Chatbots - White Paper

Sub title 1: Chatbots Redefine Customer Engagement

Sub title 2: Chatbots - Future of Customer Experience

Robot --------------- (Interaction) -------------- Humans ----------------------- Service/ End Result

Index Page no

1. The need for chatbot - What is a chatbot? 1-3

2. 7 ways how chatbots can benefit your business 3-4

3. Use case (Chatbot across industries: Retail Use Case / Finance Use Case / Healthcare /
Brands)
                 Insurance, remittance, banking and taxes 4-6
                 Retail 6-7
                 Health, Restaurant, Hospitality, Travel 7-9

4. Bot Lifecycle 9

5. Chatbot Timeline 9 - 10

6. Chatbot building platforms 10 -11

7. Chatbot Classification 11 - 12

8. Future of Chatbot - Predictions 12 - 13

I. WHAT IS A CHATBOT?

We live in a world where you can buy your favorite brands (shoes/apparels) online round the clock or you can get
your insurance quote while lounging by the beach with your friends. Social media and emerging mobile
technologies have changed the landscape of human interaction. Today’s fast-paced digital world see people spend
their lives poked into smartphones for hours each day. We are now living in a world where messaging context is
slowly becoming the new model of business.

According to Gartner
 By 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human
 Customer digital assistants will recognize customers’ face by voice across different channels and
partners.
  More than 1/3rd of customers prefer social media rather than telephonic conversation for customer support.
 ‘Smart agents’ would manage 40% of mobile interactions by 2020.
 By 2019, personal assistants will hold a place in smartphone interactions.

So what’s driving the next digital revolution? Chatbots and messaging apps are the latest technology that
revolutionizes marketing.  

Diagram 1
2000 (mobile) --------- 2008 (apps) ---------- 2017 (chatbots)

Why bots are taking the world by storm, why your company or business needs one and how to do it right.
A Chat Robot is an application powered by artificial intelligence (AI) designed to stimulate a conversation with
another human. Bots are lightweight programs that communicate with applications or systems on human behalf to
get things done. Bots offer easy-to-use conversational interface so humans can talk to the systems just like they talk
to other people.
By end of 2017 messaging apps are likely to take over social media. Hence chatbots can be considered as the digital
bridge for messaging app users who would wish to text instead of talk. Chatbots have been around for more than 20
years. Bots aren’t “one size fits all”. They’re “one size fits one”. Chatbots are the latest innovation that startups
and corporations alike are using to serve their customers.

Artificial intelligence (intelligence exhibited by machine/software) technology coupled with the rapid proliferation
of messaging apps has made chatbots a glamorous marketing tool for businesses today. 41% of US adults use voice
search on a daily basis indicating that this functionality is already playing a key role in search queries. Artificial
intelligence and speech recognition are primers for chatbot development. Chatbots act as a new frontier in customer
engagement and brand marketing.

Diagrammatic chatbot illustration (buying dresses from an online store)

“A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human” -
Alan Turing
“Turing Test” is considered as the standard for qualifying chatbots as intelligent. This test determines whether the
computer/machine exhibits intelligent behavior equivalent to or indistinguishable from that of humans. Turing test
involves 5-minute long text conversations with judges, during which the chatbot should convince the judges that it is
human on average at least 30% of the time.
Chatbot Statistics
 Global chatbot market is expected to grow exponentially between 2016 - 2023.
 10K+ developers are using Facebook to build chatbots.
 Average messages per session and time per session across all bots jumped a bit from June to July.

Chatbots are good at mimicking human conversations. Many companies now use chatbots for live chat customer
service channel. They provide an in-depth level of customer support without the need to hire a customer service
representative to be on call 24/7. Investing in chatbots could be the trendiest thing any corporate can do in the
coming years to boost customer value.
Chatbot app market is driven by 2 forces namely developers and corporations.
Developers create an impressive technology that makes conversations with chatbots very similar to conversations
with humans thereby expand their functionality.
On the other hand, there is higher demand from publishers, marketers, large corporates who try to gain the upper
hand by accessing the messaging app market and create more new innovative chatbots.
So it’s both the developers creating the products and corporations seeking to fill the needs of the customers.
Chatbots are the driving force of communication between brands and their customers.

