Why Bots are Here to Stay

Having spent several months with a team building an Enterprise Bot, I can see why there is so much enthusiasm around this technology. Companies have a new tool at their disposal. With Bots in place, companies and their brands will use them to achieve customer success providing personalized, instantaneous, real-time, two-way communication between customers and partners. There is going to be kinks, maybe even pleats to iron through, however, the Bot phenomenon has started and personally do not think it can be stopped. There is always going to be a naysayer or few, out there that say its just too simple. I would argue that is the point.
 
Here are the two big reasons why:

1. Looking at Usability, and yes I have capitalized Usability, there is no need to open a browser to communicate and capture or enter data when you already have messaging at your fingertips. There is no reason to download and update multiple apps. You buy your phone, install your favorite messaging channel, and voilà!, you have instantaneous access to your favorite information sources. 
2. With Bots, the User Experience is handled with the simplicity of how the Bot responds to questions and how quickly the Bot can get the information you seek. There is definite room for improvement, and there will always be a use-case for apps but just like any technology early Bot promoters are already starting to sort through some very interesting solutions to make their Bots the UI of choice. 

As we build our Bot, Robo Recruiter, we are looking for ways to architect for what we see on the horizon. We are looking at ways to positively impact our users and provide them with a great user experience. One of our key questions is how we expand functionality through communication and what that communication actually means. 
We are hoping to do more than simply prove a point, we are hoping to prove that Messaging is a better way to enter and more importantly interact with data. We believe Bots are a key tool to helping you manage data and that in the process of doing so can be used to establish better, more personalized relationships with your clients, partners, and customers. I mean, really, who likes to wait around for a response when you can get it instantaneously?  

So where are we headed? How do we in the Bot world respond to the naysayer that believes our robotic assistant, our platform, is simply — too simple. Beyond a historical example of technological progress, we can already see Bots in action solving specific issues that face consumers and enterprise. Mundane data intensive tasks or tasks of convenience are already being covered by smart developers that see a Bot as their tool of choice. I am not talking about Machine learning or AI just yet as I personally see so much value for Bots to help us humans just get through our daily download of data. Whether that be our news sources, our sales leads, or our customers’ questions, in all of these scenarios, there is a role for a Bot. 
 
At Robo Recruiter we are driven by the different ways that our clients and their candidates interact. Whether this be directly where a Candidate chooses to engage with a Bot or via a Recruiter or Hiring Manager launching a campaign over SMS or email to link to our Bot, we are constantly looking at ways to bring users up onto the system providing them the information that they and our client’s choose to share. A good example of this is a link to our Bot in a Job Description (Want to try it out a very simple demo click here). My point is this — once a user is engaged the realm of opportunity to communicate directly with that user is immense however in doing so there carries with it a huge amount of responsibility not to abuse that engagement. The User’s choices need to be understood and respected and just like any relationship the customer experience needs to be built on trust. 

So, are Bots really here to stay? In our view there is simply too much momentum and with over $200M in investment behind the technologies last year alone we will soon start to see some amazing Bots.