Developing a chatbot in the app market can be a goldmine

For some time now, app fever has been spreading among companies that want new tools to reach their potential users. Before that, every company wanted a website, and more recently, social media. At every stage, every company wanted to revolutionize its business with its dot-com, mobile app or Twitter account. Now it seems to be the turn of chatbots. Worldwide, many brands have already created their own, with varying degrees of success and sophistication: from Barbie to Lufthansa, from Unilever to the NFL, Burger King, H&M and Ford, the list grows every day.

Chatbots are the new darling of marketing

There are many types of bots, but in this article we are referring to a very specific type: chatbots or conversational bots, programs that are inserted into an application for communication purposes, especially messaging, although they can also exist as profiles on social networks.

And how can a chatbot serve a company? “Chatbots are especially useful for processes that can be automated, such as technical support queries. We’ve found that there are typically ten common questions asked in such queries,” explains Joel Monton, a user experience designer at Wizeline, a software consultancy that has developed bots for The Wall Street Journal and The Sun.

Chatbots, the perfect ally for your social networks

“They are becoming popular because the whole market is on social media, most of them on Facebook,” Monton continues. It’s the main reason why most (if not all) of the commercial bots being developed for the public run on Facebook Messenger. They may operate outside of that chat, for example on the company’s own website or in its app, but it’s a fact that Facebook Messenger is being prioritized.

“Messaging is one of the few things people do more than just browse social media,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in November 2014 in an open Q&A session at his company’s headquarters. A quote that has become almost a cliché when talking about the bets being poured into messaging apps, and bots are one of them.

In the case of the Nike Style Bot - which was launched last December in Mexico to suggest clothing and products to users - the program can operate on other platforms, but "we have not enabled it because it is not natural for consumers," says Ana Lizz Pardo, digital brand manager for Nike Mexico. Another powerful reason to prioritize Facebook chatbot is user data, the main capital asset of social platforms.This way, the chatbot knows in advance everything that Facebook knows about each of them, and that helps brands deliver more relevant messages.

“Facebook and Google are putting the first DNA molecules with their APIs, but there is still a lot to do in terms of specialization,” says Alan Lazalde of Kubo Financiero, a Mexican Fintech who is developing his own chatbot. “I think what will happen is that different types of chatbots will end up being created. Now we are seeing some that are completely generic, but I think it will be the companies that end up specializing them.”

Examples of success and failure achieved thanks to a chatbot

The ultimate goal of Nike Style Bot is to get the user to click on the “buy” button, through a friendly and content-enriched customer service. The ideal of every conversation is to turn it into a saleAttracting more customers at the end of the purchasing process is one of the main missions given to commercial chatbots. This is the case of Aeroméxico Aerobéxico, which since September 2016 offers various customer service services on Facebook Messenger and can search and book flights without leaving the messaging application.

“After the implementation of Aerobot, Aeromexico's conversion rate rose 300 percent compared to other channels used to purchase tickets, such as reservations from their website or by email,” says Juan Carlos Asensio, vice president of sales at Yalo, a Mexican software development firm that has also worked on bot projects with other major companies such as Cinépolis and Elektra.

There are also small businesses that have looked to bots as a way to improve their sales process. In Mexico City, the vegan food service Los Loosers has just celebrated six years of rolling their bikes through the streets, delivering sandwiches. From the beginning They have taken all their orders through private messages on Facebook and Twitter, but in December of last year they implemented a chatbot, with the help of Yalo.

The process was simple: a hungry user would send a “Hello” and The chatbot responded with the menu of the day in photos; it asked the user for the number of dishes to order, the address and mobile phone number, and, in theory, the order was ready. However, the chatbot often failed to understand the address and the customer's request was diverted to a human worker to complete the order. The Loosers declined to comment. Looserbot ceased operations in June 2017.

Walking the fine line between restaurants and startups, another chatbot has been more successful. Weno is a platform that collects the menu of different healthy food restaurants in Guadalajara and Tijuana and serves as an intermediary for placing online orders. The mission of this chatbot that runs on Messenger is to simplify the search for dishes“Operating in a limited context: you tell it you’re hungry and it sends you restaurant suggestions based on your location. Or you tell it what you’re craving (for example, pizza or a burger) and it searches for dishes, eventually landing on the restaurant’s page on Weno.”

The Companies will play an important role in creating this ecosystem, also by integrating artificial intelligence solutions into all its processes, not just in sales and customer service. It is still a technology in development, but Its economic impact is already beginning to have its effects.

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