What does the future hold for Chatbots might be a question of yours. To be frank, there is no real answer. 2017 was honestly a flop for the chatbot. We have yet to see the functions that were predicted years ago. However, there is one thing I can say for certain and that is, chatbots are not going away. After reading 10 + articles on chatbots posted in the last month, I was able to determine some predictions for 2018 as the chatbot industry enters a more mature phase.
- Chatbot intelligence will increase – significant improvements in conversational capabilities
- Chatbots will be created without using data
- Integration with messaging platforms will increase
- Bots will begin to interact with other bots, not just humans, in order to get tasks done.
- Chatbots will help lead to higher salaries – they will increase customer support and HR salaries over the next five year by taking over simple tasks leaving room for higher-touch interactions.
- Voice bots will be more common with early success predicted in 2018
- More chatbot companies will take advantage of cryptocurrencies to strengthen their value proposition
Jin Tanaka, CEO and Founder of Foxsy, and Expresso said, “2016 was challenging, 2017 was learning, and in 2018 the Bots will break the world!
On the flip side of things, there are people who don’t think bots will take off quite the same. One writer mentions, “Well, new year, same bullshit. It has to be said that chatbots, though they are selling like hot cakes today, are mostly stupid and disappointing.”… “Well-crafted coding and algorithm writing is not artificial intelligence.” 90% of today’s chatbots are code writing that seems intelligent, not an artificially intelligent system that can learn on its own.
Chatbots aren’t all perfect – which is why they still have a lot of improving to do in 2018. One problem with the current Chatbots is they don’t understand anything past a simple script of responses. If your answer is anywhere outside the scope of their programmed script you’ll get a “Sorry, I didn’t get that” response, which can be quite frustrating. Not only that, front-end chatbots face two problems: they lack empathy and are not capable of problem-solving. Would you trust any of the bots you’ve interacted with to solve your most pressing issues?
Ultimately, the technology is there. Whether you believe chatbots are real AI or just coding and algorithms – they are working to solve issues for companies and bridge the gap between human interaction. I believe in 2018 we are going to see many of the above predictions and the conversational capabilities will take off so much so that their understanding might actually freak consumers out…but impress them at the same time and maybe even win them over!!
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