so bots the future of apps like
TRANSCRIPT
So Bots the future of
Apps like?
Bots or Conversational bots or chatbot are the ‘in’ thing. So what are
we all gushing about?
What are bots?
Bot is a software developed to automate tasks which you would do
yourself like booking a cab, movie tickets and thus. A chat bot (which
is making waves these days) is a bot built into a messaging app which
mimics conversation with a person.
What can it do?
Service companies can automate a service with chatbots, just text the
bot to book a movie ticket at your neighbourhood cinema and Voila!
It’s done.
Just text the bot to set up a date at your favourite restaurant with your
girlfriend at 7. Voila! Its done!
Yes, amazing is the word. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology
improves it is safe to say, bots can execute a lot more complex tasks
And all the ‘big brothers’ like Facebook, Slack, Google and Microsoft
are trying to master this. Google is relying on its huge data bank to
come up with a smarter AI which will be the brains behind the bots.
Facebook can leverage on the huge traffic on its messenger app to
provide VAS with the help of bots. So pretty soon, bots will be all over
the place.
Why bots will be huge?
Wish and you get: or type and you get rather: No need to call a
customer care representative, no need to fiddle an app and the
buttons. Yes, it is survival of the fittest in the technology world as well.
Bots will probably take over parts of an app or the whole which have a
simple process or complex transactions that which can be automated
or those who have customer support involved. Chatbots will soon be
the new Personal Assistants.
The shift
With the app industry booming, the techies had moved away from
server side programming and had shifted their focus on the consumer
facing technologies. Now with bots, the focus will move back to the
servers and how to make data more usable, services more smarter
which will be the growth of AI.
So as you would be rightfully wondering, bots might reign
terror on apps industry and probably kill it?
Well probably not. Some of the initial challenges chatbots
face are
You have to say it right.
Bots are still in the very early stages of recognising human speech or
written text. It can catch on a set of instructions easily but is still a
long way off in understanding a fluent conversation with context.
CUI (Conversational user interface) which is is simple and to the point
but it will fail to solve most of the problems solved by GUI (Graphical
user interface) so is pretty much indispensable in the near future.
Bots are best option for utility based queries Usage will mostly be
booking a cab, what’s the weather in Delhi like or more complex like
paying of the electricity bill.
But when you are looking for something new and different, like the
best place to holiday this summer, GUI based apps are your best bet.
Experts say the next step will be to build smarter AI and smarter bots
along with an App. And building of smarter AI will be its own journey
which will take time, experiments, failures and may be success.
Chatbots are consumer initiated queries, now business need to be
discovered and offer their services so apps will have to be go find the
consumer.
How?
The story has not changed since the ages of the website. You need to
offer your consumers great experience, service engagement and
content for the app to be discovered and not get obscured and disused.
Be where your consumers are, even if it means getting inside another
app.
Imagine this
You find that perfect place to go for a much needed vacation on the
‘Loner planet’ blog titled ‘ Top ten must visit destinations this winter’,
let the ‘Redbus’ app fly into the ‘Loner planet’ app and give you an
option to book a window side bus ticket to get there. All this without
even exiting the ‘Loner planet’ app or downloading the Redbus app
and so retain the customer.
Build affiliations with other service providers based on context and
enhance the value of your own app as well as enhance revenue by
commission for transactions. As of now affiliations are in the form of
either ads or deeplinking (currently being used by Zomatoand uber).
But deeplinking is again time consuming and more development time.
Is there something as fast and efficient like a bot for apps?
We are entering the post app era. So what will it be? Apps, bots or
something more smarter?
Exciting times to be in the tech industry, to witness what will thrive
and what can emerge, engulfs and start a new beginning.