The document discusses the evolution of chatbots in customer service, emphasizing their growing prevalence across messaging platforms while underscoring the necessity of human involvement for resolving complex issues. Despite the potential of bots to automate basic interactions, many users find them lacking in understanding and responsiveness. The future of customer engagement may blend bot technology with human support, especially as advancements in natural language processing continue to improve their functionalities.

1. roBots
&
Customer Service
Best before Dec.17

2. Chatbots
Algorithms designed to
hold a conversation with a human,
as envisioned by Alan Turing in the 1950s

3. Messaging platforms like…
Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Slack, Skype, Kik,
Telegram, and LINE have their own chatbot APIs.
Social bots can now reach 1.5B users, soon to be
scaled to 3B users (once WhatsApp launches it’s
own API).

4. Twitterestimated
that as many
as 23 million
of its 271 million users
were bots

5. “…bots are not the way to go
for customer service”
Jeff Lesser, Twitter’s Head of Social Customer Service

6. Customers need real humans to talk to…

7. OK
but let’s not be so hasty
to write them off

8. Initiate basic communication
Give simple directions
Respond to a request for material
Search the social network for popular &
influential people
Grow your community
Participate in conversations
Create new content
Help people stay motivated
Post open source content…
Bots can…

11. HP consumers will be able to print their photos, documents
and files to any connected HP printer as well as receive
notifications to re-order toner cartridges

12. KLM gives passengers the option to receive flight updates through Messenger

13. Muppets’ fans can now talk
with a “Miss Piggy”

14. Humans will always be needed
to deal with problematic cases
or difficult support tickets.
The best practice will be the
combination of a “bot-service”
with a seamless behind-the-
scenes transfer to humans
where needed…
Chat bots are a
threat to Apps
more than they are
to human-run
customer care

15. e-commerce retailer Spring, launched Spring Bot,
a personal shopping concierge powered by Messenger and Zopim live chat

17. bot-wrecks

18. Tay.ai
“talking about you”
Microsoft’s Tay caused
controversy on Twitter
by releasing
inflammatory tweets
and it was taken offline
around 16 hours after
its launch.
#over-confidence

19. Facebook Trending Module
Facebook fires humans & bot starts
going crazy. Pushes out false story
about Fox’s Megyn Kelly, offensive
Ann Coulter headline and a story
link about a man masturbating with
a McDonald’s sandwich, as top
trending stories!
#negligence

20. Cynk & the bot campaign
Automatic trading algorithms picked up this
conversation and started trading heavily in the
company's stocks. This resulted in a 200-fold
increase in market value, bringing the company's
worth to $5 billion.
By the time analysts recognised the orchestration
behind this operation and stock trading was
suspended, the losses were real.
#intentional

21. Although a PR disaster,
Microsoft Tay.ai
demonstrated the
incredible speed that
AI can learn and adapt…
and how coding needs to
improve…

22. Developers love them…but how about users?
By July 2016 11.000 bots had been created on
while 23.000 developers had signed up to use the
Wit.ai tools

23. By May 2016
Kik Messenger had 300M users
6.000 bots created
60% of bot users aged between 13-19
81% of bot users from the US
and over 70 brands on their bot store

24. “…Users find them slow, simplistic and
not understanding their queries”
The Verge, July 1st 2016

25. The most challenging part in a
chatbot is understanding human
language & then processing it with
NLP engines like wit.ai and api.ai.
No UI that has to be developed.
Easy & Cheap to develop…
Design

26. They have to not only emulate content
but include temporal activity,
diffusion patterns,
and sentiment expression
Bots have come a long way
from their ‘pest riddled’ past
the bar has risen

27. Yes, before bots officially take over
there is need for improvement…
in contextual understanding of when to share
updates
&
an intuitive way to initiate or end chatbot
conversations

28. Advantages
Cheaper to make then Apps
Discoverability
(especially w/ a dominant msg app)
App fatigue
Clunky sites that don’t help communication
Intimate connection with a brand

29. Metrics wanted
Measure how long conversations in a bot environment last
How deep each conversation goes into each bot’s features
Conversation retention
How often is human intervention needed
Click through Rates

30. When bots become equipped to handle text
content, the human side of brands and
consumers will gravitate towards new, richer
ways to engage, including virtual and
augmented reality

31. Bank of America
Burger King
Business Insider
eBay
Expedia
Fandango
Great Western Railway
LivePerson
Mic
OwnerListens
Philz Coffee
Rogers
Salesforce
Shopify
Sonar
Sparkcentral
Staples
StubHub
theScore
Thrillist
Twilio
UNICEF
Zalando
Zendesk
Bots arriving
soon in your
Messenger

32. Thank you for listening
Vicki Kolovou aka. @netwire
vicki@netwire.gr

33. Hydration Bot
So, if you feel you’re not drinking enough water
there is a bot even for that
and my personal favourite bot is definitely…

34. …the endless screaming bot on Twitter
makes me laugh