Chatbots pioneer a new way for organizations to connect with their customers. But, the truth about chatbots is, they still lack the potential to gauge human emotions and deal with complex queries.
Organizations have now understood that humans get more attracted towards only those companies that provide assistance in lesser time. Once such technological innovation, that offers speedy and accurate service is, chatbots. Chatbots have blown everyone’s mind to a level never imagined. It is quite shocking to know that 69% of consumers would love to communicate with chatbots while interacting with brands. With such hype, organizations have started capitalizing on chatbots for their business to enhance their customer experience.
But, the truth about chatbots is they are over hyped. This incredible AI’s application (currently) falls short on emotional intelligence and smartness. Let’s dig more into the sad and heartbreaking truth about chatbots.
We know that for a conversation to be successful, there is a need that both ends should share meaningful context. It’s a collaborative approach. But, in the case of chatbots, it sometimes isn’t what we get. Chatbots, in most cases, fail to maintain the flow in the conversation. They lack the ability to remember the dialogues that you had with it in the past. This results in customers typing the same message again for the information they need, when they restart a conversation. This lack of context awareness for a chatbot happens because of ‘not-so-advanced’ NLP algorithms.
Chatbots are mostly used as an information acquisition tool. Chatbots can answer queries of customers efficiently for which they are being trained. But, when it comes to understanding empathy, they fall short again. Due to the lack of emotional intelligence, chatbots cannot gauge the sentiments of humans. Chatbots have a lack of comprehension on sarcasm, jokes, and humor. They might take a human joke as a frank thing, thereby providing irrelevant information to customers. If humans do not obtain the required assistance, then it won’t leave a good brand impression on them.
Organizations strive to develop a chatbot for dealing with every kind of business, similar to a personal assistant. But, chatbots lack improvisation skills. Let us be clear that we do not doubt the assistance provided by chatbots. They can answer accurately based on the training they obtain. But, chatbots can explain only templated queries. If you try to question chatbots again and again, it overwhelms them, leaving them confused. For clarification, they will keep on asking the same question to customers, leaving a bad impact altogether. The customer might get annoyed with such a negative experience.
Honestly, chatbots are one of the most promising application areas of AI, aimed at transforming the organization’s services and customer’s experience. For now, there are several flaws (which will not last for long, for sure) due to the immaturity of its parent technology. Chatbots, as they evolve, can give an inclusive solution for your business, easing the life of your users. As of now, by knowing the truth about chatbots, you can decide appropriately whether they are worth an investment for your business or not.
Naveen is the Founder and CEO of Allerin, a software solutions provider that delivers innovative and agile solutions that enable to automate, inspire and impress. He is a seasoned professional with more than 20 years of experience, with extensive experience in customizing open source products for cost optimizations of large scale IT deployment. He is currently working on Internet of Things solutions with Big Data Analytics. Naveen completed his programming qualifications in various Indian institutes.