5 Reasons why chatbots will replace your company app

Why chatbots will replace your company app

Do chatbots have the potential to completely replace your company app?

I refer to a future where businesses re-direct 100% of their app development budgets into a chatbot on messaging apps (due to their mobile presence), and have no app at all.

Its perhaps too early to tell, this move may also only make sense for some businesses and not others.

With that in mind, here are a few things that support the argument that your company app may one day be redundant.

5 Key Reasons why your business needs a chatbot

1. Evidence and recent trends

Recent research points to us spending 80% of our time in just three apps being Facebook, Whatsapp and Google.

Its also been found that most apps downloaded today are only being used once or twice.

Messaging apps are the only type of app that go against this trend, and coincidentally the leading platform for chatbot development.

A recent ‘Forrester Australia predictions for 2017’ report believes consumers will spend 90% of their time on just five apps this year.

Looking at the current trends messaging apps are in those five.

We are generally downloading fewer new apps because we have what we need.

App fatigue is here and its real.

How many times have you downloaded and re-downloaded an app, just to delete it again during your monthly spring clean?

2.  Speed and in-app convenience

Before you can use an app, you need to search for it, download and install it.

This process takes time and can sometimes be a hassle depending on where you are and how quickly you want to use the app.

In addition, apps take up valuable real estate on your phone in contrast to chatbots. Apps also have to be updated, regularly.

Chatbots never need to be downloaded or updated, simply search for the bot and begin using.

Its quick, easy and happens in a familiar environment. This segues into their other benefit along with speed.

The in-app experience is smooth and comfortable compared to downloading different apps, having to learn and re-learn how they work.

Is it still necessary to download a range of specialist apps that you use just a couple of times a year when you could chat to a chatbot in your messaging app?

3.  Chatbots become smarter

Thanks to machine learning and natural language processing chatbots get smarter and learn as they continually converse with customers. They essentially continually evolve which puts them ahead of apps.

As they learn, their ability to build customer profiles which exceed customer expectations will surpass that of apps.

The interaction with chatbots in the future will be highly personalised and efficient giving them a further advantage over apps.

 4. Conversation is our natural language

The interface of chatbots is conversation, or more specifically language, this is something we are taught from a very young age.

Our parents, carers and grandparents all taught us language, to converse.

It’s natural, something we have mastered, are comfortable with and does not require re-learning.

Apps on the hand are designed with more visual interfaces. Buttons, text, images etc.

As a result, there is a process of learning new visual interfaces to use different apps as we download them.

Chatbots remove the necessity to learn visual interfaces because they use language in a conversational style.

Using a chatbot is like speaking to someone who can do what you need to be done, simple and easy.

And you also have a reference of the conversation which you can refer to at any time.

5. Scalability across different platforms

Chatbots have another advantage that can be exploited depending on the needs of the business.

Once the core conversation interaction logic is developed on the back end, it can be adapted for different platforms.

So as an example you can have the same chatbot answer questions on Facebook Messenger and also on your website.

This again puts chatbots ahead of apps which can be very expensive and designed for mobile devices primarily.

The scalability of chatbots also aids omnichannel strategies and means customer experience benefits can be realised on different platforms.

This is a positive for customers and businesses.

As exciting as chatbots are, they are only in their infancy.

There is so much more to come as they evolve and really begin to show their capabilities.

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