{"id":10525,"date":"2021-02-09T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/?p=10525"},"modified":"2020-11-06T09:19:48","modified_gmt":"2020-11-06T17:19:48","slug":"pandemic-and-bots-shift-of-support-by-humans-to-chatbots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/pandemic-and-bots-shift-of-support-by-humans-to-chatbots\/","title":{"rendered":"Pandemic and Bots: Shift of Support by Humans to Chatbots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The pandemic has accelerated the use of chatbots. Prior to COVID-19, it was expected that the chatbot market would grow from $2.6 billion to $9.4 billion by 2024, according to ResearchAndMarkets.com<\/a>. It is likely now to be even much larger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a spike of chatbot usage once the pandemic took hold. IBM Watson reported a 40 percent spike of activity. Boost.ai reported<\/a> 250% growth across their deployed chatbots at the start of the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simon McNamara<\/a>, chief administrative officer at Britain\u2019s NatWest, said that<\/a> “bots allowed us to process a much higher volume of applications than we would have been able to do before. It meant the timelines didn\u2019t get longer with the massive volume.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carlos Selonke<\/a>, CIO at Santander, said that<\/a> “we had prepared but the volume was higher than expected. It\u2019s a huge focus for us, making changes to increase our velocity.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the reasons for why chatbots are becoming popular include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n