The ROI in using chatbot is in cost reduction, efficiency, and improved customer satisfaction.
II. 7 WAYS HOW CHATBOTS CAN BENEFIT YOUR BUSINESS

Chatbots are making news every day. Businesses across various sectors have introduced chatbots to interact with the
customers. And if you still wonder why your business needs a chatbot; here are the reasons why your business
should consider deploying a chatbot.
I. 24/7 Availability: Being able to answer a customer or a potential customer’s query at any time of the day is
possible through chatbots. Chatbot answers are instant and help increase the number of customers’ greatly. Chatbots
will replace the need for customer service agent and reduce the cost of customer care.

II. Located On Simple Platforms: Chatbots are available in platforms that are easily accessed by people every day.
Common platforms include Messenger, KIK, Telegram, Slack.
III. Instant/Quick Reply: Chatbots respond within seconds to the query from the user. Bots can also display
buttons for quick, personalized, relevant replies and a menu in the conversations, making it easier for people to
communicate without having the need to type several commands.
IV. Help Find the Right Product or Service: Often customers may require support to figure out the right product
that fits their needs and constraints. Bots come to their help; Chatbots can help fill in the gap of providing
knowledgeable assistance to shoppers when they are at online stores. Chatbots help figure out the right products and
services.
V. Simplify Products/Services for the Customers: For first-time buyers the products, services or business model
may be complex to understand. Bots can breakdown the jargon and help potential customers understand the benefits
of the products. Instead of print user manual, customers prefer
interactive chatbots to make their onboarding experience easier.
VI. Multiple Interactions - Chatbots have the ability to respond and interact with multiple users at a single time
more effectively. in addition, chatbots provide consistent interaction.
VII. Customer Engagement With Your Brand: Research finds a positive correlation between customer
engagement and business growth. Higher the customer engagement more is the business transformation. Chatbots
can spice it up further by making the engagement more interactive. Bots serve as a new engaging way to serve
customers.

For businesses that are looking to expand its horizons, chatbots are the way to go forward.

III. CHATBOTS USE CASES ACROSS INDUSTRIES

The possibilities of using bot are endless be it from weather forecast, grocery, news, financial advice or scheduling.
Below are illustrated few applications of chatbots across various industries.

Title 1. Chatbots for Insurance

Title 2. How chatbots are impacting the insurance industry?
Title 3. How insurers can harness artificial intelligence?
Bots can be tailored and trained to answer many questions, filling a gaping hole in the insurance world. Bots can
help insurance companies achieve more effective customer engagement, explain complex products, improve sales,
enable quick contextual access to information. Some use cases are:

 Automated insurance bots make insurance process quicker, easier, while delivering a more personalized
experience.
 Insurance shopper bot helps users sift through a range of policy options based on their risk profile and
coverage needs and recommends the most suitable product to start with. Drives low-cost direct-to-
consumer sales.
 Onboarding assistant bot helps members quickly fill in the onboarding process, print ID cards, better
understand their plan coverage which includes insurance plan cost estimates.
 Claims advisor bot aids members understand how the claim process works and assists the customers in
filing new claims or follow up on the existing claims.
  Endorsement assistant helps agents address customer requests such as policy, amendments, coverage
additions and policy surrender request
 Claims bot expedites claims payout and provides instant service, eliminates poor claims experience that
often requires extensive paperwork and long wait times. One of the leading licensed insurance carrier set
a world record by paying out an insurance claim in 3 seconds.

