Chatbots are coming your way: Start moving now!
There has been a lot of interesting discussion on how bots, and especially chatbots, could redefine the future of customer service and customer experience. The rise of bots has been exceptionally fast, and Facebook played a significant role in the chatbot revolution when they announced in April 2016 that Facebook Messenger platform supports chatbots – the number of chatbots on Facebook Messenger has been growing fast. We have been living in the world of (chat)bots for a couple of years now, and Facebook’s adoption of chatbots has been a significant landmark in the more general adoption of bots. There has already been some evidence that chatbots are gaining legitimacy amongst consumers. According to Aspect Software Research’s report published last year, “44% said that if a company could get the experience right, they would prefer to use a chatbot or automated experience for CRM.” This discussion has been, of course, promoted mainly by those…
Why (chat)bots are so exciting?
In my earlier posts, I barely scratched the surface of chatbot revolution in customer service. There are ultimately various reasons why chatbots have become to dominate the discussion on the future of customer service, and why engaging the revolution of conversational user interfaces is so important. Customer service, per definition, requires one to assume a generalist role in the organizational matrix, i.e. it’s not just about receiving inputs and generating outputs based on logically construed rules but rather it requires one to be able to offer service (not a service). It’s no wonder that customer service roles are often perceived as stressful, and of course, different client-facing service positions require a different set of personal and organizational measures to prevent excess stress (Sidle 2004; St-Vincent, Denis, Imbeau & Trudeau 2006; Julian 2008). As a 2005 study published by British scientists points out, “Of the 26 occupations included in the research, … customer services…