Chatbots: The future of the interaction interface between consumer and company.
The interaction between consumers and brands much has changed with the arrival of the internet, especially in recent years because of the social networks. New tools are constantly emerging and messaging applications that killed the SMS is the next great frontier of interaction thanks to bots and chatbots.
No, I'm not talking about the service via WhatsApp, which has established itself as the main service platform for various services, especially those related to tele delivery ... At least not the way you think. We are talking about the bots.
Many companies believe that these robots can be involved in this next great revolution of the interaction between people and brands. Facebook, Microsoft, Telegram, WhatsApp, WeChat, Kik Messenger and many other messaging applications should be responsible for this great revolution.
Bots, for those unfamiliar with the term, would be the diminutive robot (robot in English), but the clearest way to describe this term would be automatic responses software. Also known as web robots, these software are programmed to perform pre-defined tasks and so can manage tasks in an automated manner based on each input / data entry. The chatbots are using this tool to create -chats- conversations, managing questions and answers during an interaction with real people.
The bots are the next big interaction interface
Not that they are a new tool because you've probably interacted with this type of software before. Tele-marketing with phone support? Bots! phone recharge via SMS? Bots!
As you can see, the bots are not a technical novelty, because there are quite long, but they gained a new "home" and are now more accessible to a tool that is already common users. The instant communication tools! Yes, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram ... All the ones you already know.
The Telegram, for example, best known for his secret chats, already offers Bots creation option and already has several operating. No Bots cases of being used for relationship within the tool, but this is due to their limited popularity of the application. But his bots store is already very extensive, as you can see in the release link in this post ( https://telegram.org/blog/bot-revolution) about bots and also in the post about the inline bots , which is a greater integration of bots with the Telegram.
WhatsApp is a very closed tool and yet there were a lot of information about bots to him, but surely it should appear at some point. This does not leave that there are unofficial forms of bots. Max is a WhatsApp bot that emerged in early 2016 and facilitates the creation and event management within groups, as you can see on the site of this bot chat, www.maxapp.co
On the other hand, Facebook, now owner of WhatsApp, is already testing bots tools that are part of the evolution of Facebook Messenger for platform. One of the first business partners to test the solution is the KLM airline. Through Facebook Chat you can have acomplete interaction of service without the need to download another application withoutthe need to learn a new tool. In the video below you can see the operation of this featureKLM.
Outside of the popular apps circuit, especially in the Asian market, the bots are very successful in the Kik Messenger and WeChat, who already have to a bot store - recently launched - you can enable, such as Kik, you can know through link https://bots.kik.com/ below you can see the operation of the bot The Weather Channel in operation.
Chatbots are the revolution of interactions or just a facilitator?
Although some people sell this solution as a great revolution, apparently it is only a facilitator. Who works interacting daily with people on social networks know that a huge part of the interactions is repetitive, that is, you answer many of the intentions in the same way. For this case, maybe the bots are very useful and can solve many problems.
Parmy Olson, Forbes recently published a very interesting article about Kik and its huge battle against Facebook in which she called The New War of messages, showing that dozens of companies already use chatbots to interact with their consumers and dozens of them accept payment through it.
Although you can view the menu, ask for recommendations based on your history and to make payment using these robots, they should not be the only service interface with the consumer, but should help - a lot - to be increasingly easier and efficiently satisfy the customer. Think a chatbots know, by user name, the purchase history of each person.
Bots raise much trouble, after all, is not easy even for a human to interact with another human being, imagine leaving that job to a robot. I've had terrible experiences with telephone chatbots (yes, Bradesco, I'm talking about you!) And any project in this sense involves many risks, such as Tay.ai, a robot that not only interacted with people on Twitter, but learned from ... but they did not take long for her to become a racist monster.
Speaking of Microsoft, rather than just create a bot for your messaging services, they created a comprehensive framework which should facilitate the creation and adaptation of these robots for Skype, Slack and several other platforms. If you are interested, you can access dev.botframework.com/ for more information.
Major media portals also invest in chatbots, as the charge of the Washington Post that is creating a robot capable of delivering to you the most relevant notícais the day for you. Customization without the need for a new application.
The end applications
One of the most relevant points for brands and companies about this new interface is that it is replacing the applications which makes it easier acceptance by the users and also cheaper for brands.
Although the internal space of the current smartphones is much more evolved than we had before, many users still suffer from a lack of internal memory space. Not to mention that in addition to the space, new applications spend data plan and also device RAM, so if you can solve the problem your customer with a chatbot, you may be doing you a big favor.
The golden era of mobile applications is over. Americans are downloading an average of 0 them per month. Most of us already have all the apps you need and restricts some apps messaging and social networks. So instead of spending thousands of dollars pushing an application to a reluctant public, companies such as Bauer Kitchen are taking your business to services like Kik, Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger that their customers already use to exchange messages.
- Parmy Olson
How to make my own Chatbot?
It is still a process "new" and complicated, but it will certainly be easier with the passage of time and the emergence of new tools.
Facebook announced at its annual conference, F8, a bot creation tool within the Messenger, which is now treated as a platform. More information about the bots within the Facebok you have this link (https://developers.facebook.com/products/messenger/). The Telegram is / botfather (https://core.telegram.org/bots/) which may help him to establish a button within the tool, as well as Kik also own documentation for this. (https://dev.kik.com/#/home)
If you are an experienced programmer, you can use Microsoft Bot Builder to create your own bot. The code and instructions are available on the project's Github page. ( https://github.com/Microsoft/BotBuilder)