Chatbots Strategy Archives - BotCore Enterprise Chatbot Fri, 15 Mar 2024 10:12:58 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 https://botcore.ai/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/cropped-favicon-32x32-1-70x70.png Chatbots Strategy Archives - BotCore 32 32 12 Experts Share The Biggest Chatbot Trends For 2020! https://botcore.ai/blog/12-experts-share-the-biggest-chatbot-trends-for-2020/ Fri, 14 Feb 2020 17:16:00 +0000 https://botcore.ai/?p=4960 12 Experts Share The Biggest Chatbot Trends For 2020! In the past decade, we have seen the emergence of several AI technologies. And one of the most significant one among them are chatbots. In the last few years, we have not only seen the emergence of AI chatbots but also their exponential growth and rapid […]

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12 Experts Share The Biggest Chatbot Trends For 2020!

In the past decade, we have seen the emergence of several AI technologies. And one of the most significant one among them are chatbots. In the last few years, we have not only seen the emergence of AI chatbots but also their exponential growth and rapid adoption among enterprises.

While enterprises are already using chatbots for different use cases, we believe this is just the beginning of a long journey of this sophisticated technology. As someone who helped several medium and large organizations deploy enterprise chatbots, we’ve asked 11 experts the following question.

According to you, what is the biggest chatbot trend to watch for in 2020?

Here’s what they said…

#1 “…Facebook will integrate the messaging infrastructure of Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp greatly extending the reach of chatbots…”

Chatbots haven’t yet taken off with businesses today with only approximately 1% of companies actively using them. But In 2020, Facebook will integrate the messaging infrastructure of Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, greatly extending the reach of chatbots to over 3 billion daily active users on a single platform. We believe this will make chatbots a must-have for businesses wanting to connect with users on those popular platforms.

Larry Kim

– Larry Kim,
CEO, MobileMonkey.
LinkedIn | Twitter

#2 “…Chatbots should become generically more efficient at identifying the intent of a user…”

“The largest technical trend I see in 2020 is that Chatbots should become generically more efficient at identifying the intent of a user. As the work done on BERT at Google starts to be incorporated into offerings, the context of words (like prepositions) within an utterance will be given weight to enable more accurate understanding.

However, Chatbots are at the Peak of Inflated Expectations in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence in 2019, but the potential return is not inconsiderable. Consequently, within business we should see an increase in Chatbot Education allowing expectation to more closely match Reality and an increase in the meaningful adoption of chatbots.”

Keith Williams

– Keith Williams,
Chatbot Consultant, Founder, KMW3.com,
Ex-HR Services Director – Technology, Unilever.
LinkedIn

#3 “…Conversational assistants will remain an extension of the brand and a sidekick for customer care…”

“Consumers are increasingly demanding real-time engagement, including self-service tools that allow for instant Q&A and problem resolution. As technology continues to improve and evolve, conversational assistants will remain an extension of the brand and a sidekick for customer care, providing not only contextual, personalized on-demand support, but critical insights on the customer journey back to the organization. Such tools are no longer nice-to-have, but critical elements for differentiation and success in the digital economy.”

Theodora Lau

– Theodora Lau,
Founder, Unconventional Ventures, Speaker, Writer, and Startup Advisor.
LinkedIn | Twitter

#4 “…we are going to see a huge surge in chatbots deployed to understand, retain & serve customers better…”

With about little over 2 years of enterprises trying out and experimenting with chatbots for internal employee-facing use cases, many are now confident about the technology and the usefulness. And now, many businesses are switching to the next level to use chatbots to engage their customers, which was the primary goal in the first place.

From bots on webpages, portals, WhatsApp and even Facebook messenger, we are going to see a huge surge in chatbots deployed to understand, retain & serve customers better. This will reduce the time to feedback leading to quicker innovation of products by businesses.

Last but not the least, chatbots will provide the half-life extension to social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. These platforms will change from knowledge and communication mediums to self-service platforms – One of the rare things B2C will be adopting from B2B. Overall 2020 will be the year of chatbot rising to help humans.

Rakesh

– Rakesh Reddy,
CEO, Acuvate Software.
LinkedIn

#5 “…Expect structure to come from the enterprise…”

Expect structure to come from the enterprise – more specifically, expect to see key advances in 2020 coming through more extensive AI integration for bot services of all kinds. The enterprise arena is an obvious spawning ground for innovation, as businesses of every kind are crying out for intelligent and highly scalable bot solutions to connect customers with product in a timely and efficient manner.

Given the mission critical nature of any technology investment for commercial purposes, it is extremely likely that the enterprise will offer the most effective ‘test-bed’ for a rapid evolution of more adaptive and verbose solutions, thus finally delivering on the promise of a ‘near-human’ chatbot interface.

Andy Clayton Smith

– Andy Clayton-Smith,
Executive Editor, The Record, Tudor Rose.
LinkedIn | Twitter

#6 “…It (voice technology) has reached a tipping point where you can hardly differentiate between a human and machine…”

Gartner predicts that “chatbots will power 85 percent of all customer service interactions by the year 2020 and by then the average person will have more conversations with chatbots than with their spouse.” Voice technology has developed so much that it has reached a tipping point where you can hardly differentiate between a human and machine, Google Duplex is one brilliant example. An AI-powered chatbot will supercharge businesses improving customer care by connecting them to a whole array of personalized services in real-time.

Alvin Foo

– Alvin Foo,
MD, Reprise Digital.
LinkedIn | Twitter

#7 “…using chatbots to support the productivity of work teams..”  

One of the trends is using chatbots to support the productivity of work teams. They start off as simple signposts to point people in the direction of useful learning resources, insights and practical skills.  We will then start to see them move up the value chain, and offer simple coaching. Over the longer-term with data analysis, we might start to see improved engagement, better decision-making, and improved psychological safety.

Andrew Spence

Andrew Spence,
HR Transformation Director,
Glass Bead Consulting.
Twitter | LinkedIn

#8 “…we would be able to start seeing early versions of a chatbot as your sidekick at work…”

“At the business level, I believe we would be able to start seeing early versions of a chatbot as your sidekick at work. Not as advanced as JARVIS in Ironman but at the minimal, chatbot that is able to make better suggestions based on your personal preferences, parameters as well as the vast amount of data it collects of you every single minute. For instance, if my day is packed with back-to-back meetings, it could suggest blocking one hour of reflection time to process those meetings. This is on top of more accurate voice processing which enables users to communicate with the chatbot faster than typing.”

Adrian Tan

– Adrian Tan,
HR Tech Solutions Architect at PeopleStrong.
LinkedIn | Twitter

#9 “..As the quality and accuracy of chatbots improve, the number of use cases will increase…”

The two biggest chatbot trends to watch will be the increase in the number of use cases, along with improvement in usability. Frankly, when it comes to chatbots, the user experience isn’t living up to the hype, but this will change over time. Chatbots are continually learning and need to get data fed in order to understand the words and phrases used for each vertical and each particular business or organization. As chatbots keep learning, they will improve their accuracy and the ability to respond to customer inquiries.

 As the quality and accuracy of chatbots improve, the number of use cases will increase. While currently used for very basic inquiries and interactions, they’ll increasingly be used to better assist customers and agents and drive more complex interactions and transactions.

Blair Pleasant

– Blair Pleasant,
Co-founder, UCStrategies.
Twitter | LinkedIn

#10 “…Sentiment analysis will be increasingly applied in the development of chatbots…”

Sentiment analysis will be increasingly applied in the development of chatbots — because at the moment, let’s face it — most bots still act rather like bots.

The race to properly react to human sentiment is on! (And we’ve already seen how it can go badly wrong, in the case of Microsoft’s Tay.)

