What Chatbot Jobs can we Expect in the Future?

'Wanted: knowledgeable chatbot person.'

A few weeks ago, we decided to open our talent search. We are expanding at a great pace, and finding the right people to join us is paramount.

This got me thinking. What sort of jobs are chatbots creating? Beyond our company's amazing people, chatbot technology is creating lots of cool opportunities.

If the World Economic Forum is right, 65% of today's children will work in a job we know nothing about. There is a point to be made that many of these will relate to AI, data science, or even chatbots.

Let's think through some of these together.

Building

We're going to need people to build these darn things. This is the easy bit of the article because, duh, we already have people building them:

• Chatbot development engineers;
• Deep learning engineers;
• Neural network engineers;
• Artificial intelligence architect;
• Data scientists;

and so on.

These are sort of 'expected' jobs. I assume over time these will get more granular, for example ML engineers focusing on specific areas of a specific industry for specific chatbots.

Language

The internet as we now know it is a very visual thing. Website here, infographics there, buttons, banners, menus, etc.

Chatbots, whether they are text or voice, will change that. Visual interfaces will slowly disappear to make way for efficiency. Hence, I believe 'language people' will matter a lot. This is the area that is most likely to bring never heard before roles in the near future.

Right now, these are the roles we work with that relate to language:

• Conversational UX designers;
• Conversational UX testers;
• UX designers;
• Translators;

Conversational UX designers map out the chatting experience of a user going through a bot.

UX designers in the chatbot industry are somewhat rarer, though they exist. Their role makes the most sense with on-site chatbots where the company has more freedom to design the chat interface.

We use translators all the time, as we work with international clients.

Now let's brainstorm some jobs of the future in the language area!

Conversational researcher

I envision there is going to be a role within a chatbot company for someone who will research the best way to speak to a specific audience.

That person would get the audience brief (e.g. '14-18-year-old females with an interest in computers') and go find everything they can about them. How do they speak between them? Where do they hang out? Which words do they use? Which words do they hate?

Think of it like market research, but focused on words.

I believe people will actually graduate from university for this type of specific role, with chatbots in mind.

Conversational optimiser

This sort of edges on the next section. Beyond knowing how people speak, we will need people to teach how to optimise conversations.

It is common these days to have a consultant look over your website to give you feedback. 'Move this button here', 'change the menu there', 'use different images', that sort of things.

I believe we will see people specialise in exactly that but for conversations. A car selling company with an onsite chatbot would bring someone like that in and they would say:

'Based on the initial interaction you have with the user, you should move straight to asking about their budget before talking about the colour of the car. This would impact conversions from chatbot user to purchase by 0.37%.'

This sounds market-y, I know. I wanted to put it into language because the key here is the use of language and conversation to improve conversions.

Marketing

Finally, marketing. This may just be me, but I think this is going to be super exciting. We can expect a lot from marketers being able to use a completely new and different channel.

We are already witnessing innovation in this field today. I can't wait to see what people will come up with next.

I think there are two main new roles that will come out for marketers in the chatbot space:

• Chatbot marketing manager;
• Chatbot marketer.

(I hope people will come up with better names for them than this.)

A chatbot marketing manager will lead the marketing of a brand's chatbot. Imagine Axe spray releasing a chatbot. They're going to need someone to head the marketing of that new thingy.

I believe people will specialise in exactly that. There will be super smart people out there who will know the best steps to take to make a chatbot release super successful.

A chatbot marketer, on the other hand, is someone who specialises in marketing products within a chatbot. Subtle? I know.

Imagine Philips releasing a sales/marketing chatbot. They will most likely feature all their products in there, help users find the one they need, and ultimately sell it to them.

I believe we will see people have 'product marketer through chatbot' as their sole purpose within a company. Their job will be to introduce new products, organise the chatbot's sales features, oversee the conversational optimisers, and more.

Job seekers; prepare for the chatbot era

The world is changing. Whatever the future holds for chatbots, job seekers of tomorrow will have to keep up.

To do so, I suggest you keep a pulse on our industry. Even if you are a salesperson. Even if you are a translator. Even if you are a print marketer.

The job you are doing today may very well shift in amazing new ways. Don't miss these opportunities.

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