Will Inclination to Chatbots Impose Threat to Mobile Apps and Websites?
Right from its inception in early 2016, chatbots have been in talks. The major tech giants started trying their hands in Bot development even when chatbot was merely six months old. Gartner predicts that by 2020, the management of 85% of the customer interactions will be by a bot. Whether embarking on a bot development platform or developing a chatbot of their own, the new discussion of the tech town is whether chatbots are imposing some threat to mobile apps? If you walk down the tech history, it has always seen transformations. So a new change shouldn’t send shock waves across the tech town. We have witnessed a few trends right from replacing the desktop Operating Systems by the browser as a new platform to websites taking the place of client-server applications. Observing another tech trend won’t be something new. If you ask me the reactions on this news, as an end-user whose life surrounds WeChat, Whatsapp, Telegram, and other mobile applications, I will panic. Chatbots are a boon to business aiming to offer world-class customer service within the messaging application interface. Then what will be the ply of users depending on endless mobile apps for communication?
1. The Stationary Growth of Mobile Apps The debut of the Apple store in 2008 created a broad and successful path for ‘Apps’ as officially named to small mobile programs with 100 billion apps downloaded from the Apple store itself. With convenience and speed in its kitty, mobile apps have become the primary interface between us and our devices.
Then why are we saying it immobile? We all have a saturation point after a certain extent and Gartner portrayed it. In March 2015, Gartner made it clear with its reports that users are worn out due to the increased usage of mobile apps though they didn’t want to refrain from the usage completely. The only complaint that they had was the apps were pouring out of the bucket and moreover, the devices have issues related to memory. Though apps are not outdated, their abrupt growth is halted. The rise in the time of mobile usage was the ultimate result, but the app diversity remained unaffected. Though there are unlimited app choices, the number of apps per user is not an eyebrow raiser. They remain the same irrespective of their increased usage as per the research from Nielsen.
Inference: The chances of survival favors only to a handful of apps. Though apps play a crucial part in our lives, the companies into various verticals from airlines to food will have to opt for another option to reach to the customers.
2. Chatbots with a Leap
I don’t remember a second name other than Chatbot when customer service strikes my mind. Few names among the popular companies who have made a visible impression using chatbots technology on messengers such as CNN News Chatbot, Hyatt- a hotel chatbot, Spring (E-commerce Chatbot), HealthTap and much more.
Inference: Chatbots are your trusted pilots when you want to have a broad reach out of customers. They are not only intelligent but efficient assistants as well.
3. Whole and sole
How do you see mobile apps and websites?
A basketful of information indeed! So on examining various UI elements, the existing mobile apps and websites are nothing but a bunch of information bundles. Rather than going from one app to another, if all this information is stored in a single messaging app, the chatbot itself will be providing all the essential data to the customer thus reducing the burden of the user to get dogged from one screen to another for the sake of acquiring services. Since interaction is the main focus, chatbots become the best replacement of mobile apps thus outperforming apps for successfully completing the task. Consider an example. You need to order groceries and at the same time book movie tickets. For both these tasks, dedicated apps are available. Giving up on the precious space of your device, you need to download and then perform separately. Imagine you have a bot which would smoothly carry out the process in a single go. Thus merging the services in a single app is much more cost-effective, time-saving, and convenient.
Inference: Thus chatbots help you to get rid of multiple downloads.
4. The Benefits of adopting Chatbots Till now we have become well-versed with the capacity of Chatbots. The high-functionality with exceptional, innovative features of messaging bots are side-lining mobile apps to a verge of extinction.
Since the aim surrounds the two main factors- effective interactions and communications, businesses are inclining towards chatbots which are more interactive and functional. Another capacity of Chatbot is tracking responses of the customers. Chatbots have successfully walked the path of mapping operations onto the framework irrespective of being intricate or simple with flying colors. The credit of simplification of the organization’s workload in addition to the experience of the customer goes to chatbots. Click here to read more