SMB Toolkit: How Chatbots Can Transform Your Business

Information technology'due south time to embrace the chatbot revolution. For small to midsize businesses (SMBs), adding a dash of conversational intelligence to your organization is a not bad mode to both drive customer engagement and help streamline your in-business firm operations with a contextual helper. Chatbots are embedded in all sorts of chat and collaboration experiences today, and you can discover thousands of them in Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, Skype, and a host of other applications and services we use to communicate and get piece of work washed.

Chatbots are exactly what they sound like: a chat with a bot. It'due south a form of conversational artificial intelligence (AI) in which a user interacts with a virtual agent through natural language messaging. These automated interactions can be used to surface contextually relevant information, assistance a user consummate an online transaction, or serve as a helpdesk agent to resolve a client'due south outcome, without ever involving a man.

One important distinction to make is that chatbots are non full-blown virtual assistants like Alexa, Cortana, or Siri. The distinction betwixt a text- or voice-based chat interface is less of import than the telescopic of where digital assistants live and what they practice for a user equally opposed to the more than narrow focus of a chatbot. Virtual assistants are omnipresent AI helpers embedded within our smartphones, Bluetooth speakers, operating systems (OSes), and other computing environments, offering predictive recommendations and performing a wide range of evolving functions. Chatbots, for the near role, live within a single app or messaging interface, and can be programmed more merely with a selection of automated deportment for specific business tasks.

For the average SMB or enterprise organization, the specialized nature of chatbots actually makes them more than useful. Companies and software providers are already implementing chatbot experiences to revolutionize business processes, including due east-commerce, customer back up, expense tracking, and more. In this article, nosotros'll lay out what chatbots can do in real-earth business settings, how the tech is evolving, and explain why investing in chatbots isn't always the right decision in identify of a proficient 'ol fashioned human employee.

Customer Back up and Conversational Analytics

We tin can't talk about every one of the thousands upon thousands of chatbots out there, so we focused on a few examples that evidence defined business organization apply cases. Normally, one of the first chatbot apps people think of is customer support and virtual helpdesk agents.

There are dozens and dozens of customer support bots available inside Facebook Messenger, Slack, Skype, and other conversation apps including Kik and Telegram. Even popular helpdesk platforms such every bit Zendesk Support take launched customer support chatbots.

These types of chatbots help customers submit and resolve tickets without leaving their messaging app of pick, only likewise serve every bit a natural language interface to a company's noesis base. Rather than going through a painfully blowsy automated telephone call system only to talk to a man, a chatbot surfaces the information a customer would've had to search for otherwise without e'er involving a human customer support representative.

For Robert C. Johnson, CEO of business-to-business (B2B) client support software visitor TeamSupport, chatbots are ane layer in the button toward integrated omni-channel client support. Johnson is skeptical near the potential of chatbots in more circuitous B2B interactions, only fifty-fifty for client-facing support he said automation is very tricky to get right.

"V or 7 years ago, the back up space was an email ticket system, a knowledge base arrangement, a chat system, and a phone system, and they didn't really talk to 1 another," said Johnson. "We've also had issues with automated technology before, whether information technology's automatic agents or phone trees. We know when we call and get an automatic answer that nosotros'll have to get through seven layers of automation to talk to a person. It'southward frustrating. Omni-channel customer support has the benefit of integrated search and workflows, things like a keyword in a ticket triggering a noesis base article. Chatbot systems are layered on that as another channel."

Beyond the basics of setting upwards a customer support bot triggering and answering tickets, you lot tin configure these types of virtual agents to do merely about anything. IBM offers a Watson-based platform leveraging the AI's tongue processing (NLP) and cognitive calculating to build customized business chatbots for client interactions. Watson Virtual Agent gives businesses not merely a customizable chatbots builder for customer-facing experiences, merely deep analytics and an date metrics dashboard to mensurate the chatbot's effectiveness.

"I think about cognitive computing as a prepare of intelligence capabilities that provide strength and leverage to our human mind," said Rob High, IBM Fellow, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, IBM Watson. High spoke at Mobile World Congress earlier this year about cerebral computing in chatbots and virtual agents, explaining why these types of AI interactions make sense in customer support and online merchant interactions.

