2024 saw some huge developmental leaps in AI, which is one of the main technologies to power chatbots. As AI has gotten more intelligent and NLP has become more precise as well as fluid, chatbots have improved exponentially.
In 2024 the chatbot market was valued at 7/01 billion and that number is expected to grow to 20.81 billion by 2029.[*]
Performing advanced customer service functions like giving customers recommendations - chatbots can also pull off feats like scheduling, canceling appointments, and even refilling prescriptions in the healthcare field - to name a few possibilities.
Chatbots can work in any customer service environment, particularly looking to assist in reducing things like high call volumes in contact centers. If contact center management wants to extend convenient customer service options to relieve the stress felt by agents, they're likely already sold on the idea of chatbots.
OpenAI and ChatGPT
Founded in 2015, OpenAI has been everywhere as of late. Contact center software and customer service (CX) software developers have been all over the technology. In September 2024, OpenAI released its latest large language model (LLM) which had the reasoning capabilities of a Phlevel expert in biology, physics, and chemistry.
Nearly every 'major' and non-major player in the UCC space has either added ChatGPT to their roster of capabilities, hoping to boost their CX capabilities, or has developed their own LLM.
At Zoomtopia 2024 Zoom announced big improvements to its self-service chatbot, Zoom Virtual Agent, such as multi-intent detection to handle more complex customer issues. The Virtual Agent can process several problems at once and automatically update customer intents based on insights from active trends or common queries. Zoom is also launching an AI virtual voice agent to enable self-service voice calls.
Automate, Automate, Automate
While many assume that AI will eventually replace humans at their job, the express goal of said technology is to assist humans in better performing their jobs.
From answering queries about products to extending post-sale support, chatbots (and voice bots) are seemingly invaluable. They can work to collect data from customers, along with ensuring a quality experience if the logic is sound. Companies can even leverage chatbots for onboarding and automating tasks involved in that process: be it a new customer or employee.
There is also no risk of human error, and bots can handle multiple customers simultaneously. And that is all automated - (freeing up) human agents to perform higher-level customer service tasks, such as when a customer needs to speak to a human for any number of reasons.
Everything from e-commerce to healthcare, real estate, and various other industries might 'handsomely' benefit from reducing long response times, lack of follow-ups from human agents, and other downsides to relying (solely) on humans to perform CX within organizations.
For example, in October 2024, Nextiva announced a new feature allowing users to automate staff forecasting and scheduling. Automations like this benefit both companies and team members as they reduce costs while ensuring that individual agents aren't over- or under- worked.
Omnichannel Chatbots
2024 saw a continuation of decreased consumer phone usage in favor of other communication channels such as email, messaging, and social media. Messaging in particular is projected to account for 61% of business communication in 2025.[*]
Social media channels have also grown in popularity driven primarily by Millennial and Gen Z users. The global social commerce industry is expected to reach 1.2 trillion in 2025.[*]
In order to meet the demands of modern customers, it will be necessary for companies to implement omnichannel chatbots that can interact with consumers on a variety of channels and apps, elevating to live agents when necessary.
For example, Zapier recently released an omnichannel chatbot builder (currently in Beta) that can be linked to multiple channels such as email, messaging apps, and social media. The chatbot serves as a central point for handling interactions across channels and supervisors can customize the chatbot's directive, add channel specific formatting, and more.
The Future of Chatbots
As chatbots leverage a model that trains and makes them better over time - the result is that the experience (for customers) will only get better over time. In fact, Gartner predicts that 40% of GenAI solutions will be multimodal by 2027.[*] Meaning that AI-powered tools such as chatbots will be able to understand not only text, but also images, audio, and video clips. The potential for AI-powered self-service is limitless. When considering this, it seems only clever to implement such a tool now.
The fact is that chatbots are something that can help a business beyond what they could have ever imagined, it merely takes the imagination of creative folks to know how to use the technology best to enhance various experiences for both customers and customer service agents.