As conversational AI bots continue to improve in 2020 onwards, it should become almost impossible for a customer to realize they are speaking with a machine.

Amazon Comprehend is one example of chatbot software paving the way.

Sam Hurley

– Sam Hurley,
Managing Director, OPTIM-EYEZ.
LinkedIn | Twitter

#11 “…We are starting to see them (chatbots) being used to automating certain aspects of commerce…”

Chatbots have been through their initial experimental phase, and we are starting to see them being used to automating certain aspects of commerce.  The bad news is that they are starting to be used to spam us as the other channels of interruption marketing (advertising, cold calling, unsolicited emails) dry up.  If Chatbots are to be taken seriously, people need to try and start using them, not to spam, but to create real-valued business processes.  What do I mean?  One of the spin-offs of the new technology of the iPhone, was social media.  Social Media has changed how we work and changed society.  Let’s hope Chatbot energy is channeled in the same way?

Tim Hughes

– Tim Hughes,
CEO and Co-Founder, DLA Ignite.
Twitter | LinkedIn

#12 “…Voice bots will not be limited to just asking weather or playing music…”

Voice chatbots will be more powerful for 2020 as we predict it with data backed by Botanalytics. The penetration of Google Home and Amazon Alexa is increasing dramatically and usage of voice bots will not be limited to just asking weather or playing music. Banks, Insurance and Travel companies will be more in the game by providing voice chatbots with specific skill sets. Maybe not providing lots of capabilities, but focusing on some skill sets. That will be the key to get success in 2020.

Ilker Koksal

– Ilker Koksal,
CEO, Botanalytics.
Twitter | LinkedIn

How Acuvate Helps Enterprises Deploy AI Chatbots

We leverage our enterprise chatbot builder platform – BotCore to help various Fortune 500 companies, SMBs, and start ups to build, deploy, manage and train AI chatbots. Our chatbots are used to improve customer service, productivity, efficiency and coordination at workplaces.

  • MeshBOT: World’s premier chatbot for SharePoint intranet that can solve your intranet adoption challenges.
  • IT Helpdesk Bot: IT Helpdesk Bot uses machine learning to learn answers to repetitive support requests and improves the speed and work productivity of your helpdesk.
  • SIA Bot: An intelligent sales assistant which helps your sales team in making informed decisions and improves top line revenue.
  • Business Intelligence Bot: A chatbot which simplifies your data consumption and interaction.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.

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Chatbots: The Past, Present, And Future https://botcore.ai/blog/chatbots-the-past-present-and-future/ Wed, 19 Dec 2018 10:42:00 +0000 https://botcore.ai/?p=98 Chatbots: The Past, Present, And Future Chatbots currently are one of the most popular AI technologies in the enterprise world. Bots are being deployed for different functions of an organization – be it engaging customers, training employees, driving sales, providing IT Helpdesk or HR support, generating leads etc. These intelligent machines provide instant service, round […]

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Chatbots: The Past, Present, And Future

Chatbots currently are one of the most popular AI technologies in the enterprise world.

Bots are being deployed for different functions of an organization – be it engaging customers, training employees, driving sales, providing IT Helpdesk or HR support, generating leads etc. These intelligent machines provide instant service, round the clock – you don’t need to keep your customers/employees waiting 24 hours for the next support agent to come online. 80% of businesses want chatbots by 2020.

However, bots weren’t equipped for intelligent and smart conversations when they were first invented. Chatbots have undergone several advancements in the past few years. The history of chatbots is intriguing, and so is the future. Let’s walk through all that chatbots were back in time, are today, and can be in the future.

the history of bots: where and how it all began

The word chatbot comes simply translates to conversation enabled by bots. As such, there are two components to this word – chat, which means conversation, and bot, which refers to the ‘computational’ element.

ELIZA, a 1964 computer program was one of the earliest examples of chatbots taking shape. Utilizing Natural Language Processing – something that allows computers to understand human language, ELIZA was able to recognize keywords and key phrases (inputs) and respond using pre-written scripts.

Soon after, an ‘intelligent’ version of ELIZA followed. This one was smarter in the sense that if ELIZA could understand inputs from a real person – PARRY could impersonate a real person! Invented by Psychiatrist Kenneth Colby, PARRY was indeed able to impersonate a patient with schizophrenia.

More inventions kept taking place to one-up older, outdated bots. And, the world soon transitioned into times when chatter bots could be openly used by masses. The first and most popular of these humanoids is A.L.I.C.E (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) or Alice. It was the most powerful NLP chatbot of its time and was awarded the Loebner Prize three times!

Interesting fact:  If you’ve watched the academy-award winning movie ‘Her’, it would be interesting to know that A.L.I.C.E was the inspiration for the movie.

the present state of chatbots: where we are today

Bots were now being deployed by businesses across various industries, all over the world. With the advancements in AI and machine learning, bots have become more intelligent are able to conduct meaningful and personalized conversations. Now, bots could adapt and learn based on the interactions they had with people. They could now process tons of data, rapidly retrieve information, process information, and give the right output/answer in no time.

In a consumer world, chatbot adoption increased because of an increase in the usage of messaging platforms. Consumers now rely on a chatbot for connecting and interacting with their favorite brand, troubleshooting basic issues, purchasing products that have been highly personalized based on their interests and likes, and keeping up to date with the latest deals and discounts on their favorite products!
According to Business Insider, by 2017, messaging apps have ousted social media platforms. You can check the following chart to get the stats and figures on global monthly active users.

Bi

chatbots in today’s enterprise

Organizations today are using chatbots for a variety of use cases and the usage varies from industry to industry and function to function. And the benefits chatbots offer are plenty including enhancing customer experience, improving employee productivity, automating mundane tasks, reducing costs and simplifying business workflows.
Enterprises are now leveraging chatbot builder platforms to effectively build, deploy, manage and train AI chatbots.
Let’s dig into some detailed chatbot use cases in the present day scenario.

chatbots for customer service

Customer service is the most popular use case of enterprise chatbots today. Businesses across industries are using customer service chatbots as the first line of support to reduce costs, improve customer experience, and increase agent productivity. Capabilities like 24/7 availability, multilingual support, instant responses, agent handover have made chatbots the most desired AI technologies in customer service.

chatbots for IT helpdesk

A number of enterprises are implementing IT helpdesk chatbots to accelerate response time, improve support staff productivity, automating IT workflows, and to deliver service related information on-demand.

Deploying chatbots can help alleviate your IT help desk challenges by making the whole process less labor-intensive, less complicated, highly interactive, and less costly.

With a chatbot at your disposal to answer basic queries raised by your employees in real-time, your IT help desk staff can focus on more complex and key tasks, thereby increasing your support efficiency!

Read More: How Can AI Bots Increase IT Helpdesk Support Efficiency?

 

chatbots for business intelligence

Data is the oil of the 21st century! Many companies today are integrating AI chatbots into their existing BI systems like PowerBI, Oracle, SAP BI etc. to help decision-makers get super quick access all the information and reports  they need, in no time.

Simply ask your bot “What is my predicted sales for December 2019” and the bot will generate an accurate response after analyzing tons of data instantly. That too in a format that you prefer (image, graphs, pie charts, etc.)!

Learn More: Business Intelligence BotsPower BI Bots

chatbots for HR

HR is one of the most popular functions for which chatbots are deployed. HR chatbots simplify and automate workflows throughout the employee life-cycle. Employees can use bots to ask simple or complex HR queries, perform tasks like applying for leaves or giving an appraisal etc. Whether it’s talent management or onboarding or employee engagement or off boarding, chatbots have successfully reduced HR costs in all stages of the employee life-cycle and streamlined the entire process.

