Why I should / should not invest in chatbot
Tags: Bots, Messaging, Chatbot, Start With Why

People are going nuts over chatbots and everyone wants one. Let’s have a quick look at what makes chatbots irresistible for startups and businesses.

Why you should invest in chatbots :

Because that’s where the cream lies :

Quick stats : “Facebook’s Messenger hits 1 billion users, after two years as standalone app” — Reuters, July 2016

Billions of people use Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Snapchat, WeChat, Line and other chat and messaging services to communicate with their friends, families and social circle every day. We can confidently say that the natural extension of this will be to communicate with anyone, including businesses and organizations, in the same way as you communicate with your friends.

A chatbot can easily be built for any major messenger service like Facebook Messenger or Slack. And it is evident that this is where people really spend much of their time, don’t you want to be present where your users are ?

Being an early adopter helps :

It is often seen that new technologies usually need longer than expected to take off but when they cross the threshold the growth can be like a vertical line. Looking at the utility and immediate benefit of chatbots, we can safely say that chatbot is here to stay and grow.

The main reason is, it serves the group of millennials that have grown accustomed to using chat in everyday life. Furthermore, Facebook, Microsoft and Google’s recent push into this space is attracting interest from everyone.

So sooner you get your business start serving via chatbot, the better you will be placed against your competitors.

Response Time :

Bots perform instantly, effectively and with precision day or night. Bots are not restricted by time limits as humans do. For a smaller organization, it may not be feasible to have the resources available to answer emails or calls at 3AM, but having a bot do the job for you makes it so much easier, faster and effective. So don’t lose your time and ultimately, your customers.

When it comes to handling customer’s queries on social media or any online channel, the most important factor is the response time. Your response time must be minimum so as to keep customers engaged and satisfied with your service. Chatbots help you achieve exactly that.

Chatbots are (almost) like human :

Simply put, there are 2 types of chatbots — unintelligent ones that act using predefined conversation flows (algorithms) written by developers building them and intelligent ones that use machine learning to interact with users.

No matter which kind of bot you build, it will be anyway more personal and human than your usual app. You can equip it with your personality, your brand’s identity, make it speak to your users like you would, change its message depending on the input from the user.

Users will feel as if they are talking with another human and not some random machine.

They speak the ‘real’ language :

Let’s face it, the language our apps and websites use to interact with our clients is not the language we speak to our friends and families. So how do you expect to build a personal bond with the client if your conversation lacks a personal touch.

Our apps use words (rather commands) like “sign up”, “log in”, “download”, “click”, “fill in” and it lacks any social touch such as “please”, “hello”, “for sure”, “how is it going?” etc. It’s like our businesses suffer from the social communication disorder.

Chatbot help you express anything you want in a more social and conversational language which your users will definitely value. This is what makes people want to stay with you and chit chat for a bit longer.

Much simpler interface than a typical apps :

Chatbots are usually text-driven, with a touch of images and widgets, which makes it easy to interact with them. Look at all the messenger apps you’re using — they are as simple as they can possibly be, and that’s exactly why we like them so much.

Content is king, so don’t distract your user with fancy but redundant features. Also, remember that simplicity is what has helped the most successful brands win our hearts over the years.

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” — Steve Jobs

These things are at the core of a chatbot concept that’s why they are headed straight for success.

You can build them overnight (Literally!) :

Building a chatbot isn’t a rocket science (unless you are actually building a rocket). So be relaxed, building a chatbot won’t cost you much time. In fact, it will happen much faster than creating mobile apps. And timing really matters in business, right? There’s a variety of bot templates and ready-made software developed by Facebook, Microsoft and others that you can use.

All you have to do is to integrate it with a messenger platform of your choice, tweak some features, and your bot is ready. Building a bot may take a day or two if it’s a simple bot, sometimes it may take few weeks if a bot needs to be able to handle complex queries.