Diagram 3: insurer traveling abroad chatbot lists the insurance policy

Title 1. Bots for money remittance industry

Title 2. Payment gateways open up to bots
Sending money online is about to get easier with the implementation of chatbots. One billion people in the world
send or receive remittance; out of which a quarter (250 million) are migrants. In 2016, $600 billion dollars was sent
in global remittance. Chatbots leverage APIs (application programming interfaces) for easy and fast money
transfers.

Remittance assistant chatbot enables users to check market beating rates and transfer money in over 190 countries.
Merits of using bots in money transfer include
 Quick and easy money transfer in a huge range of currencies.
 Range of ways of delivering your money either bank transfers or delivery in cash depending on the
countries to which the money is delivered.
 Apart from the money transfer, online remittance bots do have some added features like shopping online,
receipt management, shipping tracking and receive relevant newsfeeds ads.

Bots build a better solution for customers and continue to play a vital role in money transfers in the future.
Title 1. Bots in banking
Title 2. Chatbots role in banking industry
Title 3: Move towards conversational banking
Title 4: Chatbot banking

Chatbots make commerce more conversational for banks and merchants. They provide customers with a
personalized banking experience. Leverage of the banking bot to provide personalized white-glove service, pump up
customer delight and save a ton of cash.
Personal banker bot for retail banking helps you check your bank accounts, find ATMs, new credit applications,
inline credit scores and apply for new services just like you would at your neighborhood branch. The bot keeps track
of your day-to-day expenses, manages and puts a cap on your spending. The chatbots for retail banking will make
“your smartphone your personal banker”.
Wealth manager bot asks you intelligent risk assessment questions, suggests portfolio changes based on your goals
and helps you track your portfolio performance. Cost-effectiveness would be the first reason a customer would
choose a robo-advisor over a face-to-face manager.

ATM assistant is a bot on demand among customers. The bot helps you find ATMs enroute to a particular
destination, the cash status of the ATM and features associated with the ATM such as cardless cash access.

Digital mortgage advisor bot which operates using natural language processing techniques understands your need
and helps you find the perfect mortgage plan for you. The bot engages customers when they start to think about a
home purchase helping them find the mortgage product that suits them the best.

Sales assistant bot aids in bank’s website search and navigation, initiating new loan process and answer queries
related to the loan process. The bot uses free-form conversations with NLP.

Online loan service agent sends you loan statements and reminders on a monthly basis and collects principal,
interest on your preferred dates. The loan service agent cuts down on the loan servicing costs and manages loan
payments proactively.
Account assistant bot is aimed to help field sales by offering best offers, analysis of the current account, loan
initiation and product queries to the customers. Bot helps drive revenue in field sales.

Paybots/ Bot-assisted payment/bots for digital wallet an artificially intelligent consumer interaction tool process
payments in-app without taking the customers to external websites. The bot assists the wallet consumers through
their digital payment journey. Bots for digital wallet bring an evolution in mobile commerce by integrating
payments, identity, loyalty, mobile marketing.

Credit card bot enables you to connect your eligible U.S Card to your Messenger account to get messages in
Messenger for each purchase that is made using the Card. Related messages about the purchase such as restaurant
recommendations, Card benefits reminders. For example if you purchase airline tickets using the Card, the bot sends
you details regarding the ticket purchase and when you leave for the trip, the bot may also offer the option to receive
dining recommendations at your destination.

Stock trading bots which are built on API have an impact on the stock market and help follow trade ideas,
earnings. The bot alerts you about earnings predictions from traders, investors across the globe and how they rank
compared to your peers. Any update in the stock market (upgrade, downgrade, buy or sell recommendations) will be
alerted to the user.

Tax bots to make tax savings easy. According to IRS statistics, in 2016 there were 507 million visitors to IRS
website, a 3% increase when compared to 2015. Americans spend 6.1 billion hours and $233.8 billion complying the
tax code. With the complexity and frustration, most people switch to tax preparers. With advances in technology
chatbots offer a simple tax software solution.