Learn more: How Chatbots are Revolutionizing The HR Department

statistics on adoption of chatbots

  • Chatbots are expected to cut business costs by $8 billion by 2022 – Juniper Research

  • Furthermore, by 2021, conversational AI-first will be adopted by the majority of enterprise IT – Gartner.

  • By 2021, 50% of enterprises will be spending higher on chatbot creation than on mobile app development. – Gartner

For more such insights and statistics on the state of chatbot adoption, read through this blog post.

the future of chatbots: where we are headed

As the chatbot technology continues to mature, the future of bots is becoming interesting. Here are a few important trends to watch for:

  • Chatbot-RPA integration: Enterprises are taking customer and employee experiences to the next level by combining the power of automation from RPA and cognitive intelligence from chatbots. RPA helps chatbots access legacy enterprise systems which lack modern APIs. Bots can trigger RPA robots to perform complex actions without routing to a human agent – increasing productivity.

  • Voice Bots: Gartner predicts that, by 2023, 25 percent of employee interactions with applications will be via voice, up from under 3 percent in 2019. In the future, chatbots will no longer be just text-based interfaces. As AI-powered speech-to-text and text-to-speech hosted services improve, voice bots will be used for a variety of enterprise applications including conversational BI, IT helpdesk, scheduling meetings etc.

  • Chatbots will be more human: As key chatbot components like NLP, Machine Learning, sentiment analysis, contextual and language understanding etc. become more advanced, chatbots will be able to conduct much more complex conversations – just like a human does.

There might be soon a time when your bot will be reminding you of your sales meeting scheduled for the day. There’ll soon be times when a smart speaker will take your order at a restaurant. Bots speaking to bots can become the reality of the future. What next? We can only wonder.

If you’d like to learn more about enterprise chatbots please feel free to get in touch with one of our chatbot consultants for a quick consultation! 

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Envisioning The Work-Life Of An Employee In A Chatbot-Driven Enterprise https://botcore.ai/blog/envisioning-the-work-life-of-an-employee-in-a-chatbot-driven-enterprise/ Fri, 07 Sep 2018 10:09:00 +0000 https://botcore.ai/?p=112 Envisioning The Work-Life Of An Employee In A Chatbot-Driven Enterprise Meet Nathan. He has recently joined ABC Corp. as a Marketing Manager. The new job means a new city and the tension associated with relocation. But one thing that Nathan is thankful for is that the hiring and on-boarding process was seamless and did not […]

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Envisioning The Work-Life Of An Employee In A Chatbot-Driven Enterprise

Nathan

Meet Nathan. He has recently joined ABC Corp. as a Marketing Manager. The new job means a new city and the tension associated with relocation. But one thing that Nathan is thankful for is that the hiring and on-boarding process was seamless and did not require him to visit their office again and again. But how was this achieved? Well, luckily for Nathan, ABC Corp. happens to be one of the forward-thinking organizations that uses chatbots for all their HR, ITSM, and Business Intelligence related tasks.

what is a chatbot?

chatbot is a computer program or an artificial intelligence which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Chatbots are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner and are used for various practical enterprise use cases including customer service, IT helpdesk, HR or information acquisition (Business Intelligence).

ABC Corp uses BotCore’s AI chatbot which enables organizations to build and deploy customized AI chatbots. So, let us see how Nathan’s life at ABC Corp. has been impacted by chatbots.

chatbots – making nathan’s life easier

Nathan has joined as a Marketing Manager. A typical day in the life of someone in this role entails multiple team meetings, client interactions and brainstorming sessions that require them to access records and data insights on the go. Also, since marketing managers almost always have days that are jam-packed, having someone take care of handling internal processes such as applying for leave, giving appraisals, searching for reports and information and keeping them abreast of upcoming meetings etc. would be a boon. Someone like a personal assistant; BUT, not everyone can have an assistant tracking these details. It is just not a feasible option. However, everyone can seek help from a virtual assistant. In order to see how chatbots are helping Nathan handle daily life at ABC Corp., let us look at some scenarios. 

Recruitment

When Nathan applied for the position at ABC Corp., he was immediately sent a text message by Allie, ABC’s recruitment bot.

Allie: Hello Nathan. I am Allie from ABC Corp. I am reaching out to you in response to your application for the position of Marketing Manager.

Allie: We see that your skill set matches that which is required for the role. Could I go ahead and set up an interview for you with our GM-Marketing?

Nathan: Thanks, Allie Sure!

Allie:  Thank you Nathan. Would the 1st July 2019, 12 PM work for you?

Nathan: Umm…will I be required to come to your HQ location?

Allie: That will not be necessary. I see that you are based in a different city, hence we could have the interview via Skype. Is that okay?

Nathan: That would be perfect. Thank you!

Allie: You are welcome. Please add ABCCorp as a contact on Skype. I have sent you a calendar invite for the interview. Kindly acknowledge the same.

Nathan: Sure.

Allie: Thank you Nathan. Have a great day ahead. And good luck for the interview!

Nathan was extremely pleased with how efficient Allie was in reaching out to him quickly, understanding his location criteria and setting up an interview accordingly. In a recent survey by Allegis it was noted that 58% of candidates were comfortable interacting with AI and recruitment chatbots in the early stages of the application process. In fact, about 66% of candidates were comfortable with AI and chatbots taking care of interview scheduling and peripheral activity.

Essentially, a recruitment chatbot can collect information from candidates such as their resume and contact information, help set up an interview with a human stakeholder based on his/her calendar, collect screening details such as experience and skills and answer the candidate’s basic questions about the job.

Learn more: How Chatbots Can Simplify the Recruitment Process

HR Onboarding

Once Nathan cleared the interview and was offered the job, he was reached out by Allie once again.

Allie: Hello Nathan. This is Allie. Congratulations on the offer, Welcome to ABC Corp!

Nathan: Hi Allie. Thank you very much.

Allie: Before we start the onboarding formalities, do you have any questions I can help you with?

Nathan: As a matter of fact, yes. Could you please send me any company related information I should be well-versed in before getting started?

Allie: Absolutely! Below is a company overview video to get you started with!

Allie: You can also refer this intranet page for more information [Read Now]

Nathan: Great! Thanks Allie. Could you also send across the leave policy and the list of holidays for this year?

Allie: Sure. Here are the leave policy and the holiday calendar. [Check Now]

Now, please note that as part of the onboarding process, you are required to send across copies of the following documents to hr@abccorp.com:

  • Personal Identification Details – any authority attested  identification card would do
  • Last 3 payslips from your previous employer
  • Bank account details

Nathan: Sure, I will send them across.

Allie: Okay. Also sending across the NDA. Please sign the same and send it across.

Nathan: Okay.

Allie: Great! Thank you Nathan..

Nathan: I’d like to raise an IT request for requesting a new laptop

Allie: Sure, your request is recorded. An IT agent will get in touch with you soon!

Nathan: That’s great, Thanks Allie!

Learn More: How Chatbots are Revolutionizing The HR Department

IT Helpdesk

Nathan has started his first day at ABC Corp. and has met his team. He has been given access to the company’s marketing dashboard but is unable to sign in. He remembers that ABC Corp. uses an IT helpdesk bot that can be accessed using the internal messaging tool. He decides to seek help.

Nathan: Hi.

IT Bot: Hello Nathan. Welcome to ABC Corp. How can I help you?

Nathan: Well, I am unable to sign in to the marketing dashboard.

IT Bot: Have you been granted access?

Nathan: Yes. I was sent an email earlier that I can now access the dashboard to see project-specific details. But my sign-in credentials do not work.

IT Bot: Sorry about that. Let me check.

Nathan: Sure.

IT Bot: Looks like there was a technical problem with credential generation. I have sent across a password reset link to your email ID. Kindly use it to sign in with the new password.

