Foreseeing immense potential, businesses are starting to invest heavily in the development of chatbots. Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) allow businesses to use these bots in a few  key areas that will impact their bottom line and create less expenses while increasing sales/leads. Oracle conducted a survey of 800 decision makers in businesses and concluded that 80% already use or plan to use chatbots by 2020. Complete automation is not feasible but there are areas in business where chatbots can produce considerable savings. An estimate of $23 billion can be saved from annual salaries. The two largest areas that can be improved by chatbots are sales/marketing and customer service. In terms of sales and marketing, the potential is significant. For now, chatbots that send out special offers and coupons can be beneficial to creating leads and eventually sales. The goal is to have chatbots that recommend items to customers based on their preferences or responses to a few prompts.  AI technology hasn’t quite perfected that formula, however, companies like Amazon and Google are working on algorithms that hope to solve this issue.

From a customer service perspective, chatbots can answer basic Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that many customers ask, providing the answers upon request. If the chatbot is not able to help the customers, they can prompt to talk to a live person. While this doesn’t 100% replace human capital in customer service it can definitely reduce costs companies will incur while still being efficient and user friendly.

Although chatbots are far from perfect, there are still many practical and current uses for the AI technology. In order for retailers to benefit from the opportunities created by bots they need to convince consumers that commerce/support through a chat interface is as easy as texting a friend, but with more perks. The clearer the benefit to the consumer, the greater the results will be.