If the base is ready, you can even build them within few days. The fact is, the tech side is not the hard part here, it’s the conversation and personality you’ll have to spend most of your time on.

The best strategy for building complex bots could be to build a beta in few days and then start getting feedback from your users. Then improve your chatbot based on the real user’s experience and expectations.

Chatbots are cheaper (much cheaper) to build :

At the end, everything comes down to the cost doesn’t it ? Let’s decipher this factor now. As we have already covered, chatbots take less time to build as compared to building mobile apps and it is directly connected to the cost too as these two factors are intertwined tightly.

Of course, complex bots will take more time to build as compared to simple ones so the cost factor will also go up in the proportion of the complexity.

But in a nutshell, it DOES NOT cost too much to build a bot. It’s quite inexpensive than you could imagine.

Cost to drive installation is zero :

Here lies the crux of cost saving. When it comes to apps, you’ll need to build them and take efforts of promoting them to get downloads.

For chatbots, you don’t need to worry about all this. People don’t need to install the bot to get started. This means huge savings for your business as the cost to get users on board is alomost zero.

Why you should not invest in chatbots :

Of course chatbots are not perfect in all aspects. There are few areas where chatbots have a room for improvement. Let’s have a quick look :

Sometimes chatbots act dumb :



Of course chatbots themselves can not be dumb, they just act as per the way they are programmed. If bots are not implemented correctly, they don’t accurately respond to customers’ requests, they give customers unhelpful and irrelevant information. And this is going to hamper the customer experience.

When you factor in the delays caused by the chatbot not understanding what your users are communicating, the efficiency becomes ever worse — because now they have to re-type the question and hope the chatbot gets it.

In order to tackle this area successfully, we need much advanced AI which can understand what users are saying with its intelligence. The work has already begun and further advancements are in pipeline.

Security :

There are still concerns floating around the security & privacy of the data handled by chatbots, specially in case of banking and finance operations where the security of data is of paramount importance.

So if you are planning to build a chatbot for your business where the information that will be shared is sensitive in nature, you might want to give a complete thought to the development process.

You are not the driver anymore :

Chatbots operate in a limited environment. You don’t get much scope to improve the customer experience, you’ll have to play around the defined perimeter.

So you need to make sure that whatever experience you build for the user, it’s perfect. Another major downside here is, you don’t have the complete control over the environment because once developed, bots become in charge.

Chatbots can be rude :

Although chatbots are capable of recognising millions of words and configurations to provide a user with the most accurate answer possible, most are still unable to provide conversation skills that a human naturally provides.

Some users may prefer short and to the point approach, but others might find it less personable and somewhat cold. No matter how well they are programmed, chatbots will lack the capability of bringing human touch in interactions.

Cannot complete complex action :

Chatbots work by recognising certain key phrases and provide pre-set responses to those phrases. They find it difficult to register and respond to complex questions, and to carry out compound activities.

Sure, chatbots perform few task much better like being a virtual assistant, answering customer service questions such as FAQs and revealing the latest news and updates etc. But they lack the human intelligence to process complex queries and link them to the solution.

They are not real experts :

Chatbots may pose as experts but the truth is, they are not. They simply collect information and give formulaic responses. This might cause more trouble than benefits in some cases.

Let’s take an example of a chatbot offering treatment on medical conditions. If the patient cannot explain his pain points correctly, a bot might end up offering him completely wrong medication. This is rarely the case with a real doctor. Doctor will physically examine the patient, understand the condition and provide medication based on his expertise in the field.

You might not (really) need a chatbot :

It’s not mandatory that every business must have a chatbot. Your business might not demand one. So if you don’t have to interact with your customers frequently or if the kind of interaction you have needs to be highly personalised based on the customer’s requirement, why waste valuable resources in something that your business barely needs.

Of course some of these limitations will be overcomed as the technology evolves and more complex algorithms are developed. But the point is, you need to analyse your requirement in detail and figure out the best possible way to get along with chatbots.