Nathan: Okay. Thank you.

IT Bot: My pleasure. Is there anything else I may assist you with?

Nathan: No.

IT Bot: Okay! Have a nice day Nathan.

Nathan uses the password reset link to quickly sign-in to the dashboard. He is happy that instead of having to waste time locating and asking the right people for the fix, he was able to reach out to the IT helpdesk bot in no time.

Read More: How Can AI Bots Increase IT Helpdesk Support Efficiency?

business intelligence

It has now been a couple of weeks since Nathan joined ABC Corp. Today he is scheduled to meet with the head of Alpha Foods, a long-standing customer of the company. One of the issues that Alpha Foods is facing is a steep decline in sales. Nathan has been asked by his manager to focus on the issue in order to come up with a fix. Before he walks into the meeting, Nathan wants to be abreast of the company’s revenue and sales data. He decides to use Mylo, ABC Corp.’s Business Intelligence bot.

Nathan: Hi Mylo.

Mylo: Hello Nathan. How can I help you today?

Nathan: I have a meeting with Alpha Foods. Can I see their annual revenue details for last year?

Mylo: Sure. Alpha Foods’ annual revenue for 2017-2018 is 90 Billion.

Nathan: Okay, can you break that down by region?

Mylo: USA – 32B, Asia Pacific region – 35.7B, Europe – 22.3B.

Nathan: Okay, can I see a graphical representation of their sales in the Asia Pacific region?

Mylo: Yes.

Shares

Nathan: Well, that doesn’t look good. What about their sales in Europe and USA?

Mylo: They seem to be doing pretty well there. Sales in Europe have seen an improvement of 6% on average annually. Sales in the USA are on the uprise too – at an average annual rate of 2%.

Nathan: Map sales numbers for Asia Pacific with their trade promotional campaigns from the last 5 years.

Mylo: There are no trade promotions from Alpha in Asia Pacific between the years 2013 – 2018.

Nathan: That explains it. This is enough insight for now. Can you mail these figures to me as well?

Mylo: Sure. The details have been sent to your email.

Nathan has understood that Alpha Foods is facing an issue specifically in the Asia Pacific region as they are facing a hard time attracting customers to their products. Nathan uses the data insights provided by Mylo to suggest a new trade promotional campaign to boost sales for Alpha in the Asia Pacific region.

Learn More: Why Business Intelligence Needs Chatbots to Boost User Adoption & ROI

Intranet/Employee Assistant

Nathan routinely reaches out to Mia, the company’s intranet & employee assistant bot to check on internal company updates and to set up meetings.

Nathan: Hi Mia. Please schedule a meeting with Alex from the Sales team for tomorrow at noon.

Mia: Confirming, meeting tomorrow with Alex Knoxville at 12 PM?

Nathan: Confirm.

Mia: Meeting scheduled. Calendar invite sent to Alex.

Nathan: Any other updates?

Mia: Yes. The leave policy for the year 2019 has been updated. Tap to see the latest policy.

Nathan: Well, send it to my email instead.

Mia: Updated leave policy sent to your email.

Mia has made simple, daily tasks a breeze for Nathan.

Learn More:  The Role of Chatbots in the Intranet

 

explore how chatbots can help

While these are only a few popular work-life scenarios in which chatbots can help Nathan, the fact is that several other ways bots can simplify work for him or any normal employee. The conversational interface of chatbots simplify everyday workflows for employees and eliminates the hassle of switching multiple apps. Chatbots act as a single point of contact to get tasks done and access information. The use cases of chatbots are diverse and emerging across functions and industries. Enterprise leaders should have a powerful bot strategy to make the most of this technology.

If you’re interested in learning more about chatbots and how they help your organization, feel free to get in touch with one of our chatbot consultants. Acuvate leverages its enterprise chatbot builder platform, BotCore to  build, deploy, train and manage AI chatbots for large and medium sized enterprises.

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Chatbots vs Apps: What does your business need? https://botcore.ai/blog/chatbots-vs-apps-what-does-your-business-need/ Fri, 22 Jun 2018 10:04:00 +0000 https://botcore.ai/?p=129 Chatbots Vs Apps: What Does Your Business Need? Just as with any new technology that enters the market, there is always the lingering question of whether the new technology will replace the old. This question has led to an ongoing debate about whether chatbots would or should completely replace apps in today’s ever-evolving technological environment. […]

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Chatbots Vs Apps: What Does Your Business Need?

Just as with any new technology that enters the market, there is always the lingering question of whether the new technology will replace the old. This question has led to an ongoing debate about whether chatbots would or should completely replace apps in today’s ever-evolving technological environment. While some experts seem to think chatbots will, in fact, soon replace apps, others predict that they will continue to co-exist, and even complement each other for a few years to come.

As a company with extensive experience building chatbots, we may be biased towards bots. Nevertheless, for the purpose of this blog, we will logically and fairly address the pros and cons of both bots and apps, so you can decide which strategy makes the most sense for your specific business objectives.

In order to elucidate our points better, we’ll be discussing the benefits and disadvantages of both technologies, based on two different business scenario where they are used.

But first, let’s quickly establish the definitions of chatbots and apps for better understanding.

CHATBOTS

A chatbot is a software that is when powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence can engage in human-like conversations. Conversations between the user and a bot happen via a chat interface using textual or auditory methods.

Bots are usually built using a chatbot platform or frameworks and deployed on messaging apps like Skype, Skype for Business, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Facebook Messenger etc. or virtual assistants like Alexa & Cortana to converse with end-users.

Advancements in Artificial Intelligence and its components related to it like Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) leading to the building of highly intelligent bots with extremely relevant responses in a natural language tone. Also making the conversation 2 sided, very close to the human-like experience.

APPS

An application or apps is a software program that’s designed to perform a specific function directly for the user or, in some cases, for another application program.

Now let’s explore two different scenarios to understand what both these technologies can mean for business growth:

EMPLOYEE-FACING SCENARIO

Gartner reports that by 2021, more than 50% of enterprises will spend more per annum on bots and chatbot creation than traditional mobile app development.

Enterprise Applications

Today’s organizations are inundated with a variety of apps, all of which serve individual goals. With the proliferation of SaaS apps due to their cost-effectiveness and ease of use, the number of apps in enterprises has grown radically. However, the downside of this is – having to handle so many apps can be overwhelming and confusing for both end users and support staff. Employees are forced to access multiple apps to get various tasks done and the IT department has to spend a considerable length of time helping employees manage these apps effectively. This is the single biggest disadvantage of apps, that the bots can overcome.

When you think about scale in terms of geographies, this number can grow exponential rather quickly. Needless to say, the IT teams do struggle extensively to ensure that the right access is being provided to the right people. This feat is not unachievable, but it comes at a very heavy cost – From building, testing, maintaining and updating individual apps.

Moreover, chatbots can reduce the number of enterprise apps, by integrating into multiple apps and acting as a single point of contact for accessing information through a cognitive experience. Bots also automatically take care of security and authentication of users. Last but not least, apps provide more of a pull mechanism of disbursing information. Whereas bots offer both pull and push modes – acting both as a manager and assistant. This enables a better and effective way for information dissipation.

Gartner

By leveraging enterprise chatbot platforms like Acuvate’s BotCore, you can deploy a single chatbot which can integrate into multiple apps and acts as a single point of contact for employees to get all the relevant tasks done and queries answered. Employees don’t have to switch and navigate through different apps.

Read More: Why should enterprises bet on bots?

Bot

Case-study

A global consumer goods company had a huge workforce of above 160000 employees across several locations. Users were using multiple applications and software to complete routine HR and IT tasks resulting in decreased employee productivity and high operational costs.

