What Is a Chatbot?
Chatbots are software that automates live chat services. They're capable of sending and receiving messages, transferring real-time conversations, and looking up service information for customers. This technology improves the customer experience by making your support team more accessible to current and potential buyers.
In North America, the best known example of a messaging app is Facebook Messenger. WhatsApp, also owned by Facebook, features bot integrations, too. And, the list doesn't stop there. In fact, there are a number of messaging apps and platforms — Slack, Twitter, etc. — investing in a bot platform and ecosystem. But for the sake of simplicity, our examples will focus on Facebook Messenger.
Time to connect the two concepts: Let's say a third party company, like Lyft, creates a bot that interfaces with Facebook Messenger. When a user needs a ride, she can message the Lyft bot and order a car to pick her up directly through her Facebook Messenger app. In other words, she doesn't need to switch to the dedicated Lyft app to use Lyft's service.
Facebook also encourages companies to build their own bots on its messenger platform. Why would companies want to do such a thing? Facebook's incredible reach and user base. With a bot integration, any company can provide services to over 900 million active Facebook Messenger users.
And, by creating its own bot platform, Facebook instantly made its Messenger app stronger — who wouldn't want to order a pizza, book a flight, talk to a customer service rep, and chat with their best friend all on the same application?
Where Are Chatbots Most Used?
According to Comscore, there are 1.5 million apps available in the Apple Appstore. But, in this increasingly crowded landscape, most smartphone users can't be bothered to add new apps to their phones. App downloads have slowed to a trickle in recent years, and today, the average smartphone user downloads zero new apps per month.
Comscore also calculated that 80% of a person's screen time is typically spent looking at just three apps. And, this space is increasingly dominated by big players — as of April 2016, nine out of the top 10 used apps were made by Google and Facebook.
Comments
Post a Comment