Title 1: Chatbots in Retail

Title 2: Why Bots Should Be A Part of Your Retail Strategy

Bots present a quick-to-develop, easy-to-use, extensible, frictionless shopping experience.

Beauty advisor bot keeps you updated on the latest information on skincare, haircare at the snap of your fingertips.
Now your bot is your new “beauty best friend”. The bot interacts with women in natural conversations and gives
virtual try-ons. The artificial intelligent beauty advisor allows selfies to be taken in order to provide an image of
what a beauty product might look when it is applied. The photos are generated using facial tracking.

Chatbot-assisted haircut offers a personalized on-demand customer service with very little human interaction. You
can handpick your favorite hair stylist to get your job done.

Personal shopper bot to mimic the social experience of shopping. The bot can act as a style builder helps
customers plan a more personalized shopping experience. Visitors who enter the shopping center are guided through
a series of questions from the bot to understand things like how much time visitors have and what activities they
prefer. After getting the inputs from the visitors, the bot provides a series of suggestions including details about ideal
stores, surrounding theme park rides and show timings in and around the shopping center.  

Fashion Advisor bots - “See-now-buy-now” fashion bot takes us through the glimpse of behind the scene looks of
the London Fashion Week. The bot also lets you enter a maze and asks you to navigate through pictures. Once you
get through that you can make purchases from the collection.

Order tracker bot helps the customers understand about their orders and seamlessly brings in a live agent when
needed.

Warranty advisor knows details about your purchase history and provides coverage information and whom to
contact in case of repairs/replacements.
In-store assistant revolutionizes the way chatbots for customer services work. Drives revenue by better supporting
retail sales associates.

Flower and gift order bot helps shoppers send flowers and find the perfect gifts. The bot can answer live questions,
make gift suggestions and send shipping updates. The bot is available on both Kik and Facebook.

Title: Chatbots for healthcare: Doctor in your pocket

Conversational chatbots check, remind and encourage patients to take their medications. Health bots improve patient
experience, medical staff productivity while driving down the cost of care. AI may play the role of doctor in the
future of the healthcare. Image-recognition algorithms help detect diseases. Few startups have started to use
intelligent machines to redesign the clinic, redefine the role of the practitioner and reposition the patients’ in relation
to their health.

Health assistant bots provide patients with important healthcare information. The bot helps improve the patient
experience and reduce telephone wait times. Patients can use the communication platform to reduce operational
costs. The bot allows the booking of appointments, collection of healthcare information and issue reminder to
patients. Pharmacies can advise the bot to take prescription orders and inform patients when their prescription will
be ready for collection. Health insurers can use the bot to provide information about health insurance coverage to
patients. Drug companies can use the bot to provide information about various pharmaceutical products.

Scheduling assistant helps patients set up appointments with the right doctor and reminds the patient about the pre
and post appointment actions.

Hospital website navigator aids patients and affiliated physicians to find the right department on a particular
hospital’s comprehensive website.

Online diabetes manager reminds patients to take insulin at regular intervals, diet recommendations, scheduling
check-ups for symptoms related to diabetes.

Homecare assistant helps medical staff retrieve relevant patient details during a home visit and provide the
necessary care or follow-up.

Mental health bot tracks users’ mental health state-of-mind; acts as a gateway chatbot to encourage a conversation
that culminates with the patient/user seeking qualified help if needed.

Nutritional coaching chatbot helps you change your unhealthy eating habits.

Personal online weight loss coach to achieve your weight loss goals.

Child health bot can be installed and parents of ill children can start their interaction with the bot as to whether
common symptoms like fever, cough, headache, rash, vomiting, sore throat, diarrhea, fatigue or shortness of breath
warrant an appointment with the doctor. Patients can also enquire about weight-or-age-specific dosing guidelines for
the over-the-counter medications.

Title 1: Chatbots for restaurants

Chatting with a chatbot helps customers discover the restaurant’s menu, place new food orders and reserve tablets.

