Chatbots have been widely adopted in the past year, and their growth shows no signs of slowing: a recent Gartner study found that by 2022, 70% of white-collar workers will interact with conversational platforms on a daily basis. During the pandemic, brands have had to communicate more information to their customers more often than they may have before — and chatbots have been especially crucial during this time to deliver timely and efficient communications as customer service agents are spread thin.
However, despite their widespread use, chatbots are still misunderstood by many. Given their relative newness, relatively limited current uses, and perhaps depiction in science fiction movies, it’s no wonder there are so many misconceptions.
If businesses are to fully realise the utility and effectiveness of AI-powered conversational messaging, there are three common chatbot misconceptions that need to be dispelled:
Misconception #1: Bots are going to replace humans
Let’s get this one out of the way. Countless dystopian books and films depict bots and AI as malevolent forces set out to overtake the human race. As lauded as AI has become in recent years, it appears that this fear is still very real — for end users, workers and decision makers. The truth however is chatbots will always need human guidance, setting them up isn’t the finish line for the teams that develop, write and train them. Ongoing education and care are crucial for chatbots to act more human themselves and thus be useful to customers; otherwise, their human counterparts will be overwhelmed with calls and emails as if they hadn’t set up a chatbot in the first place. While chatbots can be written to mimic humans and satisfy the majority of customer needs, there will always be teams of humans behind them.
Misconception #2: Your IT department needs to develop and deploy the chatbot
Low-code or no code frameworks offered by platforms such as Chatlayer.ai from Sinch make it straightforward for non-technical marketing and line of business execs to save the added IT expenses and still ramp up their bots in a timely manner. That said, chatbots do still need to be built mindfully. The marketing, product or customer services team should be handling chatbot script writing — not developers — because they are closer to the customer and better appreciate the ins and outs of their customer interactions. These teams can give their bots a more authentic and knowledgeable feel, and employ similar tones and expressions to the scripts that mimic a human interaction. To take this a step further, these conversational design teams can also build a series of bot personalities that align with the personas of your varied audiences, changing the tone and word usage to create a more natural human-like interaction than something more robotic and devoid of personality.
Misconception #3: Chatbots can only be used for customer service interactions
This misconception is a little easier to understand. Most people have only interacted with chatbots in customer service/support interactions (think: the widget that pops up on certain websites asking if you need help, or automated texts to alert you that your subscription is being renewed soon and ask whether you’d like to modify your order). In these instances, either you alert the bot of a problem, and the conversation is completed once that problem is resolved, or the bot alerts you of an update or problem, and still the conversation is completed once that problem is resolved. These linear customer service interactions, however, are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of chatbot capabilities and application. Thanks to user analytics, chatbots can be used in many other, rich ways. For example, by analysing customer history, a chatbot can create a proactive personalised offer for a customer, and depending on the channel, can also share rich imagery and product photos or a link along with it. Chatbots can be used to predict when a customer may need a new service, and proactively offer it up to them. And chatbots of today won’t be confused by a customer changing the topic of conversation. They can jump from topic to topic — and even channel to channel, such as starting a conversation on the brand website and then transitioning to WhatsApp if the customer needs to leave their desktop — to meet the customer where they are and provide service that rivals (but, again, will never replace) that of their human counterparts.
As the world becomes increasingly digital, and consumers remain socially distant, brands will need to perfect their online customer experience, or create one from scratch to fulfil consumer demands and business opportunities. Chatbots will serve as a cornerstone for responsive, personal — and even proactive — customer communications, and the sooner we can dispel these commonly-held misconceptions about chatbots, the better.
Guest Blog by Vikram Khandpur, Chief Product Officer, Sinch
