AI Chatbots: From Rudimentary To Revolutionary Functioning

Since its first development 50 years ago, chatbots today have come a long way, although they are still in a rudimentary stage. But the recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and advances in machine learning have introduced a new generation of chatbots that are revolutionizing the world of customer service.

A survey conducted by Forrester Research revealed that more than 30% of private firms are using chatbots for customer service, and the trend seems to be picking up. AI marketing is the next big game in the domain of the industry and app marketing automation is rapidly picking momentum. Let us find out why exactly is this happening? What are the benefits a company can get using chatbots?

In a nutshell, the striving for efficiency by both consumers and businesses are leading this revolutionary movement concerning chatbots. Most of the consumers are reluctant to contact customer support as a good number of consumer spend more than 20 mins just on hold in a week. Nobody enjoys waiting especially when the very purpose of the call is to accelerate various processes. Phone trees are automated when customers are asked to hold and it is extremely difficult to navigate.

These inquiries have traditionally been outsourced to call center service providers, but the drawbacks in this type of processing are evident. With costs that are overshooting company budgets, alternative solutions are the need of the hour.

Chatbots are not doubted the best alternative solutions for the problem of inefficiency that haunts companies today; they are always available, prompt, and consistent in their service, which may not be possible with humans. With chatbots, there are no more holding calls to get the right response to any customer’s queries; this will certainly ensure higher customer satisfaction and hence a better online reputation.

Chatbots Vs Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Bots – What’s The Difference?

The use of chatbots have become a common practice for businesses today. Extensively being used for delivering effective customer support and building better customer relationships, the potential of chatbots are being much realized in today’s competitive business environment. The latest in this technology is what’s called Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots. Unlike the previous models, these new generation chatbots utilizes AI technology to deliver higher efficiency and functionality.

The primary difference in the functioning of a regular chatbot and an automated chatbot (AI bot) is in its decision making ability. Unlike a chatbot which has a monotonous and rule based response, an AI driven chatbot can respond based on the aptness of the situation, making the conversation more relevant and engaging. 

Rule based chatbots are simple to build and provide a very linear solution; a single dimensional support. Such a bot answers queries based on specific rules that it’s been taught and developed on. But the bots are incapable of responding to queries that are out of their recognition pattern. These bots are less scalable, less robust and require a specific architecture and infrastructure to function. Although chatbots of this nature requires less investments and very little liability, there are lots of potential downsides.

AI bots on the other, though similar in function, differ in its fundamental concept. You can think of AI bots as a person with the conscience of right and wrong. AI bots offer far greater functions that rule based bots can ever provide, but it requires more intensive groundwork. These bots use machine learning algorithm which enables them to learn from past experiences without human intervention; saving much time and energy.

Such bots are able to frame responses in a smart way, making conversations more relevant and engaging. And the potential application of this technology is making it the next big thing in the world of chatbots.

The 3 Best Marketing Automation Tools of 2017

Being a function of every business, Marketing has evolved and developed to a whole new level today. The tasks that marketers perform are not at all easy and can be very daunting. However, various automation tools have enabled marketers to cope with many tedious tasks.One of the most discussed topics today is the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing activities to achieve results that were previously impossible.

2017 has witnessed a great increase in the use of automation tools in the domain of marketing, especially on social media platforms.With the increasing count of social media users, the use of AI social media marketing tools have also increased. With this, here is my list of the 3 best marketing automation tools of 2017:

Market
A multi-functional platform, Market offers marketing automation, real-time personalization, and customer engagement marketing. In addition, the tool offers management functionalities such as marketing calendars and budgeting options.
Some of the key features include lead generation, campaign management, search marketing, email marketing, website visitor tracking, optimizing ROI and personalization.

HubSpot
A very popular inbound marketing platform, HubSpot offers a variety of capabilities with its diverse functions. With tools for blogs, SEO, social and email marketing, HubSpot offers a comprehensive platform for improving marketing efficiency. Some of the key features include, content management system, leads monitoring, monitoring LP, building automated work flows, use of real time data to enhance user experience, and much more. The best thing about HubSpot is that it has free trial available.

Pardot
A fully automated marketing tool, Pardot can help marketers in specific areas like lead generation and management, email marketing, social marketing and more. The key features include, email marketing, lead scoring, form builders, search connectors, landing pages, connecting all search campaigns in one single platform, ROI reporting and much more.

The list is so comprehensive and so here are other mention-able tools: Eloqua, Customer.io, Contact Pigeon, Pica9, Render forest and Buzz Builder. Do check these ones out as well as they might suit your work nature and budget as compared to the ones mentioned in the list.

