The chatbot landscape changes for 2018
Next year, Chatbot growth will dwarf all previous rises as millions of companies adopt them for their websites and Messenger apps. But the return on investment and value to the user will be keenly measured to ensure chatbots are a valid business tool and not a fad.
The stats point to growth
Various outlets put the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for chatbots at between 24.3% (Business Insider) and 37% (Orbis) for the coming years in revenue terms. In between them, MarketsandMarkets predict growth from $703 million in 2016 to $3,172 million by 2021, for a 35.2% growth rate.
Analyst firm Forrester describes “…chatbot growth as crazy. Bots are easier to develop than apps, and they’re a way to reach consumers where they spend the majority of their time.” The other big IT analyst firm Gartner says that 55% of companies will have a chatbot in operation by the year 2020, with bots operating as a key part across business and at home for families.
All of which points to a vibrant development and deployment market, with many players looking to help businesses roll out their bots.
The push to AI and NLP
While script-base bots will be more than satisfactory for many use cases, Business leaders are already looking at artificial intelligence and natural language processing to help drive the next generation of bots. Flexibility and context will be king as chatbots aim to fit alongside the likes of Alexa and Siri.
AI will help with issues like eliminating human bias from interactions, while natural language processing can widen the topic of conversation and the number of valid responses. Between them these can improve business performance for internal-facing bots, and improve the customer experience for clients or site visitors.
These features and growth drivers like multilingual interfaces, multi-channel capabilities will help chatbots become more capable and universal. That’s the high-level view, but for any company developing a chatbot, they will want the bot, whatever its technical origins, to become more
useful, to be able to answer a wider range of specific questions and provide more information to users.
The user side of the equation
Of course, an explosion of features is of little value without understanding what users want from their bots. Workplace by Facebook already deploys bots for internal use, helping to streamline work processes or manage common HR or other tasks to make a department more productive.
Any business using a collaboration tool should be able to monitor query metrics and establish ways of using bots to help deal with internal pressures, as well as those of external clients or customers.
The split comes when Internal bot users will rapidly learn how to talk to their bot and be aware of its limitations. For a new visitor to a website or a customer trying out a bot for the first time, there is no such internal knowledge and the chances of fluffing the interaction and disappointing the user is far higher.
For these cases, owners of existing bots are at an advantage as they can deep dive into their metrics and find out what leads to failed or successful interactions. Having that bedrock of knowledge gives early adopters an advantage over those new to the chatbot market.
Getting chatting fast in 2018
A key message for the chatbot market is to highlight the speed and flexibility of deployment. From an all-free model like Snatchbot that offers scripting, deploy-to-many and analytics, to the deep AI power of IBM’s Watson, chatbots are resource light, fast to launch and easy to modify.
This is a step beyond website or app development that often requires many months or work, rounds of alterations and submission processes. Chatbots are already popular among more nimble businesses and progressive brands, but more work needs to be done on breaking into the enterprise market.
Venturebeat reckons that 2018 will be the year for chatbots in the enterprise market, with insights-as-a-service a key selling point as corporations look for deeper analysis and measurable returns when it comes to customer information.
The key to success will be more statistics that demonstrate the return on investment in terms of time saved, revenue and data gathered. Once more data becomes available, the companies currently holding out will jump on board and at that point there will be no reason for a company not to operate a range of chatbots to meet the demands of customers and to improve internal processes.
This dual-pronged approach will see larger businesses reap the reward of chatbots and start asking what they can do next, the key question for 2019 and beyond.
