Chatbots, defined as software-powered conversational agents that can interact with users via audio or text, will soon roll out en masse to help sellers engage proactively with their consumers on social media platforms, particularly on Facebook and Skype. A similar automated assistant is also said to be in the works for Canadian-based site Kik.
While these AI-based agents generally aim to make the lives of online users easier, they could be revenue platforms for tech companies in the long run, and the best avenue to do that is messaging, "the fastest-growing online behavior over the past five years," as postulated by technology analyst Michael Wolf in a report by The Wall Street Journal.
Wolf also said that 1.1 billion new users will be using online messaging apps by 2018. This is especially appealing in Asia where local messaging platforms trump their Western counterparts.
In terms of adoption, Asia is not behind its peers, either. "Software butlers," as they are called in a China Daily report, are used widely to "pay for meals, order movie tickets and even send each other gifts."
The influence of messaging is largely due to the sense of urgency it offers while maintaining a more personal tone than what email marketing, for example, allows.
With chatbots in the background, however, things are poised to get even better, especially for marketers and sellers.
Citing experts, China Daily said that "messaging bots can handle a wider range of tasks than apps offered by retailers and other consumer businesses."
"In part, that is because bots can recognize a variety of spoken or typed phrases, where apps force users to choose from options on a drop-down menu," the report added.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also believes that the mobile ecosystem is going big on bots.
In a conference held in San Francisco, California, last month, he said that "bots are the new apps" and that "people-to-people conversations, people-to-digital assistants, people-to-bots and even digital assistants-to-bots" are what consumers and sellers alike are going to witness in the coming years.