Food ordering chatbots help customers place orders for your favorite tacos. The bot due to its feasibility attracts a
lot of customers and employs artificial intelligence that allows customers to place pickup orders through the
messaging app for selected menu items. Now you can order pizza along with your favorite toppings directly within
Facebook Messenger using a chatbot. The user can create an online account and the bot can also answer questions
about pizza. The bot maintains a history of existing orders which can help users to reorder the last meal or place an
“easy order” track. The bot can handle pizza order and delivery, streamlining the process, improving accuracy and
eliminating wait-times. Customers can also query about deals , offers and promotions.

Smart kitchen bot can help plan your week’s meals, order the ingredients and also gives guidance on the cooking
process. The smart kitchen has add on features like music streaming, audio news feeds, weather forecasts and
multiple voice-activated timers for the kitchen.

Recipe bot allows customers to find brainstorming recipes. Customers will be able to query chatbot about the
nearest restaurant location, making reservations and retrieving details about specific dishes by sending emojis. For
example texting an emoji of shrimp will fetch information about shrimp roll.
Table reservation chatbot builds a table reservation in your favorite restaurants.

Hospitality bots to upgrade your guest service experience. Hospitality bots upgrade guest service experience, act as
a personal travel assistant and virtual concierge throughout the customer's stay. Bots ensure a positive experience
that drives customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Represent the content within circles

 Virtual guided assistant to make planning and booking trips easy

 Deliver right-time, right-fit promotions and discounted rates
 Put on-the-fly purchases, reservations at customers’ fingertips for ease and convenience

Concierge bot an automated AI program that converses with your customers, to enable fulfill the guests concierge
needs 24/7. Online concierge manager manages the content and responses given so as to provide personal attentive
care to each guest simultaneously.

Travel bots either provide automated customer service on a travel company’s website or operates through a
messaging platform to converse with a traveler and assist with booking travel. Companies are leveraging natural
language processing to create virtual assistants that operate like travel bots. They have the potential to improve the
travel industry.  During the journey, a bot would retrieve all boarding information which includes time of flight,
boarding gate, airport terminals and information about airports. A travel bot should also allow the traveller to book
on the go. Besides answering the travellers queries, a travel bot notifies users when a flight is delayed or when it’s
time to check out from a hotel. Only with these types of personalized interactions, chatbots will be valued among
travellers and bring value to their trip.

