AI expert Amit Ben is the founder of Nanorep, which was acquired by LogMeIn last year. We had a chance to talk to Amit about his takeaways from Chatbot Summit Tel Aviv and about his predictions for Chatbots in the next few years to come.
Please introduce yourself and tell us about your journey so far with Chatbots?
My name is Amit Ben and I am the Head of Technology for Customer Engagement & Support at LogMeIn. I’ve researched A.I. for many years now with a vision of leveraging machines to create value for humans. With this goal in mind, I founded a company called Nanorep in 2009 which was acquired by LogMeIn last year. Now as the foundational A.I. technology powering LogMeIn’s customer engagement platform, Bold360 ai, was designed to revolutionize the digital customer experience, using chatbots to enhance the customer journey. It’s been amazing to see how far chatbots and A.I. technology has come over the last ten years.
What fascinates you about Chatbots and what is missing for them to become mainstream?
The opportunities and experiences chatbots can provide are endless. I think chatbots will become the “killer feature” organizations are looking for. Over time chatbots will get bigger mindshare as adoption grows and the technology improves.
What are your top predictions for Chatbots for 2018? 3 years ahead?
As we look to the future, here are some of the top trends we see moving the industry forward:
1. Rapid Adoption of AI Technologies
While AI-powered technologies made a big splash in recent years, there are still a lot of questions around adoption. How difficult is it to implement these technologies with my legacy systems? Are the benefits real? How long until we see value? As more and more successful use cases come to light and pilot programs show ROI, the path to success will be more clearly paved and confidence in investing in the technology will grow. Companies will also start to feel pressure that the first-mover advantage of AI will begin disappearing and will drive more widespread adoption. In addition, the technology will also see its next big step in maturity. We’ll see reactive automation move to proactive use cases that will help turn service engagements into sales opportunities and see deeper contact center integrations.
2.There Will be More Channels of Engagement, Not Less-
Consumers are choosing which channels they want to use to interact with the brands they do business with. With the amount of engagements continually increasing, brands will need to provide a true omni-channel experience for their customers, no matter where they choose to engage.
3. Artificial Intelligence Won’t Replace Humans -
There will always be a need for human-to-human interactions- it’s just that agents’ job functions will change with the addition of A.I. The most successful companies to implement A.I. solutions will be those that take a hybrid approach where A.I. technology empowers both the customer and the agent.
How did you come to be a speaker at Chatbot Summit? What did you talk about?
Last year I had the opportunity to speak at Chatbot Summit about the evolution of chatbots and where we were on the Hype Cycle. While A.I. has certainly matured over the past year, there is still long way to go. From the lens of customer engagement, organizations looking to implement A.I. technology need to evaluate how chatbots and human agents can effectively work in tandem to deliver better customer experiences. To truly be effective, A.I. and agents need to collaborate and work together to achieve a common goal.
What where some of your main take aways from chatbot summit?
We’re going to start seeing a lot more consolidation in this field. Right now, there are a lot of platforms that are trying to bridge the gap between human agents and chatbots. As with any new technology, the pack will start to thin out and the strongest solutions will emerge. The hype will start to die down and organizations will become more realistic in the expectations they have for chatbot solutions.
Which industries do you believe will be impacted most by the Bot revolution?
The industries we believe will be most impacted by chatbots are those focused on establishing and maintaining durable customer relationships, such as: Financial Services, Travel/ Hospitality, and service providers. Organizations that have frequent customer interactions and are seeking to deliver high-quality customer experiences will be the first to adopt A.I. technology. In doing so, they can leverage chatbots to manage repetitive and routine requests while directing high-value, more complex conversations to their human agents. This will ensure customers get the best possible outcome in the simplest, fastest way possible.
