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Posted on by Ruby Lowe

Chatbots: Yay or Nay?

So what exactly are chatbots?

 

We’ve all experienced the sheer joy of asking Siri ‘Who let the dogs out?’. We’ve all heard stories of children accidentally ordering thousands of pounds worth of toys from Amazon Alexa, and if you’re a 90s kid, you might remember SmarterChild on MSN – a bot truly before its time…

But bots have moved on from the days of MSN automated responses and LOLing at Siri. In its broadest form, a bot is an automated communication software that uses the internet or a built in database to communicate with users.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yay?

But why are bots becoming more popular and why should you be using them for your brand?

Efficiencies: First and foremost, bots can take over simple tasks and automate them, removing inefficiencies and freeing up actual humans to work on higher-level tasks. For instance, if you wanted to create a bot that allowed people to book a table at your restaurant, staff would be able to answer more important and complex queries from customers, leaving the simple tasks to the bots.

Personalisation & content: bots can be used to create highly personalised streams of content for users, taking into account their likes, dislikes and online behavior. AN example of this would be CNNs chatbot, which creates personal news streams for individual users.

 

Nay?

Are there any downsides to the growth of the bot?

Function: Don’t worry; bots won’t be stealing our jobs any time soon. Bots are still very much susceptible to awkward mishaps and problems. It’s impossible to forget about Tay, a bot created by Microsoft that was created to mimic and converse with users. This mimicking tool caught the attention of internet trolls and the bots was soon learning and mimicking racist, sexist and generally quite terrible stuff out to Twitter users. Microsoft commented on the fiasco and apologized, but it’s still gone down in the history of bot disasters. (Lessons learnt from the Internet: never ask people to name ANYTHING and never let them have access to a self-learning bot.)

The difference between bot & not-a-bot: As more and more bots are created and put to use, internet users are going to have to become more savvy to what is a bot and what is not-a-bot. Would you feel deceived if you wanted to speak to customer service representative on Facebook chat but instead got served up a bot?

There are still large developments to be made: Some things that bots can do today are incredible. However, bots still lack the apathy and intelligence of..actual humans.

 

Should you think about developing a bot for your brand?

It’s important to consider if creating a bot for your brand would be genuinely useful or if creating one would be simply for the sake of it. It’s easy to get caught up in daydreams of having a hugely successful and intelligent bot, but it’s important to remember that sometimes it can go wrong, and for a lot of brands it’s a novelty not yet worthy of having. However, as technology moves on at lightning pace, it’s important to keep up. Bots (in all their forms) are a truly groundbreaking form of communication so it’s worth considering, or at least daydreaming about embracing the world of the bot at some point in the future.

By Ruby Lowe

@rubyl0ve

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