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What do you think about the latest craze - chatbots?

G

GuestA4319

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Everyone is talking about chabots, Facebook , Microsoft and other companies got into this.

There's also a new thing "conversational commerce" floating around, that allows you to purchase stuff by using natural language.

Has any of you tried/used chatbots for your business?
 
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Ninjakid

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Everyone is talking about chabots, Facebook , Microsoft and other companies got into this.

There's also a new thing "conversational commerce" floating around, that allows you to purchase stuff by using natural language.

Has any of you tried/used chatbots for your business?
Chatbots aren't new, I remember them in MSN Messenger and they were annoying as F*ck.

Show me a chatbot in your business, and I will boycott you. Period.
 

Carrenoda

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The only ones I've really seen promote the amazing benefits of using chatbots, are those who sell chatbots.

They would be in the fast lane I suppose.
I'm building one for a client, and was wondering if I may want to build more for other clients in my area.
That's not really escalable though unless I outsource the work and focus on client acquisition.
 
D

Deleted50669

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You should check out Intercom, that's basically their core business. Chatbots are effective for onboarding on-the-fence customers... people spending extended periods of time reading through the site, trying to decide if it's a worthy purchase. For those folks chatbots can make the difference pretty easily, if the right script is fed to it.
 
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Carrenoda

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You should check out Intercom, that's basically their core business. Chatbots are effective for onboarding on-the-fence customers... people spending extended periods of time reading through the site, trying to decide if it's a worthy purchase. For those folks chatbots can make the difference pretty easily, if the right script is fed to it.

Thanks a lot, I'll check it out
 

Ninjakid

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Hahaha, What!?
maxresdefault.jpg
 

ned.ryerson

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Chatbot is simply a term referencing a type of Bot that people use to tap, talk, text. As others have stated they've been around for a while. Clippy from the Windows operating system was probably one of the better known examples.

There are more bots on the internet than humans. Bots as you may know are simply small pieces of automation.

The reason why chatbots have made in insurgents is because of the underlying natural language processing capabilities of cognitive services from companies like Google and Microsoft I've gotten very good. I'm not talking about the usual FAQ or Q&A chatbot that you probably see on a lot of e-commerce sites. I'm talking about true cognitive services that are automated Human Services, Legal Services, etc.
 
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D

Deleted50669

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Chatbot is simply a term referencing what type of Bot that people use to tap, talk, text. As others have stated they've been around for a while Clippy from the Windows operating system was probably one of them or better known examples. But the reality is there are more bots on the internet than humans. Bots as you may know are simply small pieces of automation. The reason why chat box have made in insurgents is because of the underlying natural language processing capabilities of cognitive services from companies like Google and Microsoft. You're going to see a shift in many tasks being handled by a bot that previously were handled by a help desk... Human Resources, legal. They're not only here to stay but they're going to get much better.

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The black magic of web sockets is a deep, deep hole.
 
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Jeff Noel

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I'd say the latest craze is rather more the voice assistants. The day there'll be ads in Alexa and Google Home... $$$
 

The-J

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They suck. But they won't suck forever.

NLP (natural language processing) is starting to get better and better, and soon chatbots will be able to have meaningful conversations toward a goal.

However, the biggest hurdle right now is understanding what people want out of a conversation. Even humans have a hard time with this, but chatbots have a tremendously difficult time with it.

Currently, the chatbots that are getting popular on Facebook Messenger have almost no NLP capabilities and are used as streamlined sales tools. Similar to how when you make a phone call and you can press a number to be directed to solve your problem. However, it's not always a great customer experience and is often implemented out of the desire to streamline and automate, rather than out of the desire to actually serve customers better. Surely, you should be able to see the problem in this.

There are some applications that chatbots really can do well. They can answer very simple questions, they can provide mapped out flows, and they can be used to send automated messages. They suck at everything else, though.
 

Carrenoda

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They suck. But they won't suck forever.

NLP (natural language processing) is starting to get better and better, and soon chatbots will be able to have meaningful conversations toward a goal.

