What are Facebook Chat Bots?
Facebook has plans for a future where we will be able to communicate with a business as easily as we are able to chat with a friend. Facebook plans to accomplish this by using chat bots over Facebook Messenger.
USA TODAY explains that chat bots are essentially chat robots, interactive software, that are powered by artificial intelligence and are often aided by humans. The ultimate purpose of this interactive software is to simulate human conversation and perform simple tasks such as automatically responding to a question (Guynn, 2016).
The Importance of Chat Bots
Messenger’s Head of Product, Stan Chudnovsky, explained that Facebook is trying to make it easier for consumers to communicate with businesses according to Tech Crunch. He further addressed that it is easier to chat and text verses siting and talking over the phone (Matney & Constine, 2016).
Chat Bots Used for Business
Forbes reveals that Facebook’s ambitions to turn Messenger into a new platform for three key areas: e-commerce, advertising and customer service. Facebook has been working with many businesses to launch services through Messenger. Recently Dutch airline KLM announced that its customers could begin to retrieve their boarding passes directly through Facebook Messenger, and ultimately it wants to sell tickets through the chat app. In addition, Uber started to offer the option to order one of its cars through Facebook Messenger last year according to Forbes (Olson, 2016).
Since the launch of Messenger platform, around 5,000 companies that use Shopify have sent order confirmations and alerts through the chat bots on Messenger. As well, six million messages were exchanged the first week of the platform on a chat bot for Call of Duty (Matney & Constine, 2016).
Music Labels and Artists will Benefit from Chat Bots
Chat bots have the potential to create a thriving ecosystem for advertisers and businesses on Messenger. Artists and music labels that traditionally spend their ad dollars on Google’s suggested search results or Facebook’s News Feed, should now look into Messenger as a new and potentially more intimate space in which to engage with their audience (Olson, 2016).
Original article: The Future of Facebook Messenger Chat Bots
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