The increasing use of "robots" or "chatbots" in the delivery of advertising, online engagement and social media to facilitate sales for SMEs across the country has arrived - how long will it be before you join the robot revolution?
Adam Zelcer is the man behind a company called AdBoy.
Zelcer is known as "Adboy during office hours," and while he notes he's not a great salesperson, being a technical IT guy, he put his skills to use in building a Facebook Messenger chatbot robot to handle his sales enquiries.
His company Adboy.com is now helping businesses do the same and trade more affordably 24/7 by replacing human customer service with robots on Facebook Messenger.
{loadposition alex08}Now, we've seen with Telstra's chatbot that sometimes the bots still aren't as intelligent as we want them to be, but whatever software hiccups these bots might still have, Zelcer notes that "robotic engagement is the future of business for many SMEs, particularly for those that sell online".
He notes that "It is the only way smaller businesses can compete with larger businesses in engaging 24 hours per day without the significant human resource expenses," and said: "We’re already seeing automation in the form of self service machines popping up for big companies in-store like fast food chains and supermarkets but what about online?".
Clearly, the chat bot sector is developing fast and soon people will not even realise that they are engaging with a chat bot rather than a real person.
So, what makes chat bots different, and what are their benefits?
- They operate on the basis of artificial intelligence, you can control how they behave and what they do and say
- They are highly cost effective
- They can be built into websites, Facebook and other social media platforms
- They operate 24/7, even when you are sleeping - delivering an 'open for business' face to the market
As you can imagine, Zelcer notes that the robots are "customised to the business for automated conversations on Facebook Messenger and can do all sorts of stuff like take food orders, schedule bookings, accept enquiries, follow up on leads and sell products online - and all mostly with just buttons and quick replies."
While they are known as chatbots, Zelcer calls these robots "chat assistants" and as noted, they are a "cost-effective way for any size businesses to serve their customers."
Zelcer added: “Websites have a lot of friction with stuff like page speed, navigation, forms, account creation, FAQs, checkouts and the need for calling humans that are mostly only reachable nine to five, five days per week.
“This means sales are lost when customers can’t get further information needed to finalise a sale and businesses are also competing based on how good their website is and not how good their business is.
“There are a lot of instances where websites can be bypassed and where human interaction can be automated which will lead to cheaper customer acquisition costs.
“This also opens up new ways for business to get discovered. A chat assistant can be found via search in Messenger and can even start a conversation with a user instantly after they comment on the business' Facebook post".
Zelcer continued: "Adboy.com is preparing for a future where chatting with a service provider or a retailer’s virtual assistant in your Messenger contacts could be just as popular as contacting a human via a website.
"Facebook has already reported two billion messages are already sent on Messenger between people and businesses each month. 53% of people are more likely to shop with a business they can message and 56% of people would rather message than call customer service.
“Automated chat is still in its infancy, which means now is a good time for businesses to adopt and stand out from their competition.
"Automated chat is just the beginning for Adboy.com as we’re already starting to implement artificial intelligence on our chat assistants for more natural conversations. I even think that in the next two years our chat assistants will develop to the point where people won't even know whether they are talking to a human or not," Zelcer concluded.
Indeed, given my own penchant for a bit of wordplay, Zelcer's Chatbots sound like the Energizer Bunny powered by DuraZelcer batteries, they just keep going and going and going!
So, with the robot revolution ready to chat you up and happily able to answer your product and service questions online in an ever more intelligent manner, we can hope that the only thing robots will want to "exterminate!" is bad service.
