I will begin by saying my early days of brand development came well before the term “brand” was even used, and when I worked for the brand himself – Mr. Harry Rosen – so exceptional customer service that went the extra mile was the rule. Check out the chatbot on Harry’s website or Sephora’s. Retail chatbots today have moved beyond the traditional role of customer service support and have shifted into providing help browsing and buying products and services. The success measures have been so strong that it has nonprofits investigating how AI can help strengthen fundraising. So let’s chat about chatbots.
Consumer Attitudes towards Chatbots are Improving
LivePerson annual surveys look at attitudes across six countries (unfortunately no Canadian data, but USA, UK and Australia), and report that positive attitudes towards using chatbots to provide personalized services at scale are improving. This isn’t a surprise when we consider the trend in voice-activated technology (e.g. Hey Google, Alexa, Cortana, Siri…) and other changes to consumer behaviours.
- 2020 = 31% Positive
- 2021 = 61% Positive*
*Note LivePerson’s Bella Health Covid-19 Screeningbot had over 30K daily users in 2021.
Facebook opened up its Messenger platform to chatbots in 2016, helping fuel the development of new AI technology. Today Messenger has over 300,000 chatbots on the platform and over 260,000 new conversations take place on the app daily.
- 60% of Millennials indicate they have used Chatbots and 70% say they have had a positive experience
- The chatbot market is supposed to amount to $454.8 million in revenue by 2027, up from $40.9 million in 2018. (Statista). Larger companies account for 46% of the chatbot market.
- LiveChat reports that chatbots can take care of 30% of live chat communications. Customer service chatbots also shorten the average wait time and increase satisfaction.
- Chatbot messaging for abandoned sales carts can help increase sales by up to 25%
Consumers’ Takes on Chatbots
- 52% Convenient
- 43% Faster than human help
- 42% Easy
- 62% Comfortable sharing information when asked in a message
- 86% More likely to do business when a company interacts with me in a personal way (e.g. using information on my account history)
- 53% Report using chatbots for booking appointments and 50% in helping them find a product or service
BUT
- 56% Can’t answer all questions
- 41% Lack human touch
- 36% Not personalized
Don’t Rush In Without a “Conversation” Plan
Like a well-thought-out eMail strategy, your Chatbot can be a huge brand asset if it is designed to meet customer needs and provide consistent, personalized and positive experiences. We always recommend teams start with a free Chatbot trial to get familiar with leading platforms that provide “templated” options – as customizing your AI agent to serve the particular needs of your customers can take time and resources. Like all platforms, you will need to look at what integrations already exist and how much “customizing” you will need to consider developing and testing. Most brands now hire a “conversation designer” who knows how to code engaging chatbot scenarios as chatbot journeys can be complex conversations. Consider some of the following NFP-related examples:
Educate: National Geographic created a trivia chatbot for the 46K Facebook followers in 2019. This daily quiz was designed to promote and sell their Almanac book to fans. They found 65% of users returned, 29% clicked thru to Almanac product pages and their open rate for their promotional messaging increased to 43%.
Ovarian Cancer Canada teamed up with a UK-based social listening company to create a non-profit chatbot. The bot is reported to have helped secure a $10 million grant for research, boosted donation rates by 250%, and educated users via a quiz designed to learn about each subscriber’s ovarian cancer awareness level, emotional state, and more.
Other UK examples are the Help for Hero’s website, which used a more traditional customer service chatbot to manage increased pandemic customer service support needs; the Bipolar UK FAQ Chatbot project; and Enterprise Bot Manager is highlighting new scenarios being developed for fundraising. (Chatbots for Charities Video – https://youtu.be/YmeO43izdRA)
Educate: Mencaphave put an ‘Understand Me’ chatbot on their charities website https://www.mencap.org.uk/understandme/ . The chatbot guides users and potential donors through a conversation with Aeren, who was born with a learning disability. The AI gives users information about their life, while also providing statistics on learning disabilities in the UK.
Charity Water created a bot called “Walk with Yeshi” as a donor engagement tool. When you send a message to this Facebook Messenger bot named Yeshi, she tells her story about her daily walk for 2 1/2 hours for clean water in Ethiopia.
Empower: Statistics Canada is working on chatbot technology for the 2024 Census Behavioural Test in preparation for the 2026 Census Survey. Retail chatbots have continued to improve how they gather feedback and analyze data. Nonprofits are also leveraging messaging platforms to collect data and feedback from beneficiaries or communities, in order to help monitor and improve programs.
The UN, BeeHuman, Direct Relief and other charities are using chatbots for volunteer recruitment and thank-you follow-up notes of appreciation.
Colour of Change wanted to both educate and advocate -using chatbots to get signatures for legislation that will help improve the lives of people of colour in the USA.
And Bell Let’s Talk was using Twitter chatbots in 2022 to respond to all its Let’s Talk Day social media comments, posts and messaging! They have also provided funding to the University of Calgary to use chatbot technology, in over 100 languages, 24/7 to support students with mental health questions.
The Gates Foundation is funding a project to improve vaccines in Pakistan by developing Babibot, a text-based chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to provide vaccine information and interactive support to caregivers, easing the burden on overworked health workers.
As you can see in just a few examples there is already a diverse use of cases for considering chatbot platforms as part of a multi-channel, multi-lingual communications, strategy. Articles about the growth of chatbots highlight further opportunities in retail, but also human resources, healthcare, personalized fitness, banking, training / e-learning, and more.