Ready To Be Deployed, Chatbots!!! — Part-3

So, in the first two parts, we have discussed what a chatbot is, and what are the various types of chatbots. As I said in the last part, today we will be discussing what are the advantages and some disadvantages of chatbots, if we want to introduce them in our business models.

Now, without any delay, lets start with the advantages first.

1. User Inputs and Need Analysis:
   Chatbots can help you gather precious data from your customers by interacting with them. This includes getting insights about their activities, preferences, problems, and more.
   With this gathered data, you can analyse the market demand, the feedbacks and various kind of other user inputs, which when used properly can help you increase your sales.
2. 24/7 Support:
   As chatbots are simply a piece of code running over a remote machine, where in a messaging app, some social network some some specific platform made for it. It’s really easy for us to keep them up and running 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, in other words, always.
   And who will not agree, all of us want to provide our customers/users as much live support as possible. The more hours the better.
3. Potential Lead Generation:
   The 24/7 customer support probably brings more to the table than initially thought. As we are more and more available for the current customers, it helps in getting new leads as well.
   New customers/users for our platform might wanna contact us, and if we have our representatives sitting on the desks all day long, it definitely raises the chances of making contact. So chatbot can also help us gather more leads for our business.
4. Cost Efficient:
   Most businesses hire more and more people, just to respond to human queries, and believe it or not, most of those are pretty redundant queries. The same question is being asked again and again, and the businesses pay out to their representatives, for more and more hours.
   I am not saying that businesses don’t have to hire people for these queries, they definitely need to do that in order to improve the quality of customer’s interactions with the business. But for extra hours and the redundant queries, the chatbots can play a major role. Resulting in less human hours, and probably less cost to the business.

These are some of the most prominent advantages that we can have introducing chatbots to our businesses. Also, please note that these are just some of the advantages that these chatbots have. I am a developer and I probably think more of it in a technical way than as a businessman. So, if lets an MBA or probably someone who is trained to think with a business point of view can point out more and more benefits.
But along with these advantages, there are some drawbacks as well.

Some drawbacks I would like to mention are following:

1. Lack Of E.Q.:
   Chatbots definitely have a high I.Q. However high we provide them, but when it comes to E.Q.(Emotional Quotient), they are somewhat(I mean totally) restricted. They can not always understand what a user wants to convey, emotionally. Also, higher E.Q. invites more and more human interactions as it creates a warmer atmosphere for the users.
   Also the example, reread the last line again, the warmer atmosphere, now if a chatbot(probably dumb without any E.Q.) will read this, it’ll simply try to raise the temperature, and we aren’t trying to roast them, right! (pun intended)
2. Regular Maintenance:
   The chatbots, however advanced they are at the time when they are made, the chatbot industry, like every other part of IT industry is growing at a real rapid pace. Therefore, it needs regular updates to stay in trend with the market.
   Also, even if we don’t go for the latest technology every now and then, sometimes our needs change, like we need to add some more queries to our bot, we might need to change or add some new chat flows to the chatbot and stuff like that. In short, if a business decides to go with the chatbots, will all the cost efficiency and other perks, this has to be kept in mind, that a small IT team, or might be just a developer, is needed to keep the chatbot maintained.
3. Machine Being a Machine:
   See, however advanced the technology today is, the Age of Ultron, still isn’t here yet. The machines are just machines, we can train them to be intelligent, but they still won’t be able to compete with the humans. So we can not use the chatbots and the human representatives in the exact same manner.
   While deciding to go with the chatbots, the businesses first have to sort out the things like what will be handled by the chatbots and what will be handled by their representatives. As to not to draw the short stick among all of the competition around them.

So, there are just some drawbacks that are there with the onset of chatbots in the industry. Also, one thing is definite, with the right solutions, chatbots can help your business save a lot of time, money, and resources.

With this, I think we have gone through the theory enough, from the next part, I’ll start discussing a tool for instant chatbot development. I will try to go as deep as thorough with the tool as possible.

See you soon! Also feel free to comment and ask if any questions are there.