Chatbot
The growth of messaging applications
It is reported that the growth of messaging applications has been exponentially recently, and the usage rate of messaging apps has became higher than that of other mobile applications [^1].
The following graph from statista [^2] shows that the monthly active users for the most popular messaging applications are over 1 billion.
This means that messaging apps connect more than 1 billion people for a month.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also mentioned [^3]; “There are only a few services that connect more than a billion people.”
Furthermore, could depict that the services which messaging applications can offer would have potentially 1 billion users.
More services on messaging applications
Not surprisingly, many of messaging applications are trying to offer more services than just sending and receiving messages. Some already integrated services like banking, shopping and reserving a restaurant for a dinner into their messaging platforms. But, I believe there still are huge potentials in growing and developing new innovative services on chat platforms.
The ways to offer services and chatbot
There could be many ways to offer services to users on messaging applications. For instance, each service could possibly have a dedicated tab so that users can choose what they would like to do. But, as more services to be integrated, the usability and UI designs would just get complicated more and more. Considering that we are living in an era of AI, the chatbot agents with natural language understanding could be one of the most effective forms to provide services while maximizing the usability. Rather than trying to find out how or where you could launch a specific service, this could be just done by telling the chatbot agents what you want to do.
Chatbot trends
PR Newswire forecasted that the growth of global chatbot market would become 6 billion USD worth and as high as at 37% CAGR by 2023 [^4]. Techworlds demonstrates some good example usages of chatbots that are currently available [^5]. Chatbots could not only offer a service to order a pizza or making a reservation but also it could become a specialist on various fields such as potential doctor, lawer, finance adviser, teacher and so on.
How chatbots work
Users on messaging applications would communicate to chatbot agents in a natural language; therefore, it is essential for chatbot agents to understand the natural launguage. Companies like Google, Microsoft or Amazon offer platforms to create a chatbot agent with natural language understanding (e.g., API.AI, Amazon Lex, WIT.AI and so on). Due to this, the cost of the chatbot development has been reduced dramatically.
After a chatbot agent understood what user says (Intent), appropriate services depending on what the user asked for should be provided. This could be done by having a web application hooked into the agent.
I will talk more about how chatbots work in another post.
References
[^1] http://www.businessinsider.com/the-messaging-app-report-2015-11 [^2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/258749/most-popular-global-mobile-messenger-apps/ [^3] https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/1/10889534/whats-app-1-billion-users-facebook-mark-zuckerberg [^4] http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-chatbots-market-demonstrates-worth-of-6-billion-usd-at-37-of-cagr-by-2023-300472211.html [^5] http://www.techworld.com/picture-gallery/apps-wearables/9-best-uses-of-chatbots-in-business-in-uk-3641500/