"Nosotros focus on how to enable other people to create conversations in the context of these kinds of assistants and interfaces that offering multiple modes of interaction: voice, gestures, chat—equally nosotros go forward, what we're seeing today is just the beginning of experiences that will be multi-modal and far-reaching," said High.

"Much of what has driven the internet has been near merchants attempting to create relationships with consumers. Mobile and web applications give merchants the opportunity to control the experience they desire to deliver to users, but consumers are already occupying these social spaces," he said. "That's where they are well-nigh of the 24-hour interval. Why shouldn't the merchant become to those apps with [a chatbot] and requite up that control for the sake of accessing consumers where they are?"

Watson works with Botkit to integrate virtual agents into Facebook Messenger, Slack, and other messaging platforms. But more than than that cantankerous-channel availability, the analytics yous get from chatbots can tell you a lot about customer behavior and aid refine the chatbots experience to make the investment in that automatic interaction worthwhile. Arte Merritt, CEO of bot analytics platform Dashbot, spoke on the same MWC panel as High almost how actionable bot analytics can increase user engagement and bulldoze monetization.

"People think about bots for customer service, just they're then much more," said Merritt. "We come across a lot of interest from brands across media, entertainment, travel, retail, to have an app-like bot experience within something like Facebook Messenger," said Merritt. "These interfaces are as well asynchronous; they allow for unstructured data. You're non but clicking buttons and links. In the instance of Facebook Messenger, people can transport images, video, or their own voice. We see all sorts of fascinating data come up through that you can leverage. Users treat the bots as people."

Accounting and Expense Administration

Another business scenario where chatbots make a lot of sense is accounting and finance. Accounting and business management software provider Sage built a chatbot named Pegg last year, giving users and small business owners in particular a natural conservational chat interface for staying on top of invoices and expenses, tax deadlines, cash flow issues, and more. Pegg is built into the Sage platform, but also bachelor as a bot for Facebook Messenger and Skype.

Kriti Sharma is the Vice President of Bots and Artificial Intelligence for Sage. She said the company has seen adoption in both the enterprise community and with small businesses as a way to automate deadening tasks that entrepreneurs often put off.

"Some of these tasks businesses have to carry out are really boring, similar filing tax returns and expense reports, and staying on top of purchase ledgers," said Sharma. "Particularly with the rise of the gig economy and freelancers, business owners as well may non have a dedicated accountant in that location to give them communication. A natural language interface is something that simplifies these continued scenarios at the right signal in time, and that tin can be very useful."

Pegg puts accounting jargon in natural language. Ask "who owes me money?" and the bot will quickly pull the data from Sage and tell you how much the invoice is, when information technology'southward due, and the quickest mode to contact the person. For expense tracking, the bot uses computer vision and optical character recognition (OCR) algorithms to analyze a photo of a receipt uploaded in the chat, and automatically itemize information technology in Sage.

Sharma is also the founder of Messaging Bots London, the largest network of bot developers in the metropolis. She said developing good AI is less of a pure tech problem, and more of a combined engineering and man trouble. If yous approach a chatbot purely equally a technology solution, then Sharma said you're not going to get it right.

"We desire to pay a lot of attention to the design and user feel [UX] of bots. For the small business world, accounting can exist overwhelming," said Sharma. "Chatbots in accounting is a use example that really makes sense. You lot need to do your accounts and capture your expenses, and doing it today is painful. If you have to create and send an invoice for a thousand dollars, a bot tin can exercise that. It'southward an piece of cake experience where the bot goes into the dorsum-finish system and you don't take to worry nearly the process."

Expensify is some other example of a smartly integrated chatbot feel. Expensify's Concierge assistant is built in throughout the company's expense reporting and management platform. Expensify CEO and founder David Barrett views AI as a tool for solving specific problems. In Concierge'southward case, this means a level of customer support and engagement for small businesses that wouldn't be possible without automation.

