Rise of the machine: Time for a chat

Hello, I’m Jeff….nice to meet you!

“I’m here to cut right through the boring stuff and help you find the jobs and recruitment info you’re looking for, fast”.

This is Ask Jeff, Sky Bet’s recruitment chatbot, based on sports television presenter, Jeff Stelling.

The messaging service, which is available through the company’s website and Facebook Messenger, is programmed to guide candidates through the recruitment process and instantly answer questions about working for the Leeds-based technology company.

From a lowdown on the best benefits to giving advice on where to buy a coffee before an interview, the service was launched last December to enhance the recruitment process and free up the team to focus on more important things. In the last nine months, Ask Jeff has had just over 300 conversations with people at various stages of the recruitment process, and averages about 12 conversations a week, often from people who want information outside the recruitment team’s usual hours.

“Ask Jeff has been adding real value to the business every day since we went live,” a spokeswoman says. “He’s boosting efficiency, freeing the recruitment team and providing a huge insight into the candidate base.”

Chatbots are not new – they’ve been around for a while – but businesses are starting to realise their value. Instead of browsing through pages on a website, you can have a conversation through a chatbot to get the information you need faster.

The technology is platform-agnostic, therefore can live in any messaging environment. Facebook Messenger has the highest proportion of chatbots. To date, 30,000 chatbots currently live there and the number is rapidly rising.

The opportunities for businesses are huge. Two billion messages are sent between consumers and businesses on Facebook Messenger each month.

“They’re not all chatbots but they are consumers interacting with businesses who have a presence on Facebook,” says James Lodge, head of mobile at media and advertising conglomerate Dentsu Aegis in Leeds.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t in excess of 100,000 chatbots in Messenger in the next year.

“It’s new and people are intrigued by the experience.”

For the average small to medium-sized business, the specialised nature of chatbots makes them more useful. Companies and software providers are already implementing chatbot experiences to revolutionise business processes including e-commerce, customer support and expense tracking. Businesses are investing in chatbots cautiously, Lodge says. “They are not going all out for a complex engagement because, as yet, we don’t know how far the consumer wants to go with the technology.”

Many businesses are installing Messenger widgets on their websites to redirect traffic to their chatbot. This allows them to obtain information, like a person’s name, from their Facebook profile, immediately turning previously anonymous website traffic into known users.

“It’s a mind-shift for businesses,” says Lodge. “Do you want someone to move away from your website so you can identify that person and have a conversation or do you want to keep them in the destination you’ve created for them?”

“I think that’s going to be a challenge that businesses see. They’ve invested a lot of money in their websites.”

Lodge doesn’t believe that chatbots make websites redundant “but it delivers in more conversational engagement”, he adds.

For example, a retailer can use a chatbot to have a conversation with a customer about what they want to buy, whether they are looking for a car or a pair of shoes, and filter down the options for them.

Publisher TechCrunch uses a simple chatbot within Facebook Messenger to provide a newsfeed. Adidas’s chatbot can be used to book sports training sessions and Wholefoods’ chatbot allows users to search for products and recipes.

“For me, it’s about choice for the consumer,” says Lodge. “Businesses should be where consumers want to be.

“People are coming to these sites wanting to engage with products or services they offer as businesses.”

He adds: “It feels like you’re having a conversation rather than just browsing through content, pictures and reviews because it’s tailored to what you want.”

If used in the right way, chatbots could almost replace some apps, says Lodge. According to Facebook, the average person spends 80 per cent of their time on their mobile using just three apps.

The potential for chatbot technology is massive but Lodge says we shouldn’t get carried away.

“We’re almost at a stage where we probably think it can do everything and we think it’s the next big thing.

“I think chatbots will do one thing really well and that’s probably where the value is right now.”