A man uses 'Siri' on the iPhone 4S after being one of the first customers in the Apple store in Covent Garden in 2011. (Photo : Getty Images / Oli Scarff)
Companies would be able to level up their customer service by leveraging chatbots. Bots, aka web robots, are computer programs that think, talk and do things like humans. They are aimed to replace apps and make people's lives easier.
Bots are everywhere in technology but they are drawing more attention lately, especially during Facebook's F8 developer conference in April. They have been around for a long time. They are in phone systems asking the customer to give their account number, what they call about or tell them to push a digit corresponding to what they want.
Web robots are apps that perform an automated task. Aside from ordering food, they can set the alarm, search for something online, tell the weather, show bank balance, shop for clothes and find restaurants.
For instance, Digit is a bot that helps the user manage finances by showing his bank balance, upcoming bills and send text messages to help the user save money. Artificial intelligence or digital assistants like Siri of Apple's iOS and Cortana of Microsoft's Windows, are bots.
Earlier bots were Smarterchild of AOL Instant Messenger and Clippy of Microsoft. Bots are programmed to act like humans so that talking to them feels like asking help from a person.
For now, bots are not so smart. Though they are getting better, there are still users who are frustrated when asking digital assistants questions, only to find out it did not understand, CNET reported.
Bots can be the bad variety, coming with a virus to propagate to websites. On the other hand, chatbots, those that can hold a conversation with humans to accomplish a task could be the future of online customer care.
Chatbots can be used to order a pizza and have it delivered without talking to a human. Facebook Messenger has Hi Poncho chatbot that tells the user the weather around him. Chatbots can help companies with their customer service by gathering information, understand what exactly happened, what customers want and be empowered to automatically solve basic issues.
A smart mix of humans and chatbots will get the job done to make customers happy and give fairness to the business. Over time, chatbots will get smarter and companies will trust them to solve issues.
For example, it would be great for a cable firm to allow its customer schedule an appointment in 30 seconds instead of 5 to 25 minutes on the phone; a retailer to replace a defective product; or a hotel to award points to make up a bad experience. These can be handled by chatbots and will free the company from expensive human representatives, according to TechCrunch.
The video below talks about chatbots coming to Facebook Messenger.
(Disclaimer: Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Yibada.)
