Here in 2016, great content alone is simply not enough. The combination of an authentic, relatable voice and conversations with your audience are possibly the most powerful currency in our quest to connect with each other in a meaningful way. As viewers, we are bombarded with a smorgasbord of content, and if we are greeted with an annoying pop-up ad that covers the screen or information hidden behind a paywall, we simply look elsewhere.
To secure the attention of the busy digital reader, publishers must engage and build a rapport with their audience. Despite the obvious methods of how to create a successful strategy around this modern requirement, it seems that businesses are ready to try a different approach by investigating the use of “Conversational Bots” to take their personalized services to the next level.
The is already here, and automated news stories can be sent to potential readers in a message from an AI personal assistant based on your interests and preferences. Elsewhere a British programmer has created a robot lawyer that has successfully saved its clients more than in parking tickets.
Whatever your opinion, it seems that humans will need to get used to the idea of interacting with intelligent computers. With Google, Apple, Amazon, and recently Facebook all investing heavily into digital assistants, it’s clear to see that paper newspapers will continue to decline and static e-newspapers will become less desirable as your new AI friend will distribute and generate news items to your smartphone or tablet each morning that are increasingly tailored to your personal needs.
It seems that many of us are suffering with mobile app fatigue, with of users deleting an app within three days of it being downloaded. Even the ones we do keep get lost on the crowded home screen and are typically only opened twice on your device. I suspect most of you reading this use only around five apps on a regular basis because you have learned that quantity is not better than a quality mobile app that delivers personalized value.
The problem is that our thirst for instant gratification means we no longer have the patience to scroll through several pages to get the information we need, and many of us are starting to feel more comfortable using our voice to ask an e-assistant to get the results we want.
We are social creatures who enjoy connecting with each other. Messaging apps are by far the most used on our smartphones for this very reason. Meanwhile, apps such as Slack are also leading a new revolution with their everything-under-one-roof ethos that sets users free from the old world with multiple apps and windows always open.
The next stage of this evolution is already happening as we see messaging apps developers begin to open up their APIs. That opens the door to the use of bots to go mainstream as developers go beyond only building static mobile apps to concentrate on making e-assistants conversational bots and that will drive another paradigm shift.
It’s time to prepare for the arrival of messaging chat bots that could even manage our travel, documents, sales leads and our entire lives if developed properly. There are already a few warning signs that suggest that businesses or publishers that do not integrate the use of conversational interfaces will soon witness an increasing drop in traffic if their content is not available on these digital platforms.
Ultimately, these chat bots are relatively easy to create and programmed to provide actions or give automated responses based on the interaction between users after a variety of questions or comments in a conversation.
The most interesting aspect of this emerging technology is how we are starting to add fewer new apps to our phones and tablets. Bombarding users with an array of choices and multiple options to manage even the most mundane aspects of our lives is increasingly becoming a chore.
Less is more, and we no longer need five pages of apps on our smartphones or tablets. The quest to simplify our lives is well underway, and it seems that adding targeted chat bots to our five favorite apps could be the silver bullet to deliver the greater productivity and efficiency we have been searching for.
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