Big Numbers Highlight Chatbot User Adoption and Success

The drum beat continues as more businesses, large and small, provide chatbot services for their customers. The rising numbers of users and success rates show that the technology is having a major impact on businesses, so is your company ready to engage with customers in this new and exciting way?

Bank of America’s erica chatbot is the latest helping messaging tool making big waves in the financial sector. She’s had over a million conversations in three months since launch, providing the bank’s 25 million customers with money advice and transaction information, without the hassle of wading through statements or searching through bank advice pages.

Bank of America’s digital banking boss, Michelle Moore, noted that “It goes to show how quickly we can grow, and we expect the numbers to continue to grow.” She highlighted popular interactions and queries like “Show me all my Amazon transactions.” to highlight the simplicity of erica. Imagine in a year’s time when even the most reticent of customers are using the bot rather than other services, do you think those users will ever look back?

The project was clearly signposted to customers with explainers about the service across email and social media. This is unlike many big brands that sneak a project out under the radar and expect users to find it, and then understand how to use it without adequate knowledge.

Across industries, recent surveys show 95% of content managers are preparing chatbots for launch by 2019.

Microsoft Win Big in Asia with Xiaoice and Rinna

American technology brands are having all sorts of issues playing in the Chinese market due to political and legal issues. However, those that play nicely are seeing huge success, such as Microsoft and its dedicated China-market bot Xiaoice. With the slogan “Among millions of people, I belong only to you” bots are massive in Asia, the most commonly used service for banking, utilities, booking rides and ordering.

In Japan, she’s called Rinna and they both appear on those nation’s most popular social media services, accomodating the needs of approaching 25 million users. While the Asian landscape is deeply competitive, it provides a glimpse into our future as mobile-first chatbots replace apps and websites for most uses.

As chatbots are live 24/7, cut out the wait in the call centre queue, the need to dig through a FAQ or knowledge base, more people and businesses will see the benefits of the technology. Since bots act just like a typical conversation, they remove a lot of the uncertainty that many users still have.

Travel with a Chatbot

Aside from banking, travel is a massive growth area for chatbots, with airports, airlines, hotels and hospitality businesses finding major boosts to their customer service efficiency by using bots.

Here, we see the next steps in making bots more than just a customer service agent handling the basic queries. As airlines become ever-more competitive, the bots will be able to offer more services in future. From upgrades to offers, frequent fliers will rely on their bot for the latest deals, while passengers will be able to change or cancel tickets and reservations via the bot rather than going to a check-in desk or waiting in a phone queue.

As more businesses move higher value, more useful tasks to chatbots, their value increases considerably. In any industry companies also see the value of chatbots for their own internal processes, from HR and recruiting to onboarding and time-keeping, chatbots can help a business work more smoothly.

Building those Bots

Whatever the task, building a chatbot is surprisingly simple and getting them running online takes no time at all. Existing bots and chatbot libraries, like SnatchBot’s Bot Directory provide a useful starting point for those embarking on their bot journey. From health to dining, retail to customer support, there are plenty of well-defined examples you can use as a launchpad.

The key to a good bot is ensuring all possible conversations end in a positive outcome, and that they help the user find the information they need. Natural language processing and AI technologies help by understanding what the user is asking, and finding keywords in their responses.

Bots can also be trained, by adding banks of typical examples, so they understand what people will ask them, while adding searchable information and resources, enables the bots to find what the user is asking, even if it isn’t a common question. For example Jane.ai is a bot that raised over $8 million to help search through existing business files, emails and so on.

All of this technology helps make life easier for the user and more efficient for the business, making it no real surprise that chatbots are a key part of any progressive businesses’ plans.