"Retrieve about why y'all would get a bookkeeper or accountant. You desire someone to help with time-sensitive financial requirements unique to your business. The difficult part is trying to configure a platform similar Expensify to tackle this item thing, or to answer a question like 'I got this letter from the IRS, what do I do?'" said Barrett. "Ordinarily yous'd need a highly paid and trained auditor to do this, but a lot of small businesses don't have the resources to afford that. Concierge brings that loftier value expertise into their hands."

Expensify began by focusing on a narrow set of accounting and bookkeeping questions, and built out Concierge's body of cognition and automated responses from at that place. The bot reviews and categorizes uploaded receipts, manage expense reports automatically, and too serves as a natural language consultant for questions most specific expenses or price comparisons.

Barrett said Concierge is also evolving in a number of different ways. Beyond the ability to process a myriad of data types and systems—credit bill of fare import, e-mail parsing, mileage tracking, mobile OCR, a visitor's internal reporting structure, and more than—the chatbot is likewise learning how to collaborate more naturally with users, and to leverage the data information technology collects to surface recommendations…in a way that's not creepy.

"One surface area we're working on a lot is getting Concierge to aid you understand what's happening on a daily basis in a manner that'south non spam," said Barrett. "We want to summarize data in a way that'south actionable, and for Expensify that's nearly making the process of business organisation travel more fun and social. We have information on how much you like Thai food over sandwiches, where you lot similar to get it, all this info and preferences expressed through expense data. We besides take calendar functionality, so think nigh automatically reconciling those preferences confronting meetings and attendees, and and then suggesting a restaurant based on availability, location, and each user's preferences."

Automated Due east-Commerce Agents

For online businesses, the third big saucepan for current chatbot technology is east-commerce automation. You can order an Uber or a Starbucks java without leaving Facebook Messenger, the app leading the due east-commerce bot charge in the U.S.

Since Facebook opened up its platform to developers we've seen major brands launch bots for everything from travel booking (Hipmunk, Kayak, Travelocity) and nutrient (Domino's, Whole Foods) to major retailers including American Hawkeye, Kohl's, Sephora, and Victoria's Secret. Plenty of bots nevertheless utilise live customer support and sales reps, but any bot in the directory carrying an "automated messaging" tag is a fully democratic chatbot.

"Chatbots are everywhere," said Beerud Sheth, founder & CEO of messaging bot creation platform Gupshup. "Within a messaging app, everything is but a thread. If you're chatting with an entity, it could be a human or simply equally easily be a program. Businesses tin can at present develop a whole range of services that to the user seems similar but another user you're messaging."

Sheth spoke on an MWC panel about bots and due east-commerce along with representatives from PayPal, Google, and others. Within east-commerce, chatbots now have the power complete an unabridged online shopping transaction within a conversational message feel.

Brick-and-mortar retailers accept even turned to the technology to not only bulldoze online and mobile conversions, only to help increment pes traffic too. Macy's used the Watson Virtual Amanuensis platform to build and launch a bot called "Macy's On Call," which gives shoppers a customized chatbot to answer questions every bit you browse a particular store. In this case, the chatbots are learning over time to provide amend assistance as they analyze purchase blueprint information.

What these automated experiences can do is fast-evolving, but the killer app for e-commerce chatbots is payments. In China, where the messaging app ecosystem isn't as diverse and the majority of users are active on WeChat, the app'southward built-in Weixin Pay feature has reached 600 million monthly users, according to parent company Tencent'south Q4 2022 results.

The payment functionality is integrated into the chatbots running on WeChat, so if a customer needs to make a payment the chatbots handles that transaction in a few clicks. Messaging app Kik has taken a cue from WeChat and has begun developing chat-based payment methods, and Facebook Messenger has native chatbot payments and a purchase push button feature currently in beta.

Harper Reed is the founder of mobile commerce startup Small-scale (acquired past PayPal) and now an entrepreneur-in-residence focused on Side by side Generation Commerce at PayPal. During the MWC panel Reed said he sees payments equally one of the keys to chat-enabled commerce.

