A look into the growth of chatbots and their rising influence across domains

‘We want to be there for our users, asking them Hi, how can I help?’

‘We think you should be able to message a business, the same way you can message a friend.”

‘…A personal assistant that knows about your world and is with you across all your digital devices.’

These were the words spoken by the CEOs of the three tech behemoths of the world, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. Simultaneously, all three companies have been investing millions of dollars in developing technology, acquiring enterprises and building on engagement channels to boost their capabilities about the concept they are referring to. As we know, in the world of tech, money is spent only when wars break out. Right now, this war is all about chatbots.

From the pages of Alan Turing’s 1951 paper on ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, chatbots have come a long way to be a part of every step of our busy lives. From morning news to weather and traffic updates, bill payments, planning vacations, setting reminders to picking up kids from school or grabbing a quick bite of entertainment, chatbots are helping us carry out our day-to-day activities, indulging us with simple, engaging conversations in the process. And with a global expected market valuation of USD 3 billion by 2021, a growth rate of CAGR 35%, and the biggest tech giants scrambling to achieve domain leadership, chatbots are here to have the last word.

But how did chatbots become such a critical tech-solution after initially being driven off as just another digital exhibit? Through a combination of 3 factors-the rises of a number of users of messaging services, their substantial contribution in reducing business costs, and innovations in the field of AI, machine learning and NLP, enhancing the quality of interaction.

Essentially, chatbots consist of two aspects-the ‘chat’ or the interactive and empathetic side of the operations to communicate with the end user. The other is the ‘bot’ aspect, which deals with the technology available to modify a chatbot’s present utility by adding features and enhancing its storage, analysis or strategic ability. Fortunately, the skill set in both these aspects is growing at a robust pace.

Bots getting better-Improved technology enabling chatbots to offer more

Last year, with the introduction of chatbot Olly, a bot was finally created that could adapt to its owner’s behavior, using a complex series of machine-learning algorithms that process the owner’s responses to devise a way of conversation that best suits his/her need. However, as ongoing research in domains such as Natural Language Processing further strengthens a bot developer’s ability to enhance the efficiency of bots in deciphering natural human conversations, full of jokes, innuendos, ironical statements and sarcasm, they will undoubtedly account for a huge chunk of the conversations of tomorrow. For instance, Xiaoice an advanced NLP bot by Microsoft provides natural language conversations to the Chinese community on the microblogging service Weibo. It has a compelling personality and even a ‘sense of intelligence’ developed by systematically mining the Chinese internet to provide a huge research sample size full of human discussions.

Actions speak louder than words-What are the possibilities being offered by chatbots

The very fact that a machine can replicate human conversations while managing thousands of callers simultaneously and engaging them in a highly personalized manner is reason enough for it to be of immense use in every domain. Chatbots have already established their dominance in the business sphere, helping businesses across the world save more than $8 billion by cutting down on operational costs. The wide range of businesses cutting across industries and domains that form the diverse clientele of Haptik is evidenced enough of the growing positive noise created by chatbots. From manufacturing, retail inventory, supply chain management to end-user business engagement and feedback collection, chatbots have streamlined the processes immensely. Yet as businesses make a beeline to integrate chatbots within their organizations, they continue to find varied applications across diverse industries such as healthcare, BFSI, public sector initiatives, counseling, HR etc.

Globally, vernacular chatbots have registered substantial growth, especially in the travel and tourism sector. Moreover, in countries such as India with a lot of linguistic diversity and a major portion of the population entering the digital domain for the first time, such chatbots have helped to make the internet less daunting for first-time users. Additionally, voice and speech-to-text based bots have also become popular, empowering uneducated and marginalized sections of the society to avail internet-based services.

Yet, unearthing their real potential lies in not treating them as standalone solutions but a tool that can be used to its optimum only through human collaboration. Chatbots can definitely accelerate operations by smoothly completing the fundamental tasks, thereby freeing up humans to focus on areas that require their experience, wisdom, expertise, and intuition. From sci-fi movies to the real world, it is only when humans and machines team up that the world is truly saved.

—by Aakrit Vaish, Co-Founder Haptik

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