We leveraged our enterprise chatbot building platform, BotCore to build an AI bot which is integrated into the company’s most used HR and IT apps. The bot resides as a contact in Skype for Business – the company’s actively used messaging app. It answers the repetitive IT and HR related questions of employees and helps them complete simple tasks like leave application, raising an IT ticket etc.

This drastically decreased the dependency on the IT and HR support staff.

UPON DEPLOYMENT OF THE BOT, THE COMPANY’S COST-PER-CONTACT AND COST-PER-TICKET DECREASED BY OVER 20%.

CONSUMER-FACING SCENARIO

Apps have obviously seen their share of the limelight. With Apple’s App store claiming to have over 100 billion application downloads, it’s not hard to see why apps, with the convenience they offer, are a vital part of a variety of devices we use on a daily basis. Whether one is using smartphones or tablets, laptops or TVs, we are heavily dependent on apps for a variety of functions. Infact, apps form the basis – a singular interface- of how we interact with our smart devices.

App fatigue is a real challenge for consumers and brands, alike.

Based on a report by App Annie, the average user uses only 9 or 10 apps on a daily basis, even though they have upwards of 35 or 40 downloaded.

Further, app downloads have also plateaued, even though the number of devices continues to increase. This is primarily because most people are randomly downloading all the apps they can anymore and instead sticking to apps that are already known and established.

Then there’s also the challenge a lot of smartphone users experienced with the usage of their time, leading them to limit their app downloads. Having too many apps on the phone also slows the device down and causes memory issues.

Apps are still very popular and sought after, however, new apps simply can’t expect to continue at a massive growth rate. According to a report from Nielsen, despite the increase in app usage and app choices, the number of apps used per user is staying the same.

It is expected that only a few apps will continue to reside on people’s devices and stay relevant, as they continue to become a primary channel through a lot of tasks centred around work, play and communication, can get accomplished. But organizations across the board will have to identify new ways of reaching customers.

What is particularly interesting is that messaging apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, etc. have seen significant growth. A Business Insider research study reports that the combined total monthly active user (MAU) count of the top 4 messaging apps has grown to 4.1 billion in 2018, with the top three messaging apps claiming user bases of 1 billion or more.

Bi

Companies have realized that their customers are on a variety of platforms and that in order to stay on their minds, they have to be present on these platforms as well. And as consumers increasingly move towards messaging, businesses are making it a priority to facilitate channels that can make it happen effectively. Several companies are using chatbots such as H&M, Pizza Hut, Sephora, and others and they’ve experienced success with it.

BUILDING A CHATBOT V/S MOBILE APP

This is likely the most important factor when making your decision between building a chatbot vs a mobile app. For an organization to generate any ROI from its development efforts, it is important to consider that building mobile apps is an expensive affair requiring large teams, in-depth strategizing, long development cycles, possible outsourcing, ongoing support, which can end up costing organizations a huge chunk of investment to build and support.

It can also be conveniently managed by an enterprise chatbot platform that facilitates the easy rollout of updates. The only expenses enterprises incur with building a bot is limited to their developer’s time. If the bot is being built at scale, then associated costs do increase based on the platform chosen – however, it is still rather minimal compared to what enterprises would spend building an app at that scale.

WILL CHATBOTS REPLACE APPS?

We don’t imagine chatbots would replace apps, as they may not be comprehensive, exhaustive solution for your company. When built and deployed efficiently, they can be a great way to change the way your business operates, as they add context, consistency, efficiency and human-like conversation to your daily business operations. Most importantly, they’re extremely cost-effective.

If you are a company that is just starting to consider the chatbot route for your organization, consider integrating chatbots with your existing apps and websites to maximize customer engagement and increase employee productivity.

If you’d like to know more about chatbots and watch our enterprise chatbot builder platform – BotCore in action, feel free to schedule a demo with our experts.

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How Chatbots will help in HR onboarding https://botcore.ai/blog/how-chatbots-will-help-in-hr-onboarding/ Fri, 11 May 2018 12:12:00 +0000 https://botcore.ai/?p=139 How Chatbots Will Help In HR Onboarding Organizations are incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) as central components of their digital transformation strategy. According to Gartner, more than 50% of CIOs will have artificial intelligence as one of their top five investment priorities by 2020. AI-powered chatbots are set to […]

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How Chatbots Will Help In HR Onboarding

Organizations are incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) as central components of their digital transformation strategy.

According to Gartner, more than 50% of CIOs will have artificial intelligence as one of their top five investment priorities by 2020.

AI-powered chatbots are set to transform different aspects of HR process, especially recruiting, hiring, and onboarding new employees. HR teams can progressively leverage these chatbots to streamline and personalize the HR onboarding process.

HR administrators are starting to pilot AI to achieve outstanding value to the organization by leveraging chatbots for recruiting, onboarding, employee development and training. Especially in high attrition industries such as retail, finance, healthcare. etc

A recent survey of 350 HR leaders conducted by ServiceNow finds 92% of HR leaders agree that the future of providing an enhanced level of employee service will include chatbots.

Learn More: How Chatbots Help HR Managers Improve Employee Experience And Reduce Cost Per Contact

7 WAYS HR CHATBOTS CAN HELP IN HR ONBOARDING

INITIAL SCREENING

In 2016, 56% of recruiters said they can’t make good hires because of lengthy hiring procedures
– MRI Network Survey 2016

Reduce the hiring cycle by automating your initial screening using the power of conversational user interface.

Chatbots can initiate the interview process by fielding screening questions and capturing the answers. This helps in automatically screening and shortlisting the right candidates by assessing their potential.

Automating screening has an additional benefit of eliminating human bias and identifying the candidates based on merit.

WALKING RECRUITS THROUGH INITIAL ONBOARDING REQUIREMENT

HR personnel need to collect basic information like KYC, tax forms and signed non-disclosure agreements or other legal documents from the new employees during onboarding. It would be a rather time-consuming activity for the HR personnel to collect information from every employee.

In such scenarios, HR chatbots can be best utilized to assist potential hires. During the onboarding process, chatbots can answer queries from new hires through the conversational interface. They can speed up the onboarding process by collecting employee information, completing forms, and assisting in online registration by removing the need for paperwork.

GUIDING NEW HIRES THROUGH COMPANY POLICIES

New hires require a lot of attention initially to get answers to some of the most repetitive or basic questions regarding the policies or standard operating procedures etc. of an organization.

New hires and HRs can save a lot of time by redirecting interactions involving basic queries to an HR chatbot. These could be anything from HR policies about a vacation to standard operating procedures for new employees.

HR chatbots can help businesses improve the employee experience and help reduce HR workload by answering employees questions about latest company policies instantly and accurately.

Read More: How Chatbots Are Revolutionizing The HR Department

INTRODUCTION TO ORGANIZATIONS TEAM

In industries like retail etc. in which workforce is spread across multiple locations, onboarding can be a major challenge. Finding out about team updates, company achievements, scheduled projects and objectives is a basic need for a new entrant in a department.

New hires don’t know whom to contact for completing tasks or ask for information – in order to get the required information, they start contacting the HR team for even the most minor things.

AI chatbots can reduce dependency on HR and prioritize issues. Using chatbots, new employees can directly interact with the bot regarding their team’s whereabouts and updates within the organization. Additionally, chatbots help new joinees extract details about their assigned role, team hierarchy and their position in the organization landscape.

SHIFT MANAGEMENT

While employees are in the process of gaining insights and getting a hang of the systems, chatbots are programmed to set up monitoring of login logout timings of the new joinee.

Generally, employees maintain and manage their time sheets using specifically intended portals provided by the organization. Employees need to login into the portal and update them physically during login and logout times. This process would take time, impact productivity and may lead to human errors too.

