5 Chatbot Use Cases that Will Shape our Future
We are convinced chatbots are taking over the world.
But, in which ways?
As chatbots get deployed over more and more industries, as brands take the initial step towards making automation a bigger part of their business plan, and as consumers get to experience the power of chatbots throughout their days; the future will take shape.
We took the stage earlier this week to talk about one of the ways chatbots will shape our future: e-commerce. This was the perfect opportunity for me to jot down my thoughts on the topic, and add in five more use cases.
In this article, I will focus on six areas where chatbots will make a tremendous impact. This includes both personal and professional experiences, and, when possible, examples.
Ready to step into the future?
Travel – Personalised handheld assistant
However many advances in technology our society has made, organising a trip has remained a struggle.
There is finding the place to go, then finding the hotel, then figuring out if there is anything good to eat around there, then realising the beaches (or slopes) are too far from the place you have been looking at for 2 days – and starting over.
The only thing that can really take over that pain is speaking to a local… or a super intelligent, all knowing database-fed robot!
Chatbots will drastically change the way we experience travel and leisure simply by being assistants we can talk to. By turning the horrendous amount of research and organisation we currently go through to look for a place to stay that suits our needs into a simple conversation.
Picture the interaction between a chatbot and its user. Imagine how the conversation simply flows, from initiation to getting all the information the user needs.
Productivity – Personalised coach
The best chatbots offer a personalised experience.
They live to serve you. Not your ‘buyer persona’, not the most accurate representation of who you are, not the sum of your characteristics – you.
What better way to utilise this than to improve who you are?
A productivity chatbot will help you better yourself and keep you on track.
Chatbots will drastically change the way we achieve our goals. Artificial intelligence will be used both to understand who we are and tailor our tasks to our uniqueness, and to deliver useable insights on how to achieve the goals we set ourselves.
Instead of making a list of tasks to achieve this week, tell your chatbot where you want to be. Let the AI reverse engineer your goals and dictate the best way to get there, whilst taking into account who you are.
Entertainment – Personalised fun
As we all know, the entertainment industry is massive. They are always looking for new ways to engage an audience.
Much like brands get to engage with their customers in a completely new way, chatbots enable the entertainment industry to offer something exclusive to their audience.
New movie coming out? Turn the protagonist into a chatbot.
New album coming out? Deploy a lyrics decryption chatbot, providing an on-demand explanation of parts of lyrics.
New video game coming out? Offer exclusive content and help to your players through a chatbot.
Chatbots will change the entertainment industry by offering a new dimension of fun. We will get to be part of the experience rather than passively taking it in.
e-Commerce – Personalised shopping
The team’s favourite.
Everyone shops on the web nowadays. Whether you are looking for new shoes, a new game, or a piece of art; there is a place on the web for you to buy.
On one hand, we have e-commerce websites offering everything you can think of, in massive inventories. On the other hand, we have millennials slowly but surely becoming the bigger buying force of our society.
What do millennials want? Our recent research showed 44% found speed to be the most important aspect of dealing with a company.
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Surely, browsing through hundreds of products to find the right fit for them is not the best option.
Millennials also have plenty of questions. They want to know the people behind the business, the ethics behind the factory, the story behind the product.
Chatbots will change the way we shop online by offering a fully personalised shopping assistant. Instead of blindly browsing a website, we will have an AI-driven assistant with all the answers at our disposal.
We recently presented our shopper assistant chatbot to brands such as Nike, Pepsi, and Bacardi. All are looking for ways to capture this new buying power’s attention, satisfy their curiosity, and ease conversions.
A chatbot for your website is a great way to keep users engaged and ramp up the sales.
News – Personalised digest
And finally, news.
News aggregators were arguably the first chatbot experience most consumers have had. Websites like The Guardian or Tech Crunch released their news chatbot early on last year, offering a personalised digest to their readers every day.
Where do we go from there?
Although The Guardian’s chatbot was innovative, in the industry we know it could be a whole lot better. The future of news chatbots is in highly targeted personalisation.
This goes beyond simple interest gathering (‘I want news about tech, the UK, and rock music’). The news digest of the future will know when we are having a break at work, when we are traveling somewhere and need local news, when to divert for the user’s orders to deliver time sensitive news.
But, also, the news digest of the future will be interactive. Getting the latest five articles from a blog feed is actually nothing new. We have been doing it with RSS feeds for a long long time.
Interacting with the news? That’s actually revolutionary.
What if you were to get an article about Amazon’s new Echo Look product. Seems interesting, but you can’t find the price of the product in the article. Ask the chatbot!
What if you were to get an article about a recent political decision in the US, but can’t understand a specific legal term. Ask the chatbot!
You see where I am going with this. As an always-on tool, the chatbot can go beyond simply delivering the boring old news and turn the experience into an interactive conversation between you and, literally, the world.
More chatbot use cases than you can think of
Every time I sit down to write one of these articles, I have to refrain myself from writing an entire novel. There are more chatbot use cases out there than we can think of, and that is what truly excites me about this revolution.
Consumers are starting to realise how chatbots and personalised automation could change their lives. Brands are starting to realise how chatbots could improve their services.
This is the time of the chatbot.
