1. The Numbers Don’t Lie

Chatbots Magazine suggests that people use messaging apps more than social media nowadays. Chat apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are used by millions of people, billions of times a day.

Facebook alone has over 100,000 chatbots in operation. These chatbots are used by people from around the world (over 200 countries).

· Facebook have claimed that over half of the 2 billion people who regularly use messenger are more likely to use businesses and services that are able to message them

· Hubspot suggest that 47% of consumers are willing to buy from chatbots, and that 57% of consumers like chatbots because they can provide instant service.

2. The Technology Continues to Improve

Thanks to recent advances in design and implementation, the average chatbot is becoming much smarter and – as a result – more reliable.

It’s been suggested by Accenture that chatbots are able to resolve 80% of customer chat sessions. As the artificial intelligence these bots are powered by is capable of learning from experiences, the amount of enquires they can solve increases over time.

The more the technology improves, the fewer problems arise and the happier users become. IBM, for example, recently reached an error rate of 5.5% when it came to AI word recognition, a considerable improvement over the 6.9% in the previous year.

3. Consumers enjoy using chatbots…

Everyone wants to get their problem solved as quickly and smoothly as possible. Aspect conducted a survey that showed 71% of customers hope to resolve their problems without having to get help from someone else. Over 60% of the survey respondents claimed the chatbots they used were easy to use, friendly, and fast.

4. Increased Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction increases when a user is able to use chatbots to do what they want without having to fill out complex forms or go through a long-winded workflow process. Raising a repair, making a complaint or getting a response to a general enquiry through a chatbot provides an instant resolution without waiting on hold or being transferred.

5. Handover to an Agent

The report from Aspect also found that many people would like there to be an option to speak to a live agent if they wanted it. The hybrid solution with chatbots and humans is still the best bet for optimal customer satisfaction. A good chatbot will be able to hand over to online live-chat, arrange a callback or hand over for a voice call.

6. The Possibilities of Chatbots are Endless

A good chatbot combines solid artificial intelligence with a great interface and well-planned integration such as to raise a work order in the housing management system and repairs scheduling system. When an organisation manages to get those factors right, they can tap into the full potential of chatbots.

We’ll find ourselves in a future where AI and chatbots enable tenant self-service for the full range of services provided by their landlord.

7. Bots and Voice Assistants are the Future

What’s most exciting about the future is imagining a time when voice assistants like Alexa and Siri are able to interact with a chatbot to further enhance customer experiences.

Imagine being able to describe a maintenance problem to Alexa which she diagnoses and schedules a technician to fix.

This idea reaches further too. It can be used to manage rent payments, report ASB or re-arrange a gas safety check.

Chatbots, virtual assistants, and artificial intelligence are the foundations of a fourth industrial revolution. Times are changing, and every industry, including social housing, is going to change with them. From customer care and marketing to operations, there’s plenty of potential for any and all businesses to reinvent themselves for the better with chatbots.