bots & customer service
TRANSCRIPT
roBots &
Customer Service
Best before Dec.17
Chatbots
Algorithms designed to hold a conversation with a human,
as envisioned by Alan Turing in the 1950s
Messaging platforms like…
Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Slack, Skype, Kik, Telegram, and LINE have their own chatbot APIs.
Social bots can now reach 1.5B users, soon to be scaled to 3B users (once WhatsApp launches it’s
own API).
Twitter estimated
that as many
as 23 million
of its 271 million users
were bots
“…bots are not the way to go for customer service”
Jeff Lesser, Twitter’s Head of Social Customer Service
Customers need real humans to talk to…
OK
but let’s not be so hasty to write them off
Initiate basic communication Give simple directions Respond to a request for material Search the social network for popular & influential people Grow your community Participate in conversations Create new content Help people stay motivated Post open source content…
Bots can…
HP consumers will be able to print their photos, documents and files to any connected HP printer as well as receive
notifications to re-order toner cartridges
KLM gives passengers the option to receive flight updates through Messenger
Muppets’ fans can now talk with a “Miss Piggy”
Humans will always be needed to deal with problematic cases or difficult support tickets. The best practice will be the combination of a “bot-service” with a seamless behind-the-scenes transfer to humans where needed…
Chat bots are a threat to Apps more than they are to human-run customer care
e-commerce retailer Spring, launched Spring Bot, a personal shopping concierge powered by Messenger and Zopim live chat
bot-wrecks
Tay.ai“talking about you”
Microsoft’s Tay caused controversy on Twitter by releasing inflammatory tweets and it was taken offline around 16 hours after its launch.
#over-confidence
Facebook Trending Module
Facebook fires humans & bot starts going crazy. Pushes out false story about Fox’s Megyn Kelly, offensive
Ann Coulter headline and a story link about a man masturbating with
a McDonald’s sandwich, as top trending stories!
#negligence
Cynk & the bot campaign
Automatic trading algorithms picked up this conversation and started trading heavily in the company's stocks. This resulted in a 200-fold increase in market value, bringing the company's worth to $5 billion. By the time analysts recognised the orchestration behind this operation and stock trading was suspended, the losses were real.
#intentional
Although a PR disaster, Microsoft Tay.ai demonstrated the incredible speed that AI can learn and adapt…
and how coding needs to improve…
Developers love them…but how about users?
By July 2016 11.000 bots had been created on
while 23.000 developers had signed up to use the Wit.ai tools
By May 2016 Kik Messenger had 300M users
6.000 bots created 60% of bot users aged between 13-19
81% of bot users from the US and over 70 brands on their bot store
“…Users find them slow, simplistic and not understanding their queries”
The Verge, July 1st 2016
The most challenging part in a chatbot is understanding human language & then processing it with NLP engines like wit.ai and api.ai.
No UI that has to be developed. Easy & Cheap to develop…
Design
They have to not only emulate content but include temporal activity,
diffusion patterns, and sentiment expression
Bots have come a long way from their ‘pest riddled’ past
the bar has risen
Yes, before bots officially take over there is need for improvement…
in contextual understanding of when to share updates
& an intuitive way to initiate or end chatbot
conversations
Advantages Cheaper to make then Apps
Discoverability (especially w/ a dominant msg app)
App fatigue Clunky sites that don’t help communication
Intimate connection with a brand
Metrics wanted Measure how long conversations in a bot environment last How deep each conversation goes into each bot’s features
Conversation retention How often is human intervention needed
Click through Rates
When bots become equipped to handle text content, the human side of brands and
consumers will gravitate towards new, richer ways to engage, including virtual and
augmented reality
Bank of AmericaBurger KingBusiness InsidereBayExpediaFandangoGreat Western RailwayLivePersonMicOwnerListensPhilz CoffeeRogersSalesforceShopifySonarSparkcentralStaplesStubHubtheScoreThrillistTwilioUNICEFZalandoZendeskZingle
Bots arriving soon in your Messenger
Hydration Bot
So, if you feel you’re not drinking enough water there is a bot even for that
and my personal favourite bot is definitely…
…the endless screaming bot on Twitter makes me laugh