the future of messaging bots and chat for business
TRANSCRIPT
The future of messaging bots & chat for business
@ChrisMessina Infobip Webinar March 22, 2017
Known for
Inventing the hashtag, product hunts
Companies
Uber; Google; Mozilla
Skills
UX & product design, marketing, social media, developer relations, platform strategy
Appeared in
Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, The Information, Backchannel, Business Insider, Wired
Speaking
MobileBeat, SXSW, SapientRazorfish, Future Decoded, Slush, APIDays
Two things:
Do ask questions! ☞
Take the quick poll!
Should you build a bot?
🤔
2016: “The Year of Conversational Commerce”
“Utilizing chat, messaging, or other natural language interfaces (i.e. voice) to interact with people, brands, or services and bots that heretofore have had no real place in the bidirectional, asynchronous messaging context.”
“Evolving from simple social conversations to business-related conversations.”
—Mary Meeker, KPCB
Worldwide Device Shipments
Source: Gartner, Worldwide Devices Shipments per Year by Device Type
2,000M
1,750M
1,500M
1,250M
1,000M
750M
500M
0
2006 2011 20152007 2008 2010 2012 2013 2014 2016
250M
2009
Credit: LukeW Design
2006
239M PCs
68M Smartphones & Tablets
2016
269M PCs
1,729M Smartphones & Tablets
Messaging is the killer mobile app
Source: companies, BI IntelligenceMonthly active users for the top four social networks and messaging apps
Big 4 social networking apps
Big 4 messaging apps
MIL
LIO
NS
3,500
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
Q4 '11 Q1 Q1 Q1Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q2 Q3
Messenger was the most downloaded app in 2016#1
80% of teenagers are using Messenger as either their first or second means of communication
88% of Millennials report that they prefer chatting over the web or social media to talk to businesses
We’re #trending!
Source: ubisend Ltd 2016 Mobile Messaging Report
63.9%of consumers agree with the statement “Businesses should be available and contactable via messaging applications”
49.4%of consumers would rather use a messaging app than a phone call to communicate with a business
How did we get here?
Steve Jobs2007
This one works This one doesn’t
Entertainment
iPod
Communication
Phone
Apps
iOS
+
+
+
+
Entertainment
iPod
Communication
Phone
Apps
iOS
+
+
+
+
+ ?
Credit: AP
Number of monthly active Facebook users
© Statista 2016
The World Online
Sources: cpu-galaxy.at; Facebook Devices; Amazon
• 📲 Massive UX improvements in tech products
• 📉 Friction and access costs to the internet
• 📈 Speed of computing
• 📈 People online (*demise of “offline”)
• 📈 Spread of technology into all facets of our day
• 📈 Casual, familiar relationship with technology
• 🤖 AI assistants being invited into our lives
• 🚸 Children as leading indicators of “🔜 normal”
Macro trends ∴ new assumptions
No Such Thing as OfflineBy Justin Barber Illustrations by Sehee Lee
design.google.com/articles/digital-natives
—Satya Nadella, Microsoft
“Bots are the new apps.”
Build the intelligent cloud platform
Create more personal computing
Reinvent productivity & business processes
Conversations as a Platform
Some terms
Some terms
AI when a machine
mimics “cognitive” functions
Neural Network a programming
paradigm inspired by biology that
enables computers to learn from
observational data
Machine Learning ability to “learn” without explicit programming
Deep Learning algorithms that
learn complicated concepts by
building them out of simpler ones
NLP/NLU/NLG interaction between
computers and humans using
(natural) languages
Some terms
Bot an autonomous program on a
network
Chatbot a bot that uses
human language to communicate
Skill a capability that an AI Assistant learns
or obtains
AI Assistant a chatbot that performs tasks or services for an
individual
Some terms
Bot Platform a computing
context that can be extended by third
party bots
Voice Platform a voice computing context that can be extended by third
party bots
Categories of Facebook bots
Brand promotes a
commercial or corporate entity
News/New Media provides timely and/or topical content or
media
Customer Service access to help, feedback, and
account assistance
Commerce sells products or
otherwise focuses on transactions
Categories of Slack bots
Information Retrieval
promotes a commercial or
corporate entity
Internal Operations
provides timely and/or topical content or
media
Workflow Automation
access to help, feedback, and
account assistance
Customer Support sells products or
otherwise focuses on transactions
• Immediacy: respond in < 10-30 seconds or else: frustrated users!
• Operations: operators can have up to 3 concurrent chats w/o affecting performance
• Always on: don’t recreate voicemail on messaging!
• Forgetful: conventional chat sessions lose context — don’t do this!
• Isolation: live chat is often disconnected from other contact points, confusing customers
Challenges of conversational UI
• Immediacy: speed for the EOD Generation (everything on demand)
• Authenticity: supports natural language, in your customer’s words
• Two-way communication: 1:1 messaging
• Hybridization: humans in the loop, fronted by bots
• Continuous context: combine people + system knowledge for 360° view of customer (i.e. with sign in)
• Frictionless onboarding: nothing to install; most users have messaging apps
• UI consistency: people understand messaging; no new app UI to learn
Benefits of conversational UI
The new platforms
+
October
*
2016
Enterprise ConsumerCustomer Service
Independent platform builders: picks & shovels
Anatomy of a bot
Persistent menu
Text, emoji, stickers, images, audio, video, files
Cards & Carousel
Content action buttons
Quick replies
Keyboard suggested replies
The landscape
AI assistants
Shopping
📰 News
m.me/wsj m.me/cnnm.me/theguardian m.me/GetPrpl/
TV & Game
m.me/PersonaSynthetics m.me/callofduty
🍺 and 🍕
m.me/BudLight m.me/Dominos
Art
telegram.me/icon8bot telegram.me/prismabot
Celebrities
garyveebot.com m.me/kevinhartbotm.me/869705063160306 m.me/christinamilian
Resources
refind.com/chrismessina?q=bots
producthunt.com/@chrismessina/collections/convcomm
Questions / Answers
Thank you.!@chrismessina "m.me/MessinaBot