Chatbots are becoming popular with the passage of time. In the era of Artificial Intelligence, enterprises are realizing the need of automating their business processes and utilizing technology to reap maximum benefits.
Along with AI and machine learning technologies, chatbots are characterized by the ability to respond to various queries, learn and adapt to meet the assorted state of affairs. The proficiency of chatbots has proved to be a major game changer when it comes to handling customer inquiries and other business processes to enhance customer satisfaction. The overall chatbot market revenue exceeded $250 million in 2017.
In fact, the AI technology has gained the pace, affecting the overall chatbot industry. Chatbots have widely been adopted by e-commerce, banking, and service sector to handle customer queries and advanced self-learning that can understand and alter the input. For instance, eBay the biggest e-commerce portal offers services of ShopBot in order to respond to customer inquiries and help them to find desired products. As soon as the customer type a short description, the ShopBot will ask appropriate questions and display relevant results.
ShopBot users are more likely to come up with specific results than those who are just browsing the website. AI-powered chatbots have been deployed across online stores worldwide from travel and booking to fast food chains through built-in chatbot features of the Facebook messenger, Slack, and WeChat messaging platforms. The deployment of these chatbots has helped in improving customer engagement, resulting in more sales and increased revenue.
A report published by Global Market Insights, Inc. on the chatbot market suggests that customer service is the highest contributing segment with 42.52% share. The size of chatbot is set to exceed $1.34 billion by 2024 according to Global Market Insights.
The Chatbot market is advancing from the investments made by the top stakeholders who are backed by various chatbot startup firms. The funds are utilized by startups for developing chatbot platforms and NLP technology. In 2017, Pypestream raised $15 million in funding to enhance the developments in chatbot platform and improve customer service, purchases and transactions. However, lack of knowledge about the benefits of chatbots among entrepreneurs and security reasons might hinder the market growth.
The AI-based chatbot market is growing at a CAGR of 53%, resulting in a high conversational experience in voice and text that can be utilized on mobile devices, chat platforms, and web browsers.
In fact, the global chatbot market is highly competitive as multinational companies and startups are continuously involved in research and development to build advanced technologies. Some of the vendors operating in the industry include Kik, LivePerson, Microsoft, WeChat, Slack, Baidu, Google, and ReplyYes.
