Facebook Messenger has had more incarnations than the Buddha. You may think of it as a place to have private conversation between you and your buddies, but Facebook has other ideas. It wants to be the center of your commerce life.
Lately the company is putting a lot of effort into the resuscitation of chat bots. These are automated conversations usually between you and a back-end system that lets you talk to a business about booking flights, ordering groceries, calling for a pizza, banking and more. Bot driven chats are not new, but they were pretty lame and limited.
So, why are businesses flocking to be part of the chatbot scene? Fertile ground and lots of fresh blood.
Email usage is on the wane; email business marketing campaigns are finding less and less acceptance. The use of instant messaging is up. App stores have millions of apps, very few of them get used. Most of us stick to the eight or so apps we use diligently making it unlikely that you’ll download the Domino’s Pizza app for an occasional pizza binge. Finally, automated chat responses are getting smarter. Some are claiming to use simple AI to learn about their customers’ preferences.
Businesses are hoping that having an automated conversation inside of a Messaging experience gives them a new way to reach customers where they’re at. At Facebook’s annual conference last month they announced that there were 100,000 bots running on Facebook Messenger.
But, finding and using bots on Messenger is still more curiosity than utilitarian. Since reading about Facebook’s rededication to bots I’ve been testing them. Finding them is not as easy as you’d like and the experiences range from fun and easy to inscrutable.
Facebook reports that they have plans to make the bot discovery process easier. They announced a new Discovery tab (which does not appear on my Messenger yet) that highlights hot bots you may like. A new option called “M”, a bot enabled concierge service that will serve up other bots, doesn’t do much at the moment. And in real-world companies, Messenger will use the quaint custom of scanning QR codes to access bots, too.
Mastercard’s Kiki Del Valle, Senior Vice President of Digital Payments and Labs, says that Mastercard sees bots as the first phase of conversational interfaces that will change the way consumers interact with businesses and brands. The company announced that bots are using Masterpass to allow consumers buy groceries with FreshDirect and order directly from a Subway while in Messenger. OpenTable’s new bot can be opened to book a reservation while you’re chatting with friends. CNN’s bot asks you your news preferences. Some bots are more playful. I’ve now been coached through meditation and gym workouts in my hotel room by bots. Eloise Bune, creator of ScribbleChat, came up with a successful app that turns text into digital handwriting and allows user to add special effects. While you can download the app from an app store, Bune says that putting her app in Facebook Messenger allowed her to scale much more quickly. She added that the appeal to offer ecommerce in your chat environment without the need for human interaction is attractive.
Me, I still can’t entirely wrap my head around doing my business in a place I’d relegated for quick messaging. Messenger will morph from a simple conversation to a barrage of bot happy merchants. But, Facebook Messenger has 1.2 billion average monthly users, and I’m just one. I’m sure as bots mature they’ll become as commonplace as messaging itself. Want to take a bot run of your own. Go to https://botlist.co/ for the best list available.
Robin Raskin is founder of Living in Digital Times (LIDT), a team of technophiles who bring together top experts and the latest innovations that intersect lifestyle and technology. LIDT produces conferences and expos at CES and throughout the year focusing on how technology enhances every aspect of our lives through the eyes of today’s digital consumer.