AI-powered chatbots assist employees in check-in and check-out before and after the work-hour directly using the conversational interface. These details can then further get into your time management applications leaving no room for human error.

EMPLOYEE SURVEYS OR REFRESHER QUIZZES

HR can use chatbots to the fullest of potential by conducting surveys that are employee-specific. This helps them identify the patterns in employee experience in the onboarding process. This process helps HR in identifying their areas of improvement in the entire onboarding process.

Organizations can initiate refresher quizzes on any operational or HR practices to identify the pitfalls of each department leveraging chatbots. This helps in gaining extra mileage in the employee engagement space apart from process improvements.

Read More: What Are Enterprise Chatbot Platforms And What Are They For?

EXPERIENCE IMPASSIVE YET HELPFUL INTERACTIONS

Some HR questions are awkward to ask a human. Employees might be fearful/ feel quite embarrassed to ask certain personal HR questions.

HR Chatbots are significantly more helpful than humans when it comes to asking highly sensitive personal inquiries.

Using HR bots employees could talk about a few personal concerns like:

  • If and when an employee needs to disclose a pregnancy, and what the maternal leave policies are.
  • What qualifies as sexual harassment and how to report it.
  • If employees are intending to leave the organization, they can ask about how much vacation time they have remaining and the compensation they get for remaining vacation time.

If the employee is not really satisfied with the answers provided by the chatbots, then he/she can interact about the issue directly with a human agent.

HR CHATBOTS ARE THE FUTURE

By 2021, 30% of high-volume recruiting activities (sourcing, screening, shortlisting and candidate interaction) will be done without human intervention, using innovative applications based on AI and data as a service (DaaS) – Gartner

If the onboarding process is carried out by chatbots, HR teams will have more time in managing critical and high priority issues resulting in an improved ESAT and lower cost per contact.

Organizations will have an edge over peer companies by ensuring enhanced employee engagement, improving employee retention and driving an increase in overall productivity.

On the other hand, employees feel more engaged and have a 24×7 accessible assistant who can come to their rescue at critical times and resolve issues.

Both organizations and employees will have a win-win situation by employing chatbots – by boosting employee productivity and maximizing efficiency.

Ready to deploy chatbots to assist you in your onboarding process and conducting employee surveys? If yes, check out our HR chatbot built on BotCore – An enterprise bot builder platform.

Read More: A Buyer’s Guide To Choosing The Best Chatbot Builder Platform

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.

A Return To Workplace Checklist For HR Leaders

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Chatbots: AI’s Most Practical Use Case for The Digital Workplace https://botcore.ai/blog/chatbots-ais-practical-use-case-digital-workplace/ Fri, 23 Mar 2018 20:25:00 +0000 https://botcore.ai/?p=157 Chatbots: AI’s Most Practical Use Case For The Digital Workplace WHAT DOES A DIGITAL WORKPLACE STAND FOR? A survey by the SMG/CMSWire and Digital Workplace Group as an industry insight for the 2017 Digital Workplace Experience conference revealed that 95 percent of organizations agree that a digital workplace is important. There are several definitions of a digital […]

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Chatbots: AI’s Most Practical Use Case For The Digital Workplace

WHAT DOES A DIGITAL WORKPLACE STAND FOR?

survey by the SMG/CMSWire and Digital Workplace Group as an industry insight for the 2017 Digital Workplace Experience conference revealed that 95 percent of organizations agree that a digital workplace is important.

There are several definitions of a digital workplace, so it’s really important to understand what it really is. Gartner puts it eloquently, claiming that the Digital Workplace enables new, more effective ways of working; raises employee engagement and agility; and exploits consumer-oriented styles and technologies.

Needless to say, all of these important achievements for an organization and they want to get on the bandwagon as soon as possible. With all of the radical transformations in technology, the digital workplace is undergoing an upheaval of changes. How then does an organization prepare and adapt?

As the current of an issue as it is to digitize your workplace, it’s also important to note that this conversion should be addressed in its entirety, which means technology, process and people – all three contributing factors must be taken into account and accordingly brought together.

Even before we get into the specifics of how chatbots are key to a digital workplace, it should also be noted that a digital workplace is not a destination, but rather a journey. This means your organization must be prepared for constant innovation, improvement and transformation. With that being said, it is also imperative that the digital workplace strategy being employed must take into account that employees are of utmost importance in this journey – organizations must continually provide them with latest technologies and tools required.

Read More: 5 Digital Workplace Trends for 2018.

And that brings us to the discussion of a chatbot.

WHAT ARE CHATBOTS?

A chatbot is really just another software, which is often powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence and can carry human-like conversations. Conversations between the user and a bot happen via a chat interface using textual or auditory methods.

Bots are usually built using a chatbot platform or frameworks, and deployed on messaging apps like Skype, Skype for Business, Slack, Microsoft Teams etc. or virtual assistants like Alexa & Cortana  to converse with end-users. Advancements in Artificial Intelligence and its components related to it like Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) led to the building of highly intelligent bots with extremely relevant responses in a natural language tone.

The reason chatbots are gaining so much attention from businesses across the world is that they offer a myriad of practical applications for both employees and customers.

Read More: Different ways your business can use chatbots

THE ROLE OF CHATBOTS IN THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE

Before we begin to discuss the role of chatbots in the digital workplace, it is essential to understand what chatbots can do for your workforce. Chatbots can:

  • Fetch information

  • Answer Questions

  • Push personalized notifications

  • Complete tasks

If you have watched the famous Marvel movie “Iron Man”, you must be be well acquainted with Tony Stark’s virtual assistant Jarvis and how Tony has him do a lot of groundwork for him like  “Do a background check on that person”, “Launch the new missile”, “Connect me with Pepper”, “What is the latest news” etc.

An employee chatbot features similar functionality. Consider these scenarios:

  • George, a sales employee, wants to know the latest updates on the intranet. He can ask/send a quick natural language question such as, “What’s new?” to his/her intranet chatbot in Slack, Skype for Business etc. and obtain personalized updates.

Meshbot
  • George is facing issues with his VPN and wants to raise an IT helpdesk ticket, He can simply ask an IT helpdesk chatbot for instructions or raise a ticket to get in touch with a human agent. He doesn’t have to log in to ServiceNow or Jira to complete the action.

  • George wants to obtain specific information from the CRM or a BI system or a Reporting system.  He can skip logging in, filtering dashboards and switching between windows – he simply has to ask the BI chatbot for the details he needs.

Sia Chatbot V2
  • George is now wearing a field-sales personnel cap and needs to know if there have been rises or dips in sales. A field-sales chatbot can send personalized alerts so George is immediately notified when action needs to be taken.

Sia Bot
  • George doesn’t know how to apply for a leave. He can simply ask the HR chatbot for instructions and apply by chatting with the bot in the language of his choice.

Mesh Chatbot

The greatest benefit that chatbots bring about is ensuring tasks get done in a single interface. There is no time wasted in switching between various apps or any ensuing confusion. George can get his daily tasks done efficiently because he has handed off most of the ‘manual’ work to the chatbot, getting it all done within his actively-used messaging app.

  • Chatbots provide a self-service option to employees and reduce their dependency on external IT or HR teams. This contributes towards delivering better employee experience and increased productivity, as well as easier knowledge access and sharing. Think of all time and costs saved! Chatbots are expected to cut business costs by $8 billion by 2022.
  • Chatbots provide enormous support to the emerging enterprise mobility. Remote employees can access chatbots to access information or get tasks done across multiple devices anytime and anywhere.

CHATBOTS PRESENT USE CASES ACROSS A RANGE OF DEPARTMENTS.