However, the biggest hurdle right now is understanding what people want out of a conversation. Even humans have a hard time with this, but chatbots have a tremendously difficult time with it.

Currently, the chatbots that are getting popular on Facebook Messenger have almost no NLP capabilities and are used as streamlined sales tools. Similar to how when you make a phone call and you can press a number to be directed to solve your problem. However, it's not always a great customer experience and is often implemented out of the desire to streamline and automate, rather than out of the desire to actually serve customers better. Surely, you should be able to see the problem in this.

There are some applications that chatbots really can do well. They can answer very simple questions, they can provide mapped out flows, and they can be used to send automated messages. They suck at everything else, though.

I do see your point here.
It's not stellar customer service which MJ stresses a lot in the book.

I do like some FB Chatbots that are being used lately, mainly because I can get an answer to simple questions like 'where are you located' or 'what are your hours of operation' etc.
Heck the best FB chatbot right now even pre-negotiates RE, which is interesting it's something that RE investor would want to do, however the customer doesn't feel threatened as there is no human on the other side and they remain in control and at the the sequence ends you have a pre-screened lead that's ready to talk to a human being.
The Jury is still out because we have no way of knowing the actual numbers of the bot vs the direct contact of a human being from the get go.

Therein lies the contradiction I suppose; they are not humans serving humans so you are not going to give the best customer service but if you don't have a bot and don't have staff to answer your FB messenger quickly then the customer goes with their questions unanswered for 24-48 hours sometimes longer with some business I've contacted so in the end the service is even worse.
 
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Tom.V

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I think a lot of you are missing the real power of chatbots via mediums such as FB. It's in the sense of building a powerful, high engagement list that chatbots currently stand alone. I do a large amount of my networking, prospecting, and sales conversations via Facebook. I hear a lot of the same questions. I hear a lot of the same concerns. I hear a lot of the same problems. I hear a lot of the same PAIN. Day in and day out.

I am currently building out a chatbot flow that users will OPT IN to get a powerful piece of information that can help them sell PPC services as an agency. After the users opt in, akin to an email list, just think about completely bypassing the spam filters, with a much higher engagement rate with the content you send. Then as you generate more powerful content, you can send it to your list(s) for whatever reason your heart desires.

All hyper targeted. All high value add content. The chatbot is just a delivery system that I can constantly refine and perfect like an email autoresponder, just with better numbers. It's just a highly efficient way to get in front of your target audience over, and over, and over.
 

ned.ryerson

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I do see your point here.
It's not stellar customer service which MJ stresses a lot in the book.

I do like some FB Chatbots that are being used lately, mainly because I can get an answer to simple questions like 'where are you located' or 'what are your hours of operation' etc.
Heck the best FB chatbot right now even pre-negotiates RE, which is interesting it's something that RE investor would want to do, however the customer doesn't feel threatened as there is no human on the other side and they remain in control and at the the sequence ends you have a pre-screened lead that's ready to talk to a human being.
The Jury is still out because we have no way of knowing the actual numbers of the bot vs the direct contact of a human being from the get go.

Therein lies the contradiction I suppose; they are not humans serving humans so you are not going to give the best customer service but if you don't have a bot and don't have staff to answer your FB messenger quickly then the customer goes with their questions unanswered for 24-48 hours sometimes longer with some business I've contacted so in the end the service is even worse.
I actually build chatbots commercially for clients. The natural language processing along with cognitive services actually routes whether or not a bot response or a human agent. It determines whether or not you get a typical FAQ / Q&A response to your question or a handcrafted response. Asking an HR bot how much earn time you have is certainly a different conversation than my brother has cancer. If the FAQ response isn't satisfactory it will escalate you to a human agent base off of how long the conversation goes the types of questions you ask and follow-up questions provided. Also provides a feedback loop to the cognitive services which further improve the accuracy of conversation routing. With platform such as Azure and AWS a solution like this is in reach of the SMB and not just Enterprise clients.
 

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