How marketers can capitalise on new AI technology to deliver more effective chatbots
Chatbots are no longer the robotic, clunky machines from the days of old. If you remember bots like AOL Instant Messenger’s SmarterChild, for example, you might be interested to learn that advanced designs are allowing for the creation of more interactive conversational pathways — meaning these days, chatbot conversations look a lot like their fluid human counterparts.
What’s more, companies developing these technologies are increasingly able to iterate upon each chatbot, optimizing specific types of interaction within the messenger conversation. As a result, a new element of artificial intelligence technology is emerging, and it’s called natural language generation.
Generating ‘Natural Language’
NLG is simply the creation of human-like language by a machine representation system. These systems begin with the idea of figuring out what the communication goal is or what the user wants to know. What follows is an analysis of…
Building Chatbots: Everything you need to know
Chatbots continue to receive a lot of hype in 2017, with companies including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and many others investing heavily in the technology. Smart Insights have covered how Pizza Express have built a chatbot. This brief guide explores some of key things to consider when building and launching your first chatbot.
Understand your audience
Before you start building anything it is essential to fully understand who will be using your chatbot, and what you already know about them. Facebook Insights and other analytical tools may provide some useful information.
Personas are frequently used when building websites to address specific audience groups, and may also be helpful when creating chatbots.
Set the right tone
The conversational nature of chatbots makes getting your tone of voice right critical. Tone of voice will vary according to the nature of…
Pizza Express are embracing chatbots in their social media - how easy was it for us to book a table and what are the implications for other E-commerce sites?
Pizza Express have launched a new chatbot on Facebook Messenger, they state it allows users to book restaurants using Messenger - we wanted to book a table ourselves, with this in mind, we did. Here's how we got on.
The launch followed a trial over Christmas, which was used by 150,000 people, much to the surprise of Pizza Express.
We first tried it on desktop, aiming to book a table for the restaurant near our office in Leeds, UK.
An interesting point to note is there is not much chat involved, you select options - I typed responses to see how well it worked, but also because I felt this was the way to do…
Examples showing how Chatbots will become an increasingly important marketing app in the future
Artificial intelligence and machine learning is one of the top trends in digital marketing for 2017. At the same time, we are seeing a reduction in demand for apps, particularly as the largest platforms are reaching saturation.
You could say that chatbots are the new apps; the new customer service reps, not to mention the new support system for marketers. In future, more people will turn to chatbots to manage their daily chores, be it ordering a ride or a pizza. Often these are built within Messenger apps themselves.
In fact, the rise of bots could be plainly attributed to increasing usage of messenger apps. According to Forester, people spend a staggering 85% of their time using the top messenger apps including Facebook Messenger, Kik, Slack and…
Stay ahead of the curve with these essential 2017 retail trends
There are lots of exciting new digital technologieis for retail marketers to explore next year, including: chatbots, social commerce, Google Beacons and virtual/augmented reality.
Retail marketers have had to be patient over the last few years. We all know the future lies in creating a seamless shopping experience between online and offline consumer habits. And we know personalised, targeted messages are the way to guide users from one habit to the next.
The problem is, we don’t really have the technological means to do all of this in an integrated way yet. Despite all the talk and ambition, the necessary technology isn’t readily available, affordable or practical enough for retailers to implement on a wide scale.
However, 2016 has felt like a genuine turning point for retail marketers. We’re almost there. 2017 could finally be the year retail marketing comes of age.
Chatbots are…
How and Where to Add Chat To Your Website
I’ll start with a simple question: Are you actively interacting with visitors to your store? If you own a physical store, your answer is probably ‘Yes’. But if you operate a virtual storefront - a website - and you’re answering ‘No’ to this question, you’re leaving a lot of visitor questions unanswered. And since people who don’t get their questions answered are less confident and engaged shoppers, they’re more likely to leave your website. And too many bailouts will kill your conversion rate.
Picture yourself in shopping mode: even if you know exactly what you want, and from which stores you’d consider buying it, you usually have at least one lingering question. For example, if you’re shopping for shoes online, you might not be sure if the website you’re visiting offers black suede shoes in your size. Or you might wonder if they…
Facebook's new analytics tool for Chatbots signals its desire to make bots a key part of Messenger's attractiveness to brands
Chatbots are the hot new trend that's got marketers excited this year. Their success comes from the confluence of two separate trends - the massive growth in the popularity of chat apps (which is in turn driven by the rise of mobile & social), and the development of ever more powerful AI technologies. Since Facebook announced it would support Chatbots on its Messenger app in April 2016, over 34,000 Messenger bots have been created. Whether it's Taco Bell's bot giving menu recommendations, being able to order an Uber via tapping a car icon in Facebook messenger or getting a rundown of the day's news from CNN's chatbot sent straight to you, brands have been quick to seize the potential afforded by building Chatbots within the Messenger platform.
It easy to see why…
How the ‘brains' behind the 45th President of the United States turned out to be a robot
In 1973 I went to a cinema in London to see “Westworld” starring Yul Brynner. Last week I watched the first episode of the 2016 TV series remake. As with the movie, the series concerns a future where robots act as hosts at a Wild West theme park.
Hosting paying human guests, the bots are so realistic that it is difficult to spot the difference between them and the humans. The bots play the roles of cowboys and citizens of highly realistic frontier towns - enabling humans who visit the theme park, to act out their greatest fantasies. The interesting thing about the programme is whether, guests who, given the chance to act out no-limits fantasies choose to shoot bad guys – have flings – start a brawls at saloons – or…
Allo, Allo, Allo, what marketing implications do we have here then?
Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended Source: Allo.Google.com
Google announcement this week of the launch of its new messenger app has got marketers excited. And no, it's not because of the new emojis. It's because it follows the industry-wide trend for integrating AI-powered digital assistants into messaging apps. The announcement comes hot of the heels of Facebook's announcement earlier this month which hailed the introduction of 'Messanger version 1.2', which would include facilities to let chatbots handle payments within the app.
The chat app has lots of nifty little features to tempt users, which aren't all that important to marketers. These are things like being able to enlarge or shrink text, send auto-generated responses, doodle on images or send an impressive range of stupid emojis.
The key feature from a marketing perspective is the fact the app contains a personal assistant that utilises 'Google Now', which uses a natural language interface…
