Are AI powered smart chatbots at workplaces gaining traction?

Mumbai: When Spanish start-up Landbot recently won a $2.2 million seed round for a chatbot that doesn’t use artificial intelligence, it did raise some eyebrows. The fact is that firms are already embracing enterprise AI-powered chatbots on the back of changing customer expectations—especially from millennials, the need to reduce operating costs, fear of losing sales and falling customer satisfaction. HDFC Bank Ltd, for instance, has an AI chatbot called Eva built by Bengaluru-based Senseforth AI Research. Unilever’s oral care brand Signal Pepsodent created a Facebook chatbot called ‘Little Brush Big Brush’ in Indonesia and Vietnam to “provide cute animated stories to motivate kids to brush their teeth and build their emotional connection with the brand”. Chatbots, according to a 24 May 2017 note by research firm Forrester, can not only help customers retrieve information such as weather reports, bus schedules, package statuses, and currency exchange rates much faster and easier than by navigating websites and apps or searching though large pools of data such as frequently asked questions or product inventories but also improve efficiency in completing simple tasks like pushing coupons and redeeming loyalty points, and also to build emotional connections between customers and brands and increase engagement.