This document discusses key conversational business trends: - Messaging apps are becoming the dominant form of communication over other platforms like email and social media. Most users spend their time in messaging apps. - Chatbots are being developed to automate tasks and engage users at scale through conversational interfaces in messaging platforms. There has been significant funding and growth in the chatbot market. - Trends indicate that users desire more natural, personalized, and engaging interactions through conversational technologies like chatbots rather than traditional menu-driven apps. However, challenges remain around user expectations, conversational intelligence, discoverability, and privacy/trust.

1. Key Conversational Business Trends 1
Key Conversational Business Trends

2. Key Conversational Business Trends 2
Jason M. Brenier
• Director, Conversational Business @Georgian Partners
• Ph.D. Linguistics
• Research @Stanford
– Spoken dialogue systems, natural language processing, text-to-speech
synthesis, discourse processing, deception detection, acoustic phonetics
• Previous affiliations:
– CTO @Idibon; Adaptive AI, human-in-the-loop NLP
– Forensic Technology @Ernst & Young; fraud, risk & compliance, forensic
investigations, active machine learning and NLP for e-discovery,
electronic communications surveillance, insider threat detection, AML
– Speech Design @Nuance; expressive text-to-speech, data-driven voices
– Linguistics @Cataphora; email/IM behavior analytics, emotive tone,
sentiment, linguistic style

3. Key Conversational Business Trends 3
Conversational
Interfaces
Long-running, real-time, bi-directional
message transmission between specified,
known participants using natural language
• Just the right amount of UX for the task
• Conversational
• Immediate or long-running transactions
• Seamlessly weaves robust services together
• Language vs. menu-driven
• Multiple signals (text, emoji, images)
• Dynamic views and flows
• Private

4. The rise of messaging…

5. Key Conversational Business Trends 5
Business
Correspondence
Content
Publishing
Social
Communication
Print
Web
Email
Social Media
Messaging
As remote communication evolves, conversation becomes ubiquitous.
Written correspondence
Telephone
Fax
Email
Messaging
Written correspondence
Telephone
Email
SMS
Messaging
Social Media

6. Key Conversational Business Trends 6
Messaging defines a new customer interaction paradigm.
• Mobile app usage is declining by 20% YoY
• Most users spend 50% of their time in only one app —
usually messaging.
• 75% of smartphone users use at least one messaging
app.
• Number of messaging users have surpassed social
network users.
• 5 of the all-time top 10 apps are messaging apps.
• 55% of messaging push notifications are read.

7. Key Conversational Business Trends 7
The top ten most popular messaging apps

8. Key Conversational Business Trends 8
The journey from apps to chat requires a new approach.
Web To Apps
Humans learn apps
From “and mobile” to “mobile first”
Platform = OS & app store
Discoverability
Visual navigation / menu-driven UX
Move to cloud
Similar design process
Designing around the device
Apps To Chat
Apps learn to be human
From “and bots” to Conversational Business
Platform = messaging, voice, bot stores
Discoverability
Language-based UX
Start in the cloud
New design process
Designing around the language and dialogue

9. Key Conversational Business Trends 9
Chat is becoming ambient.
Messaging Voice Assistants Conversational Devices

11. Key Conversational Business Trends 11
Chatbots: unique customer interactions at scale.
• No two conversations are the same
• Scale engagement across a large user population
• Live in messaging platforms, on SMS
or in conversational devices
• Automate complex tasks
• Act as direct participants or assistants
• Use rules, machine learning or AI
11k
bots in 3 months
23k
bot developers
900M
active users

12. Key Conversational Business Trends 12
Chatbot funding
Goal: Engage users with brands, automate services,
direct energy toward business applications
$140M+
since 2010
$85M
in 2015/2016
30 rounds of funding
in 2015/2016
$2M Slack Fund
14 Slackbot startups

13. Key Conversational Business Trends 13
A quickly evolving chatbot ecosystem accelerates the shift
to conversational business.
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Chatbot Development Platforms
Platforms provide natural language
technology, intent parsers, sentiment
analysis using AI/ML/NLP to enable
automated chat
Chatbot Marketplaces
• Digital discovery and
distribution platforms
• Platform-specific and -
independent
Chatbot Applications
• Enterprise: AI-powered
personal assistants to
schedule meetings, manage
customer service
• Consumer: provide
automated
recommendations, booking,
purchasing services

14. Key Conversational Business Trends 14
Trends: Users desire more natural, engaging and personal interactions.
Cultivate rapport
Users desire engaging, personalized, private interactions
with friends, colleagues, businesses and brands
Humanize the interface
Trend toward intuitive, physiologically grounded UX
and conversational intelligence
Summon function when it is needed
Desire to access rich insights and services through
a simple interface with minimal effort

15. Key Conversational Business Trends 15
What are the challenges?
• User expectations are high
• Conversational intelligence is low
• New interfaces must be more engaging
than apps
• Discoverability, management, and switching
• Attracting users and keeping them engaged
• Graceful failure, iterative improvement
• Security, privacy & trust

16. Key Conversational Business Trends 16
Want to learn more
about
conversational
business?
Download our white paper on the “9 Principles
of Conversational Business.”