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CHATBOTS & APIs FOR BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE To meet growing consumer demand, how will retailers take advantage of application programming interfaces to integrate more intelligent and powerful chatbots into their ecommerce systems and platforms? hatbots are really taking off in retail as customers become more familiar and happier to interact with automated assistants. Indeed, nearly half of consumers say they prefer chatbots as the primary form of communication with brands (Source: Grand View Research). This acceptance, plus how chatbots can bring down operating costs, are among several factors that will make the global chatbot market worth $1.23 billion by 2025. So, how will retailers integrate increasingly more intelligent and powerful chatbots into their ecommerce systems and platforms? The key is how they take advantage of application programming interfaces (APIs) alongside other key modern computing
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technologies like microservices, 'headless' and cloud-native computing. APIs help to simplify and streamline processes and exploit third party technologies, avoiding the need to create a chatbot from scratch.
THE RISE OF CHATBOTS
First, what are chatbots? Chatbots are automated text-based assistants that replicate the experience of chatting with another person. They look like normal apps with an application layer, a database, APIs and a chat interface. Voice-based assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri and Microsoft Cortana are just chatbots that transcribe spoken word into text and translate text responses back into spoken word.
KELLY GOETSCH CPO COMMERCETOOLS Kelly has authoured three books and is a commerce, microservices, and distributed computing expert, having spoken and published extensively on these topics
