Dive Brief:
- Artificial intelligence-based 'digital employees' could soon replace chatbots in the enterprise because chatbots don't act enough like humans, according to Enterprise Tech.
- While AI-based platforms can provide human-like customer service and can learn and improve over time, chatbots work in a linear fashion without the ability to learn. Chatbots also often fail to engage customers. About 40% of people don't get past the first message in a chatbot conversation, according to research from BotAnalytics.
- Some flavor of self-learning automation solution will be a top five investment priority for more than 30% of CIO's by 2020, according to Gartner.
Dive Insight:
Though chatbots have proven popular, AI-based platforms that emulate human-to-human customer service interaction could deliver better results. Companies have already struggled with chatbot tone. Earlier this month, IBM introduced a new feature in its Tone Analyzer service designed to help chatbots better understand consumers' tones and respond appropriately. But chatbots weren't created with a type of technology that can learn over time like AI can.
AI-based digital employees could allow for new approaches to the overall "customer experience” or make some of the tasks businesses perform everyday easier and more efficient. They could also save businesses money.
A report released by Juniper Research in May found chatbots have the potential to save businesses in the healthcare and banking sectors more than $8 billion per year by 2022, up from $20 million in 2017. But AI is still in developmental stages, so in the meantime, chatbots are safe.
