Nowadays, talking to a robot and receiving intelligent answers doesn’t seem like a ridiculous idea. With no human interaction involved, you are able to receive answers that you want… just by simple talking to an artificially intelligent robot – termed as ‘Chatbots’.
The growth of the Chatbot market is projected to grow from $703 million in 2016 to a whopping $3,172 million by 2021. Mark Zuckerberg has even suggested that ‘Chatbots are the new apps’ with over 100,000 bots already registered on Facebook messenger.
Chatbots have the potential to transform the way businesses interact with customers through creating continuous intimate two way conversations. The demand for Chatbots is mainly due to intelligent consumer engagement and a desire to comprehend consumer behaviours. By providing insights not only into consumer behaviour, location and communications in real time, it enables targeted communications.
Already released in the US, Uber has its own Chatbot where consumers are able to order a ride through messenger.
This intelligent idea has changed consumer behaviour in ways that makes one’s lifestyle more easier and seamless. Ways in which retail business specifically can put this into play is through Product Recommendations. By catering to specific needs such as ‘I want black sneakers’ and narrowing down to products, this will lead to lower cart abandonment rates due to tailored product fit. For example if ASOS were to have a Chatbot that gave what consumers wanted, their would be less cart abandonments.
After doing a little research on Chatbots, I found 2 in particular that are compatible with messenger. ‘Poncho’ and ‘Textandchill’- these Chatbots are both useable in my everyday life.
Poncho tells me the weather within my location and Textandchill gives me movie recommendations when I want to watch something similar to another movie I’ve already watched.
Poncho:
TextandChill:
Check these bots out, they’re pretty cool!
Welcome to the world of digital marketing affairs 
I haven’t had many experiences with chattiest, however, one recent example stands out to me. Only a few days ago I was interacting with the chatbot that Boost created to receive its coupons. While the process seemed to drag on and the interaction was somewhat cringeworthy, I guess in my case it was a success for Boost because I purchased a juice from them today!
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‘Cringeworthy’ is a very different way to describe it haha! Even though you mentioned that the process does drag on… it still benefited Boost as you did purchase a juice!
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Chatbots hold great potential in enhancing the consumer and brand experience, overall adding value! I guess as per the above comment, the technology is still advancing – but has great potential! I actually wrote a blog post on chatbots also, and how the level of sophistication is advancing to mimic a certain style of talking – can be great for targeting different demographics!
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I can agree that it can be used for different demographics depending on the tone and vibe the chatbot portrays!
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I recently tried out the ‘Boost chatbot’ and i found some of the comments made too personalised. The apps that you mentioned, especially the uber one would be a perfect addition for me and I can’t wait for it to launch here. However i think there’s an issue with how the companies are communicating with people. The Poncho app saying ‘thats where my ex lived’ makes me a little uncomfortable, is this how you reacted?
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I know, the Uber Chatbot would be so convenient, i would definitely use it!
I didn’t find it uncomfortable, i think companies are trying to make Chatbots seem more humanised by adding a bit of sass and humour into their replies
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Usually, I would jut ignore the chat box function finding it pointless, strange and useless as normally any information I need to find out I could find on other sections of a website. Such as the q and a page! However in some cases i think It could pose interesting advantages, for instance once I wanted to know if a top was coming back in stock and could not find any information anywhere, however the chat was able to direct me to when it would be back in stock!
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I think the idea of Chatbots is to actually rid of all your effort to go onto websites and go onto their question and answer page, like for example if you wanted answers to a specific question, easily asking a chatbot – instead of going through pages and pages to get to the answer- would definitely seem much more convenient! But i guess each consumer is different ! (:
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