Some of the travel bots include

 Beach holiday booking bot

 Flight search assistant bot
 Boarding pass delivering bot
 Online flight tracker

IV. ChatBot LIFECYCLE

Bots are exciting. Building good bots is not very easy. A little bit of structure and process goes a long way in
achieving the success of the bot. Let’s have a look at the end-to-end bot building process.
** REPRESENT IT IN A CIRCULAR FORMAT WITH THE CONTENTS UNDERNEATH
1. Gather market requirements for the bot. For instance who is the target customer, what are the pain points and what
are the solutions delivered.
2. Develop a product spec finding out the features and functionality of the bot.
3. Building conversational scripts that represent user interactions.
4. Create the architectural design for the bot which includes the front end and back end components.
5. Bot development stage
6. Bot testing process is deeply intertwined with the development process.
7. Deploy the bot to a hosted environment.
8. Submit bot to various app stores for approval.
10. Promote and Analyze the bot
11. Repeat the process for a more efficient bot
V. CHATBOT TIMELINE
1950 - Alan Turing came up with the Turing test to determine the intelligence of computer programs.
1966 - Development of ELIZA - one of the first chatbots developed by Joseph Weizenbaum. It just used 200 lines of
code. ELIZA stimulated a Rogerian psychotherapist and tricked the user into an illusion of intelligent conversation
using pattern matching techniques. Though not too sophisticated or intelligent some people mistook her for human.
1972 - PARRY chatbot was launched by Kenneth Colby - this chatbot attempted to stimulate a patient with paranoid
schizophrenia. PARRY was more serious and advanced than Eliza; it was also described as ‘Eliza with attitude’.
1988 - Jabberwacky chatbot created by Rollo Carpenter was one of the earliest attempts of creating an artificial
intelligence through human interaction.
1990 - Loebner prize that judges chatbots based on their human likeness launched.
1992 - Dr. Sbaitso an AI speech synthesis program was developed by Creative Labs for MS-DOS-based personal
computers.
1995 - Alice (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) was one of the most successful chatbots of that time.
Alice was a natural language processing bot. The bot would apply heuristic pattern matching rules to human input.
2000 - SmarterChild - Intelligent agent bot developed by ActiveBuddy
2001 - Eugene Goostman chatbot created by Vladimir Veselov, Eugene Demchenko, Sergey Ulasen. This is the first
chatbot that passed the Turing test on June 7, 2014. The bot managed to convince 10 out of 30 judges that it was
human.
2005 - Mitsuku is one of the most human-like chatbots publically available created from AIML technology by Steve
Worswick. Mitsuku had won the 2013 and 2016 Loebner prize. The bot clearly displayed a far better understanding
of the human language.
2006 - IBM Watson’s chatbot used natural language processing and machine learning to reveal insights from a large
amount of data.
2010 - Siri Bot part of Apple’s iOS features natural language UI to answer queries and perform Web service queries.
2012 - Google Now chatbot developed by Google for Google search mobile app; delegates requests to a set of web
services.
2015 - Alexa bot by Amazon is capable of voice interaction, use of natural language processing algorithms to
receive, recognize and respond to voice commands.
2015 - Cortana an artificial personal assistant crafted by Microsoft; uses Bing search engine.
2016 - Rise of social media bots - Facebook launched a Messenger platform which allows developers to create bots.
2016 - Tay bot, an artificial intelligence chatterbot released by Microsoft Corporation on March 23. The chatbot was
designed to mimic the language patterns of a 19-year-old American girl and to learn from interacting with human
users of Twitter.
VI. CHATBOT BUILDING PLATFORMS

Alexa is a voice-activated assistant that lives on Amazon audio gear (Echo, Echo Dot). It can control several smart
devices. Alexa is capable of voice interaction, music playback, setting alarms, making to-do lists, playing
audiobooks, weather and news reports, food ordering  and other real time activities. Amazon allows developers to
build and publish skills for Alexa using the Alexa Skills Kit. Alexa Skills Kit is a collection of self-services APIs,
tools, documentation and code samples that make any developer to add skills to Alexa. All code run in the cloud.
Examples of skills include ability to play music, order a pizza, set an alarm, get a Cab etc. Interaction and
communication with Alexa are available in English and German. The pros of Alexa include it has many positive
features, highly extensible and saves time.

Cortana - Voice and text based virtual assistant that’s available on Windows, iOS and Android. It can set
reminders, natural voice recognition and answer questions using information from the Bing search engine. Most
versions of Cortana take the form of two-nested animated circles, animated to indicate activities such as searching or
talking. It is available in 8 languages (English, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese).
Pros include integrated within the OS, extensible and supports natural language.
Apple Siri: Voice-based assistant that talks back to you and proactively recommends actions to take. It can
remember context and understands relationships. For example you can tell Siri to call your best friend’s number, Siri
will know who that is and which phone number to dial. Siri can also send iMessages or SMS and email to family
and friends. An enhanced version of Siri to set reminders, search for information and much more has been
developed. Easy to access on Apple devices. Understands human language. Siri paved the way for modern speech-
based assistants.

Facebook M - Part artificial intelligence and part human-powered service. M represents text based assistant within
Facebook Messenger. Attempts to do anything you might ask it do. Level of humanity is high

Slack built in bot; part time programmer and full time assistant. It is available across a range of devices and
platforms. Slack was created by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield. Slack enables you to centralize all your
notifications, from sales to tech support.

