The Rise of the Bots

October 30, 2016

Are you ready to innovate your customer experience?

Bots have been developed to help businesses save money, generate leads and automate customer experiences. Bots also offer users a new channel to interact with brands. Bots are still in their early days meaning brands have an opportunity to be the first to experiment with these exciting tools. This blog from Prototype Interactive looks into the rise of the bots and how businesses can utilize this new tool to offer a more seamless experience for customers.

What is a bot?

Bots were a big hit at the Facebook developer conference in April 2016 and are now stepping into the spotlight. So what is this new tool?

A bot is an application that performs an automated task.

Let us explain further. An automated task may be something as simple as setting an alarm, or helping a user search for something online. Siri is a bot. Bots are everywhere in technology, from search engine Googily spider bots crawling all over the web to nasty viruses sent to cause damage to your computer. For the purposes of this article, we are going to look at bots used to hold a conversation with your customers.

How do bots work?

Bots automatically respond to their user's behaviour using natural language processing. This means they allow your brand to have an automated conversation with customers which is more realistic to a human conversation. For example, a bot can hold a conversation with your customers on Facebook Messenger helping to keep your response rates high and relieve the manual labour of this type of job.

As well as responding to conversations, bots can manage context and direct conversation towards your business goals. For example, if a user sends your brand a message on Facebook Messenger, your bot application can reply including context around the question asked by the customer with the appropriate CTA.

Who is already using bots?

There are a few brands leading the way when it comes to maintaining online relationships with consumers via utilizing a bot.

  • Burger King uses bots to allow customers to order food
  • Mercedes are using bots to book test drives and provide product information
  • Spring is offering a personal shopping assistance and e-commerce via bots
  • Healthcare providers are using bots to book appointments
  • Real estate firms are using bots for maintenance requests and enquiries.
  • Telecommunication companies use bots to automate customer support requests

Are bots the future?

For the most part, yes. Apps aren't going to go away anytime soon, however there is an argument that combining apps into one giant app that controls everything would be easiest. It is likely that bots will roll out for smart apps on our phones or in the ca, that help to automate consumer's lives.

Interested in building your own bot?

The team over at Prototype Interactive provides MVP development services to help you design and deploy your bot. Contact us today.

Tell us what you think over on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Written by
Alexander Rauser
Alexander Rauser

CEO

Alexander Rauser is the author of Boardroom Guide to Digital Accountability and Digital Strategy: A Guide to Digital Business Transformation, and creator of the DSX Program, a digital strategy and transformation program for Enterprises.

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