Introduction
In 2017, businesses are looking for new ways to reach their customers, and bring in new ones. But, to do that, they have to be willing to embrace new technology. Chatbots and artificial intelligence have become a new tool that many companies are using to interact with people based on their customer’s needs, and desires. As you’ll see, these new features are becoming a necessary tool for business.
What Is A Chatbot?
But, before we can discuss a chatbot, we need to define what it is. A chatbot is a service that users interact with using natural, conversational, language. This content is used by businesses to perform a task such as customer support or helping to purchase an item. In many cases, they replace the need to go to a company’s website to look for something. You can just tell the chatbot what you want, and it will start a conversation based on the cues you give.
Artificial Intelligence
While some chatbots run on certain rules – like an “if…then” scenario – many chatbots also use artificial intelligence. The ability to use AI allows computers to do things normally done by people. In this case, a company can create a chatbot that uses artificial intelligence first to find out what the customer needs. After the initial conversation, it should have to ability to ask further – more detailed – questions that piggy back from the original question. In doing so, the chatbot can answer all of the customer’s needs. In future interactions, it can also recommend similar products based on their interests.
Examples of Chatbots
In fact, many of us have started using chatbots through popular messaging apps whether we realize it or not. For example, Facebook Messenger, Slack, and Kik all give a customer the ability to message a company with their questions or concerns directly. Through these apps, they can receive the answers they need in just a few minutes. They no longer need to wait for office hours or go to a company’s website. The messaging app helps you take care of everything.
Facebook And Artificial Intelligence
In fact, not only does Facebook help with customer service, and purchases. It can also help describe picture content to people who are blind. Facebook employee Matt King, who also is blind, helped in creating Automatic Alternative Text for the company. The tool identifies objects and people’s characteristics. It, then, uses text-to-speech to read what the picture looks like. While the service does have some kinks to work out, it is becoming popular. More than 50,000 people who have text-to-speech engines are using it.
What Marketers Need To Know
There are additional things that marketers need to understand. First, as described earlier, personalization is everything. Customers want interactions that tailor to their specific needs, and desires. Getting a personal experience will heighten their interest, and keep them coming back.
Understanding the value of artificial intelligence in chatbots has often eluded marketers. In fact, while 80 percent of marketers believe that AI will revolutionize marketing by 2020, only 26 percent of them are confident that they know how it is used in the marketing process, and only 10 percent say they are using it.
Some consider it over-hyped, but marketers need to understand that much of their customer base is made up of Generations Y & Z, which are used to doing almost everything online. These days, they are using their phones, and use messaging apps, to perform almost every task. Thus, marketers need to change their strategy to cater to the younger audience.
AI And Content Writing
In fact, many companies use artificial intelligence to write content. For example, the Associated Press now uses AI to write reports. But, it needs people to teach the relationship between the data so the AI can generate a report, which takes a lot of work.
Depending on the content, and the right AI tool, narratives can be automatically written. However, artificial intelligence will never replace human writers because we need to create the initial blueprints. Once that is done, we can move on to other content quicker.
Conclusion
Artificial intelligence has become part of today’s business world. Many companies have realized that their customers do everything through the internet, and messaging apps. Thus, it would behoove others to implement AI into their digital marketing strategy. Once they do, the improvements will be noticed right away.
