ARE CHATBOTS THE NEW APPS?

PRASHANTH N BHARATHIDASAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT,TRICHY

WHAT ARE CHATBOTS?• Chatbots are computer programs designed to

simulate a conversation

• They are based on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms

• They can be used to order online,check the weather and news amongst other applications.

• They are being called CONVERSATIONAL ASSISTANTS.

We want to be there for our users asking them “Hi, how can we help?”-Sundar Pichai, CEO Google

We think that you should be able to message a business the same way you would message a friend.

- Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Facebook

A personal digital assistant that knows you and is with you across all your devices.

- Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft

• The three tech giants are betting a lot on chatbots

• Facebook messenger wants businesses to get on board their platform to enable them to converse with their customers

• Chatbots have the potential to become the online sales person for a company by giving personalise and curated responses

• They know your habits, who your friends are and other personal information by looking into your social feeds.

• They can mimic you in a conversation and reply when you are not available in your place.

• They can enter a conversation you are having with another human and help you enhance the conversation by throwing up suggestions.- You are conversing with your friend and decide to catch up on the weekend. The bot knows your calendar and automatically throws up a suggested time. Then it asks if you want to book a table at your favourite sushi restaurant.

• It is able to do all this because it is constantly studying you and your behaviour and knows everything about you.

IS THIS THE FUTURE?

• Companies are investing into chatbots.

• Platforms like Facebook messenger and Microsoft Cortana are looking to get businesses on board

• It costs lesser to develop and maintain a chatbot than to create an app

• The customer is empowered as she does not have to install an app for every business she interacts with.

• The bot already knows everything about her and makes it easier to interact with the businesses.

• A chatbot of a not for profit agency helped 160,000 people avoid their parking tickets in the UK.

• Chatbots are being used to interview candidates for initial screening eliminating biases which are unavoidable with human beings.

• They help in eliminating man hours being wasted in answering redundant, repetitive questions in call centres.

• They are going to take over a lot of jobs.

• They are the new salesperson for the digital channel

• Mike Stern the Co-Founder of Connected Labs which is working with Amazon and Google in building chatbots believes that they will help replacing clerical jobs with more interesting intellectual jobs

Conclusion• Chatbots might be the next BIG thing since the App Store

• They might even replace traditional websites

• But can they replicate a human being? The subjectivity which is the most important characteristic of a human being will be missing.

• Chatbots do not think. They study human responses and replicate them at the appropriate place.

• Chatbots are not robust. They learn with time. The more conversations you have, the better it becomes and more accurate its suggestions are.

• It will take time to understand the full potential of chatbots, but they are definitely the new apps and companies should start investing in them.