Whatever happened to chatbots?
2016 was the "year of the chatbot". Three years later, how are chatbots doing?
Basically, people were too occupied with the fancy technology, and forgot about actually solving problems. People want to get things done, and clicking and choosing options in a GUI is already an very efficient way of doing so.
When they want to do more complex things, we don't want to talk to a chatbot, only to eventually get an useless response like "Sorry, we can't do that request online. Please call us" (if I wanted to call someone, I wouldn't be using you!)
You can give me your membership number or phone number. Which would you prefer?
1) membership number
2) phone number
In my case, a goal was better agent efficiency (i.e. fewer agents handle more customers) AND happier customers. A sweet spot for these chatbots was for them to handle specific interactions but not the whole conversation. For example, handling some basic pre-chat information gathering, or in the case of an interaction around rebooking a hotel stay, handling the date and room selection when using a medium that supports rich messaging, such as FB Messenger or iMessage.
Until we have fully conversational chatbots, it's going to be really hard to have a solution that a) eliminates agents from the equation AND b) results in higher customer satisfaction.
On the other hand, Alexa seems to be far better than most chatbots.