If you have ever interacted with an chatbot online and wondered about the technology that powers them you came into the right place.
Chatbots are software programs powered by Artificial Intelligence, designed to engage in conversions through chat or voice dialog systems. They are known to be popular among e-commerces, as they can help customers by answering questions and inquiries and reducing the need for actual human interaction.
So the main question is “Are chatbots going to replace human interaction ?”
It is no secret that in the last decade the popularity of chatbots in e-commerces had grown significantly, mainly because of them being very advantageous from a business point of view.
The advantage of chatbots:
- Cost-efficient
- Easy to implement
- Fully-automated
- Offers easy accessible information
- Multilingual
Although chatbots technology is adopted by more and more brands, their actual effectiveness is a matter of debate.
This technology proved to be useful for simple tasks, but when it comes to more complex ones, people still prefer to get in touch with a real contact person.
This fact is caused by the matter that even though AI had developed drastically in the last century, the chatbots are still not able to satisfy all customer’s requests as of having limited responses, not being able to reply to elaborate questions or inquiries that require decision-making and consequently, not being able to fully replace the need of communicating with real humans.
Conclusion
Therefore, chatbots proved to have many advantages for e-commerces, being able to assist customers with simple requests and inquiries, but the current level of technological advancement does not make it possible to replace the need for communication with a real agent entirely.
References
- https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/chatbot
- https://medium.com/marketing-in-the-age-of-digital/in-the-foreseeable-future-will-ai-chatbots-replace-human-interaction-1d48d65455cf
- https://www.drift.com/learn/chatbot/
- https://sproutsocial.com/chatbots/
- https://www.giosg.com/blog/will-ai-powered-chat-or-chatbots-replace-human-jobs-and-how-far-should-self-service-go
- https://arabot.io/en/blog-post/15/