Take for example, the intranet system of an organization. What always begins with the highest expectations of collaboration and engagement, intranet installation often witnesses dismal adoption rates and eventually being relegated to the job of legacy reference systems or a repository of references. They are not remotely leveraged for their potential of generating interactive engagement across the organization.

This, of course, results in diminished ROI, and leaves employees working remotely void of the collaboration tool they require to stay plugged into the project and be productive in distributed teams. This inability to leverage the intranet’s potential functionality has left businesses rather concerned, as instances of distributed teams rise across the world.

The Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report reveals that “43 percent of Americans said they spent at least some time working remotely last year, up from 39 percent in 2012.”

IT’S THE RIGHT TIME TO CONSIDER CHATBOTS

As you begin your journey towards a digital workplace, we expect that chatbots will obviously figure into your path towards transformation. A bot strategy can help businesses identify the most profitable use case. Unlike other AI technologies, chatbots come with the least privacy and security issues and don’t require many cultural changes. They typically have high adoption rates due to ease of use, and deliver performance improvements rather quickly.

At Acuvate, we leverage our AI-Powered Chatbot Platform – BotCore to build custom bots for enterprises. Our readily available solutions also include:

If you are currently considering building a chatbot or are exploring what a chatbot can do to address your specific business challenges, sign up for a free bot strategy session with one of our AI experts!

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Different ways your business can use chatbots https://botcore.ai/blog/different-ways-business-can-use-chatbots/ Wed, 07 Feb 2018 14:43:00 +0000 https://botcore.ai/?p=171 Different Ways Your Business Can Use Chatbots ‘80% of businesses want chatbots by 2020’ is projected by Oracle. While there are some are rule-based chatbots built for simpler tasks, the story is treading towards AI powered chatbots for intelligent and complex tasks. Businesses have created personas that are ubiquitous and have multiplied presence. Chatbots come with […]

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Different Ways Your Business Can Use Chatbots

‘80% of businesses want chatbots by 2020’ is projected by Oracle. While there are some are rule-based chatbots built for simpler tasks, the story is treading towards AI powered chatbots for intelligent and complex tasks.

Businesses have created personas that are ubiquitous and have multiplied presence. Chatbots come with the privilege of responding without bias and with a consistent behaviour. A Business Insider survey in 2017 has reported that ‘48% of consumers prefer a chatbot that solves issues over a chatbot that has personality.’ The saturation of the app market and increase in usage of messenger apps led to the rise of bots.

Businesses have discovered many different ways to use these programmed personalities to solve business problems. Their functionality can be divided based on type of audience and business segment.

CHATBOTS IN THE BUSINESS TO CONSUMER (B2C)

B2C Chatbot success stories over Facebook platform and Kik have gained popularity for their versatility. Here are a few ways you can use chatbots in a B2C scenario

  1. Many customer service automation bots like Flow XO, IMI bot are growing in number. A survey by Oracle claims that, ‘65% of consumers prefer using a messaging app when contacting a business’. The demand is rising because these bots are able to personalize customer service for each business

  2. Bots also help in initiating an expression of gratitude to customers. Kudos bot lets you say thank you and organizes delivery. .

  3. Gamification stitched with an altruistic objective. Karma collector bot that collects your karma and encourages people to help others in a gamified way.

  4. Financial markets are not left out of the radar of chatbots. There are bots that monitor stocks as well as track simple domestic savings. My Kai is one such bot that helps manage your savings.

  5. Freelancers, especially content marketing and writing professionals bet big time of content writing bots. Grammar correction bot, Grammarly in one such solution.

  6. Giphy is an interesting search bot that sieves the entire web to find the type of GIFs you are looking for.

  7. There are bots that work on lifestyle and behavioural issues too. Wysa is one of the robo-healers among many out there that help people in dealing with depression, break-ups and laziness.

  8. Woebot uses chat conversations, sentiment and tone analysis and word games to help people who are looking for inexpensive therapy.

  9. There is also a bot that helps people stay mindful all through the day, which happens to be a proven health enhancement technique. It is called Meditate Bot.

  10. X, Amy and a few hundreds of bots out there are programmed to be a personal assistant. They help in scheduling meetings, sending reminders and drafting emails, setting auto-responders all through the day. This eliminates the hassle of training and attrition.

  11. Hello Era, Sephora and 1800 are some chatbots that are directed towards influencing purchase for their respective brands. They are designed to offer personalized information for those trying to make respective purchase decisions.

Some of these bots are also applicable to a B2B scenario. Chatbots for customer support and engagement are used by B2B businesses too.

CHATBOTS IN THE BUSINESS TO BUSINESS (B2B)

For B2B, chatbot solutions are fewer in comparison to B2C. However, it is not too far to see this number growing. Bots are supporting companies in majority of the functions starting from marketing, finance, workforce management and recruitment. A survey by Hubspot has revealed that 57% of consumers are interested in chatbots for their instantaneity.

  1. Interview process management bot. Helps you to organize and manage interview person for a candidate. Gecko is an AI powered interview bot that uses video to help you screen candidates.

  2. Meet Alex and Mya are few other AI powered bots that can help a recruiter with screening candidates and job interview scheduling. Some bots are also created to help you with interviewer feedback and job advertisements.

  3. Marketing is now about being personalized and targeting to only those who matter to the business. Bixtext offers personalized marketing using artificial intelligence.

  4. Tata Capital has achieved 600% increase in lead generation with the help of chatbot. There is another bot called Drift that helps in generating qualified leads using conversations.

CHATBOTS IN THE BUSINESS TO ENTERPRISE (B2E)

Organizations are more concerned now about being future-ready than ever before. Chatbots have proven their productivity is delivering high ROI in other spheres of business. To empower different elements of an Enterprise, organizations are building their own bots using bot builder platforms. To grow internally organizations face many behavioural and adoption challenges. Chatbots help in filling these gaps and improving productivity.

  • Gartner’s research points that almost 40% of intranets fail due to low adoption rates. Once deployed on organizational messaging apps like Skype for Business Skype Slack etc Chatbots extract info from intranet and present it to employees via QnA interface. At Acuvate, chatbots can resolve this situation for Sharepoint Intranet initiatives. We call this MeshBOT. It is agile and helps in mitigating intranet adoption. It empowers employees to optimally utilize intranet. As employees interact with MeshBOT it gathers information and patterns, which enables it to provide a personalised experience.

Meshbot
  • Every company has ideal and aspirational SLAs for its IT team. However, either due to under resourced teams, lack of time or decision making bottlenecks, the IT helpdesk team fails to fulfil the criteria. The self-service IT helpdesk bot not only empowers the IT team, but with fast response, it also helps the entire organization by rendering information in time. Bots for IT helpdesk increase support staff and employee productivity. They answer simple and basic questions of employees such as password reset etc. and thereby reduce ticket costs.

It Helpdesh Chatbot Mobile View
  • There is a high demand for business intelligence bots. Bots eliminate the need for users to visit multiple BI systems and can boost BI user adoption. Our Sales Intelligent Assistant (SIA), an AI powered chatbot integrates with Data Warehouse/ Line of Business systems or your CRM and enables the sales teams to chat and quickly obtain relevant information regarding key metrics.

Sia Bot
  • Company financial performance monitoring bot. This is an internal tool that could be run by the CFO and her team.

  • Chatbots are changing the face of how HR is conducted. They help in automating several HR tasks like onboarding employees. This onboarding bot helps a person to find the right things, complete tasks in the best order etc. Donut is an onboarding and pairing bot that helps a new employee complete all the necessary tasks in the designated time. Such bots also track with the progress of an employee’s essential tasks.