"What I'm excited near is that all of this chat around conversation and assistants is laying the groundwork for the hereafter of commerce," said Reed. "On the payments side, we want to create the open up APIs for everyone to enable payments. I think in that location are a lot of hurdles between a normal consumer make figuring out their mobile strategy—let lone their chat app strategy—and programming a Facebook Messenger chatbot. But nosotros have a future ahead of u.s. where conversation is a large role of it, and that context of having an assistant in your pocket isn't necessarily the only place it will be."

The Human Touch

For all the ways an automated conversational interface can enhance your online business, chatbots besides have limitations. Look no farther than Microsoft'southward Tay chatbot fiasco for the growing pains with natural language AI. In scenarios where human intuition and contextual agreement are still paramount, for instance in social media management, situational awareness and some cheeky sarcasm go a long fashion.

Social media is frequently a make'south starting time line of defense when a customer has an outcome or complaint with a product or service. Rather than an automatic message that may miss context, a thoughtful response from a homo showing understanding and empathy with the customer's consequence has far less chance of being dragged on Twitter and leading to a bigger public relations incident.

Scheduling is another example. Using a chatbot to schedule a meeting is a simple use case, but the nuances of that type of commutation highlight how much further development is nonetheless needed in natural language processing and deeper cognition.

When coordinating a telephone call for this story with Expensify CEO David Barrett, we used a scheduling chatbot called ten.ai. The bot ultimately scheduled the meeting, but it took multiple emails to get through to the bot that I was on Eastern Time and Barrett was on Pacific Fourth dimension. This is the kind of NLP hiccup that'll exist worked out as the AI software learns and evolves, but information technology's a skilful example of why chatbots aren't always an effective substitute for a human being.

"So much of this development is incredibly nuanced, especially effectually language which is a more fluid and flexible sort of medium," said Barrett. "Imagine your friend texted you with two questions at once: where do you lot desire to go to dinner and what time are you bachelor? Which one of those exercise you lot choose to answer first? Or practise yous answer both at one time? For a chatbot, maintaining that same conversational flow can be a really challenging thing."

This all comes back to the human being touch that a chatbot can't quite replicate (yet). As useful equally chatbots can be in all these business scenarios and more, we're all the same dealing with an AI technology in its infancy. Allow's become dorsum to customer support, one of the well-nigh prevalent business apps for chatbots. TeamSupport CEO Robert C. Johnson said that for higher complexity B2B interactions, chatbots may non result in the all-time customer experience.

"Nosotros're a long manner from the HAL 9000 and Jetsons-blazon stuff. AI that'south equally intuitive as humans in being able to accurately connect the dots; a robot that can really recall," said Johnson.

"Authentic automobile learning requires a huge number of data points and experiences to pull on. Without that book, you lot really can't do motorcar learning. In B2B interactions, you're dealing with lower book of interactions simply higher complexity, which tin can lead to higher mistake rates," Johnson connected. "Chatbots are good for B2C interactions where at that place's a loftier volume and the value of each customer is non very high. If Nike loses a single client and they're not going to purchase Nike shoes again. But if one of our B2B customers loses a million dollar contract, that error hurts the bottom line."

It's important to understand the current limits of conversational AI technology so your concern can focus on investing in the chatbot experiences that are truly worthwhile. Edifice a chatbot for accounting and finance or every bit a productivity helper can ameliorate organizational efficiency and streamline workflows. Rolling out a chatbot for eastward-commerce or customer-facing back up can open upwardly your business to native messaging channels and requite users a fast, intuitive way to interact with your brand.

Chatbots are not a catch-all solution to every challenge facing online businesses. But deployed wisely, they can be a valuable tool to arm employees with contextual data and keep customers engaged within native app experiences. AI is advancing by leaps and bounds every yr, changing the way we interact with technology. If a chatbot makes sense for your business, then don't let the opportunity pass y'all by.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/ibm-watson-analytics/17072/smb-toolkit-how-chatbots-can-transform-your-business

Posted by: vincentexisparbace.blogspot.com

Share this post