Artificial Intelligence Powered Possibilities for Marketers

Application of artificial intelligence (AI) in business, marketing, in particular, is a perfect example of how the science fiction of yesterday becomes the reality of today. Marketers for long have struggled to perform painstaking and extremely time-consuming tasks. But if that could be taken care of, it will enable marketers to spend more time on strategic aspects of campaigns than on grunt works. And that’s what AI is here for. 

In an attempt to resolve many such time-consuming tasks and to optimize campaigns, marketers have started incorporating the power of artificial intelligence to reach new possibilities in the domain of marketing. With a variety of digital campaign management tools available today, marketing activities are able to achieve results which were not possible in the past. These are some of the possibilities that businesses today are exploring through artificial intelligence marketing solutions:

Data Analysis
This is one of the most time-consuming activities a marketer has to perform. Although it is extremely important, it is at the same time a real pain in the rear. But today, artificial infused marketing platforms and tools have made this task very easy. What took days, months and even years can now be done in moments. AI analyses data at the very high speed and also segregate data based on relevancy and cognitive learning.

Hyper-Personalized Ads
A recent research tells us that most consumers find pop up ads irrelevant to them. Also, the majority of individuals mentioned in a survey that they’d prefer personalized ads since they would be relevant to their taste and preferences. Though this is the demand, it was impossible until AI came into the picture. With AI solutions marketers can now create hyper-personalized content for individual consumers.

Programmatic Buying
The possibility of using software to buy and sell advertising space has saved much time for marketers. Marketers are a now able to customize their platforms, frequency, and timings of ads. In addition, with real-time buying (RTB), ad buyers don’t need to work directly with ad networks to negotiate prices. All these can be automated.

AI is here not to destroy, but help marketers achieve greater efficiency and reach new possibilities in order to serve the demanding audience of today’s times.

Possibilities in Digital Marketing That Artificial Intelligence Brings

With much application of artificial intelligence technology in various aspects of businesses, marketers have been making great use of this technology in achieving higher efficiency and success rates. Whether it is for analytics purpose or design function, AI has been used to make marketers work easier.

Today brands and businesses are using the power or artificial intelligence to create tailor mademarketing e-mails based on the profile preferences to create more engagement and hence increasing chances of conversion. AI does this by analyzing the profile user’s demographic and behavioral data to customize the email content. Use of such artificial intelligence marketing solutions are proving to generate more leads than traditional methods.

Marketers face a tough challenge when it comes to analyzing data. Since the amount of data is huge, to extract insight becomes painstakingly difficult. And most of time, marketers fail to produce insights that can help generate leads. With AI integrated platforms, marketers now have the benefit of extracting more insights than ever. AI has the ability to process huge amount of data, which could take days, months and even years, in just moments to draw relevant data and meaningful suggestions.

Today there are many digital campaign management tools available that helps marketers in various aspects of digital marketing. Tools such as Google’sAdWords and analytics have been of much help when it comes to finding, for example, things like the most relevant keywords for your business/product/service. Also, tools that generate content topics and suggestion have greatly helped content marketers in providing content ideas.

Although all these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the application and potential of artificial intelligence in marketing and advertising, they have been of great practical use for digital marketers. What we can expect on the future are hyper-personalized ads, automated spends and automated optimization of campaigns.

Why and Why Not Artificial Intelligence

Though the reality of advanced artificial intelligence has stirred up a world of controversies and debate, one cannot deny the benefits that come along with it.

Before we come to a conclusion on whether AI is good or bad, let us look at some PROS and CONS of artificial intelligence.

The Pros
Error Reduction – By reducing error we have a higher chance of achieving success; higher accuracy and precision.

Executing Difficult Undertakings –Activities like mining, deep-sea explorations and other such complex projects that are life risky can be done using AI technology at a much faster and efficient pace.

Tackling Monotony – Repetitive jobs that consume a tremendous amount of time which can be used to do something more productive can be tackled using AI.

THE CONS
High Cost – At present, the cost for the creation of AI is very high as they are very complex and also their maintenance costs are high.

Inability to Replace Humans –No matter how efficient AI can be, they do not have emotions, they cannot make judgement of right or wrong.

Unemployment – This is probably the most concerned issue when it comes to AI. In a world where employment is a daily affair, AI has the full capacity to worsen this.

There are many institutes that have integrated AI as a course. At present, the programs for Artificial Intelligence in USA is at the forefront. Being able to offer the best artificial intelligence programs, the world can’t ignore it, especially when the race for power is now driven by technology.