Key Points to Have in Mind When Working with Bot Platforms

1. Spend time error handling - Error handling is important for any type of application. Every bot interaction
will either enhance or erode trust with the users.
2. Take copies for yourself - Even though your interface is bot-based you should take time to craft copy and
embodies the traits of your brand. Clearly visualizing the personality of your interface will go a long way
towards creating a positive experience.
3. Use simple text input whenever possible - Simplify the data entry for a relevant, fast, personalized
messaging.
4. Make searching easier - Since the user is using text input to key in the queries it doesn’t mean that you
have to be limited to text. You can allow the users to drop a photo to tell the system what they are looking
for.
5. Develop history - For any application, remembering the user preferences and the default is important.
User’s conversation history with the chatbot needs to be tracked and available across different departments.
For example a user’s history of the products purchased, previous transactions, previous support issues
should be shared and integrated into future interactions.

VII. CHATBOT CLASSIFICATION

The two main types of chatbots are

Stand-alone Chatbots where the chatbots run on a single server

Pros
 Simple to install and use
 Attractive, engaging graphical interface
 Majority of stand-alone chatbots have text to speech system; adding an audio component to enhance user
experience.
Cons
 Limited degree of configuration to personalize the bot
 Not free; but most have a demo version
Web-based applications, where the chatbots run on a remote server able to be reached to the general public through
a web page.
The basic web-based chatbot in its simplest form is a blank white web page with a form embedded in it, that is the
interface between the user and the bot.
Pros
 Much more control over behavior and personality
 Free hosting of the bot
Cons
 Aren’t as easy to set-up; more steps involved for installation process
 Chatbots are classified based on the following categories
Other types of classification are as follows
I. Level of work: This is further classified based on rules and other classification based on machine learning.
Chatbot features functioning based on rules
 Very very limited
 Respond to very specific commands
 Smarter as it is programmed to be
Chatbot features functioning based on machine learning
 The bot has artificial brain/artificial intelligence
 It understands more than commands i.e. language
 Bot gets smarter as it learns from the conversation it has with people.
II. Long Vs Short Conversations
The longer the conversation the more difficult is the automation process because longer conversations need to keep a
track of what has been said. E.g. customer support conversations
Short term conversations where the goal is to create a single response to a single input. e.g. Where are you residing?

VIII. FUTURE OF CHATBOT - PREDICTIONS

Although chatbot technology is still in its nascent stage many technology experts believe that 2017 will be the year
of chatbot revolution. Customers and marketers will see an uptick in the following areas:
 Every Fortune 1000 company will see an addition of chatbot to their technical and marketing stack in the
year 2017.
 Previously, chatbots experienced issues with functionality, usability, adoption, discoverability, however
this year would see that the messaging platforms will make their products so valuable that they can’t be
ignored.
 Chatbots will become more intelligent. Intelligent messages will be the base layer that can move marketing
from mass audience advertising which focuses on reach and impressions to a more personalized, curated
relationship that focuses on customer engagement.
 “Chatbot CRM (customer relationship management)” will be the buzzword for customer engagement.
 Customers will get their own digital assistant when voice-based bots (Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri,
Cortana) further invade our lives.
 Deeper engagement - The deeper the relationship that a chatbot can develop with the customer, more likely
is the customer to accept the product suggestions, thereby boosting average basket size.
 There aren’t many bots that impart commerce capabilities with authentic and engaging personalities.
Realistic personality is the missing piece in e-commerce transactions and now it’s the right time to start
experimenting the incorporation of personality during chatbot creation.
 Talking bot which is still in its infancy will be the next big thing in enhancing UX. Illustration of talking
bot; Imagine talking with your computer to open up a travel site and then proceeding to plan the trip and
book the tickets for you, all these without touching your keypad.
Chatbots will see explosive growth in 2017 and continue to play their roles as an advantage for B2C and B2B
communications.