Strategically implemented bots offer a lot of use cases for enterprises. At Acuvate, we conduct workshops for enterprise business and IT leaders to recognize use cases with the organization. Our free e-book helps you discover how to develop resources, get started with a chatbot program and how to choose an enterprise bot builder platform . If you are eager to build your own chatbot, get started at www.botcore.ai.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.

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Basic Resources Required to Build an Enterprise Chatbot https://botcore.ai/blog/basic-resources-required-build-enterprise-chatbot/ Fri, 02 Feb 2018 21:35:00 +0000 https://botcore.ai/?p=173 Basic Resources Required To Build An Enterprise Chatbot “BOTS ARE THE NEW APPS!” – MICROSOFT CEO, SATYA NADELLA Enterprises today use numerous applications for diverse purposes. The different types of apps in an enterprise IT architecture typically include: Productivity ESS LOB ERP Due to the constant increase in organizational data and changing business necessities, new […]

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Basic Resources Required To Build An Enterprise Chatbot

“BOTS ARE THE NEW APPS!” – MICROSOFT CEO, SATYA NADELLA

Enterprises today use numerous applications for diverse purposes. The different types of apps in an enterprise IT architecture typically include:

  • Productivity

  • ESS

  • LOB

  • ERP

Enterprise Applications

Due to the constant increase in organizational data and changing business necessities, new apps emerge and employees need to constantly switch different apps for multiple purposes.

This continuous switching especially becomes a major hurdle for key decision-makers who need speedy access to pinpointed information.

This vigorous growth of enterprise apps also burdens the IT department which needs to ensure high-level security and the right authentication levels. Not to mention, three-quarters of enterprise applications have at least one vulnerability.

Chatbot (or bot) acts as an app manager by extracting the queried data from the organization’s core applications and sending it through the chosen and already-actively-used organizational messaging platform like Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Telegram etc.

Usually powered by Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing, chatbots eliminate the need for specialist apps and act as a single point of contact to decision-makers.

The conversational interface of these bots allows employees to get the needed data by asking one question at a time right within their preferred messaging app.

While developing a new enterprise application is not a new concept, building a robust enterprise chatbot is still a journey less traveled.

THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS BUILDING AN ENTERPRISE BOT
– CREATE A BOT STRATEGY

Without strategy, execution is aimless – Morris Chang

Before delving into the actual part of this blog-post i.e basic resources to build an enterprise bot, it’s important to first discuss a bigger question –

Why are you building the bot and how does it fit with your company’s goals”

Business leaders often struggle to identify different workplace challenges that can be effectively solved and automated with a bot. Gone are the days when the use cases of bots are limited to customer service.

Strategized properly, an AI bot can automate several mundane tasks in the enterprise, and also acts as a helpful digital assistant for different decision makers in multiple departments.

Based on the requirement and use cases, a structured process needs to be followed to convert requirements into a conversation design and then use it to train the chatbot and define the responses with the desired Tone of Voice.

Since its time-consuming and labour intensive task for IT leaders to explore the various use cases of enterprise AI bots themselves, Acuvate conducts AI chatbot consulting workshops.

These sessions are aimed to educate executives on the different use cases of enterprise chatbots and developing a customized bot strategy after assessing the organization’s needs.

Acuvate’s bot implementation procedure follows an agile methodology or what we call it as BDLC (Bot Development Lifecycle) Framework.  

Based on the requirement and use cases, a structured process is followed to convert requirements into conversation design and then use these to train the chatbot and define the responses with the desired Tone of Voice.

At different stages in the lifecycle, a set of templates, tools, and processes are used to streamline activities involved and keep stakeholders updated.  

Just like any other agile project, this is a sprint-based approach. Each sprint duration will be in the range of 4 to 5 weeks. Here’s a small peek at our typical 4-week sprint.

 

WEEK 1

WEEK 2

WEEK 3

WEEK 4

Activities

  • Content & Requirement

  • Analysis & Classification

  • Template Capture

  • CUX

  • NL Modelling

  • CUX

  • NL Modelling

  • Training & Implementation

  • Training & Implementation

  • UAT & Go-Live

Deliverables

  • Bot Requirements Template

  • Mock up videos

 
  • UAT Ready BOT

  • In-Production BOT

Framework

Just like bots, frameworks also are evolving everyday. Some of the latest frameworks provide toolkits which support different languages for bot development, portals for quick assembly and emulators for bot testing. As the complexity of the use case increases, the conversation needs to support thesaurus, taxonomies etc.

Natural Language understanding, processing and learning

An effective bot is one that is able to understand the user’s language and the context of conversation throughout the chat. While comprehending the language of user requires text and linguistic analysis i.e parts of speech tagging, phrase analysis etc. analyzing the context of conversation involves modelling the entities, intents, and actions of the user.

The bot should integrate with industry standard NLP services to provide a natural way for users to communicate with it. It is recommended that the bot platform must not be locked to a single NLP service or vendor. It should have the flexibility to switch to a different service if required. As the NLP and AI services across all vendors are constantly improving, this will give us the flexibility to choose the best NL services and integrate into the bot even in the future.

This is possible through cognitive service abstraction.

Cognitive Service Abstraction – This component provides an abstraction layer to industry standard AI & cognitive services across text, speech, vision (image) and custom machine learning algorithms. You will have the flexibility to choose and integrate the best Ai services as they mature. The abstraction layer ensures that the rest of your bot implementation will not be affected.

Conversational User Experience Design:

Conversational User Experience (CUX) Design is an important element of any good chatbot design. A well crafted conversational UX helps users achieve their goal in the shortest time with maximum end-user experience.

The design should make it easy for users to easily understand the functioning of bot and have an intelligent and helpful conversation with the bot.

A good CUX design should focus on the following aspects:

Conversations

Utterances

Best Practices

  • User-Bot interaction

  • Bot-User interaction

  • Level 0 Phrase

  • Paraphrasing and keyword density

  • Business slang

  • Standard intents

  • Error handling & fallback

  • Contextual conversations

  • Guided conversations

  • Entity fulfilment

  • Smalltalk & Bot Persona

Read More:  A Quick Guide to Creating an Effective Conversational User Experience

Dialog development

The user engagement directly depends on how well the bot converses with the user. An effective bot should send natural language responses based on the inputs. Dialog development services include:

  • Obtaining the profiles of users

  • Retaining the context of the conversation

  • Improving user interaction by providing a User interface based on the inputs

Bot should be able to understand and remember the context of a conversation with a user. It should not let users repeat themselves and rather pick up information from the conversation and use that to provide better answers and a meaningful conversation.

Host channel

Host channel is the channel through which you host the conversation with a user. By providing suitable API support for bots, a channel can prove to be an excellent host for publishing custom bots. A few of the most notable chat applications like Slack, Skype, Skype for Business, Telegram etc. have started providing support for bots.

A few more categories to consider include visual recognition, language translation and multi-device support among others.

Analytics & Administration

Once the bot is deployed for end users, it’s important to keep a check on its performance and continue to refine its natural language understanding through further training.

Frequent analysis of the bot chats ensures a continuous refinement of the bot’s functioning. It is also recommended to have a robust reporting system and dashboards for getting detailed insights of the bot’s performance.

With an administration portal, bot administrators can conveniently

  • Manage and train the bot

  • Control the bot responses

  • Manage user access etc.

Security & User Permissions

The bot should be aware if a user is authorized and properly authenticated to chat with it. This ensures that the bot is able to provide the right set of relevant services for a particular user. The entire communication series between the bot and user should be encrypted using SSL based encryption.

The bot needs to accept conversations from valid user IDs which are authorized to chat with the bot. These IDs can be configured into the bot post deployment by an administrator.

These are just a few basic resources using which you can kick start your enterprise bot journey. However, to build a productive bot which can drive high business efficiency and value, we also need to consider several other business and technical aspects.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.

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