The birth of Conversational Experiences and how brands are using them

Ever since Facebook announced the launch of chatbots to the world in mid-2016, the well-established definition for the same went something like “a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via conversational interfaces”. Bots got the reputation of being lightweight apps that resided within messengers. Ever since their widespread acceptance, the world of marketing has never been the same. A  wave of a disruptive new trend in technology ushered into our daily lives.

Like with every new technology, companies soon began experimenting, testing and deploying chatbots. Initially, thought leaders in the ecosystem shared views that promised the birth of a whole new ecosystem that would replace previously tested methods of marketing and fostering customer relationships and as we progress in the year 2018, the trends do appear to be shifting towards a more bot first approach albeit slow.

With promising advances in AI lined up for the year 2018 fuelled by advances in NLP and Machine Learning companies are aggressively pushing towards having their presence over popular messaging apps.  After all, an overwhelming number of surveys reveal that people LOVE MESSAGING APPS.

For businesses to flourish in the new era of marketing, it is imperative for them to deploy a formidable bot strategy.  That’s where conversational experiences come into the picture. To simply put, conversational experiences are the gateway for brands to build a connection of trust built upon interactions that either add value, excite or do both.

Based on the company’s core short term and long term agenda, some of the use cases that companies bank upon are:

Marketing – To acquire, engage & retain customers increasing marketing ROI

Sales – To convert conversations into transaction & grow revenue

Support – To provide instant, accurate responses & delight customers

Conversational marketing enables brands to remain transparent and profile customers. In the long term, customers like to stick to brands that understand their needs and deliver accordingly. In this sense, conversational experiences provide the right medium for brands to express themselves wholeheartedly.