use-Cases of Chatbots
Over the years, Chatbots have been used by enterprises to reap the benefits of customer interactions to ensure better user experience, enhanced productivity and improved customer support. Chatbots help an enterprise with more customer insights by indulging in continuous interactions and at the same time boosts customer engagement, retention and business conversion through smooth user experience, proper recommendations at the right context and by offering relevant support at all times of need.
Here we are going to showcase some widely acclaimed Chatbot use cases from some global brands across the niches.
Stubhub
The StubHub chatbot is developed as a business-driven interface that actively helps users to find the tickets of their favourite concerts and events. The bot actually ensures that the customers of this widely known event ticket selling app never miss the news and updates about the events and the availability of the tickets.
Bank of America
The digital assistant of this world famous bank called Erica can be accessed through the mobile app of the bank. The customers of the Bank of America are able to chat with Erica either by voice or through text messaging. The objective behind creating Erica is to build better monetary habits corresponding to investment, savings and other matters. The bot sends customers messages referring to any opportunity of good investment or saving debt cost or similar financial matters.
EBay Shopbot
In the e-Commerce industry, Chatbots are increasingly getting popular and this smart bot of EBay is a nice example of this. Shopbot works like a personal shopping assistant that helps customers finding their preferred products and best deals. Besides using text message you can have a conversation with this bot with voice and can tell it to search for products with an image you uploaded.
Whole Foods
Whole Food, the food retailer app offers a chatbot that helps customers browsing food products of their choice with just a few taps. The bot connected with Facebook Messenger allows customers to find their delicious meal with just simple taps or few messages. Customers can also communicate through emoji of food items and tell the bot about their needs. Besides using emoji and text messages, customers can also choose a cuisine or choose recipes.
UCLA medical center
Chatbots in the context of medical and healthcare apps have a bigger significance as intelligent bots can reduce the critical wait time for a patient searching for medical advice and help. The Interventional radiologist professionals at the University of California (UCLA) now creates a virtual radiologist bot that can provide support to the patients and care-seekers by answering decisive questions. The AI-based bot can provide clinical patient information to the physician and can provide a detailed treatment plan for the patient. It can answer to questions based upon 2,000 example data points that an interventional radiologist needs to deal with.
NBC
NBC Politics BOT was launched on Facebook Messenger just weeks before the last presidential election in the US. This bot representing the conversational interface of the NBC Politics show is created to suggest relevant content based on a variety of audience demographics. Following the first few initial interactions with the user, the NBC bot will deliver highly personalized news results that are more likely to resonate with the respective user preference.
Conclusion
Intelligent Chatbots became the most era-defining technology to drive automation through mobile apps and bring never-before results for the enterprises across the niches. How innovative you can incorporate such bots into your mobile app marketing strategy will be the key.
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