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Chatbots: Current Lukewarm Acceptance Expected to Change as Technology Improves
Chatbots, programs that interact with humans over the internet, either by voice or in writing, are becoming popular with business. Chatbots free up repetitive jobs performed by human agents, they save time and money, and generally lead to higher customer satisfaction.
Some chatbot trends forecast by Leslie Swanson, President at eXalt Solutions, in a CMSWire piece include:
- Employees will become just as likely to select and use chatbots that help their performance as employers are to add chatbots
- Increasingly marketers are expected to move away from email communication to chatbot-based communication because it sees much higher response rates.
- Chatbots will move from back-end customer service to front-end customer experience
- Chatbots will increasingly speak to each other on behalf of their human co-workers
Despite the bright future and potential benefits though, many users are not satisfied with the current generation of chatbots.
A Forrester report from late 2017 found that most consumers would prefer to talk with a person rather than a chatbot, 83 percent, in fact. Why? People thought that humans agents are better able to understand their needs (78%), address multiple questions (57%), and deal with more complex types of requests or issues.
Christie Pitts, Manager at Ventures Development of Verizon Ventures, said that “chatbots represent a new trend in how people access information, make decisions, and communicate. We think that chatbots are the beginning of a new form of digital access, which centers on messaging. Messaging has become a huge component of how we interact with our devices, and how we stay connected with the people, businesses and the day-to-day activities of life. Chatbots bring commerce into this part of our lives, and will open up new opportunities.”
