There has been a steady rise in the importance of chatbots in previous years, but 2018 transformed the tech and business world in a significant way. Now more businesses than ever are using chatbots to increase their sales and improve other aspects of business like lead generation, conversation with customers and potential clients, and the overall return on investment. 2019 is expected to be the year where chatbots become more deeply ingrained in the day to day commerce. The new year offers yet unexplored areas in artificial intelligence and the leaders of the AI world have taken upon themselves to do just that. 2019 has already given marketers a hint as to where, how, and how much can chatbots be used to increase business growth. The new trends in chatbots are already visible and those benefiting from this information have already taken note of it. Following are some of the useful predictions on chatbots in 2019:

1.Bots Will Become Even More Human-Like:

While the idea of bots in customer service was initially not readily accepted by all, soon it became a popular idea. For many years now, people have been able to distinguish between a machine and a human in customer support. However, things have changed in the last few years. Today that line is getting more and more blurred. It has been predicted by the industry experts that by the end of 2019, talking to a chatbot may be completely indistinguishable from another human.SmatSocial’s very own chatbot, SmatBot, uses natural language programming (NLP) to constantly improve its conversations with customers. This allows SmatBot to talk to humans in fully constructed, coherent sentences that flow naturally. Owing to India’s diverse nature, SmatBot is not just capable of holding a conversation in both Hindi and English, but also in Hinglish, a hybrid of the two languages. The best part of SmatBot is that the more it talks to people, the better it gets at holding conversations with them. NLP makes customer service easier for everyone involved, providing 24X7 support to your customers while simultaneously reducing on wastage of resources.

2.New and Better Uses of Machine Learning:

Chatbots are extremely useful as they work by collecting data from various different sources, putting the jigsaw puzzle-like pieces together to make a potentially complex picture. The chatbots then make use of this information as a reference to interact with users. The analysis of the data collected is invaluable in itself.The more data the chatbot is fed, the better it will be able to process, understand and react to it. The bold prediction for 2019 is that the bots will be able to interact fully with a user throughout every stage of their needs. This is achieved by making use of personalisation tools to make each user’s experience with your brand unique and tailor-made for them. By providing a unique experience to an individual, the chatbot can provide better results by meeting current and specific needs without giving generic and unhelpful information.

3.Chatbots Could Replace Apps:

With the prevalence of virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, people have reduced the amounts of apps they use. Now, for convenience, they simply ask their virtual assistant to pull up a detail over the internet, set reminders or even make a call.Asking Google, Siri or Alexa to do something is a lot easier than doing it yourself, especially if you are otherwise occupied like eating, holding your child, or even driving. Asking a virtual assistant to help out decidedly saves the hassle and potentially a little time and headache. Therefore, with the growth of chatbots, apps have started to become the thing of the past. While the change may take up a lot of time to garner traction and not everyone will adhere to it at the same time, but the time for it is coming. In other places, though, the change has already taken place and the apps have already been phased out and have been replaced with chatbots as the latter are far more reliable and beneficial to businesses. To know how chatbots can help you with your business needs, check out this blog. While apps may not be going away anytime soon, their future has been decided for them – sooner or later, they will be replaced by chatbots.

4.More Voice-Based Programmes Will be Available:

One of the major reasons why apps will eventually be phased out is their inability to incorporate voice-based software in them. This feature is already being used heavily in the current world of chatbots, and is expected to grow exponentially in the future. As time passes, voice-based programmes will only become more widespread and popular.

Closing Thoughts:

Knowing the general direction the artificial intelligence industry, especially chatbots, are heading in makes the job of marketers slightly easier. With these predictions at your disposal, you are equipped to make all the right decisions for your brand. SmatBot is a bot for all your business needs. Using SmatBot will help you declutter your website as it can handle all the things you may need to increase your business, unlike other bots which only manage a single or few aspects of your website, Take your free demo today and see how SmatBot can make your life easier and business more successful.