Messenger programs are quickly overtaking email as many professionals' favorite platform to communicate with others. Email inboxes can become cluttered with SPAM; and honestly, the technology feels too bulky and slow to be used in today's business landscape. Messenger apps like Slack, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp offer more of an instant response than email messages seem to be able to provide, which is driving customer adoption.
On a similar note, those messenger programs driving growth in the global chatbot market. Indeed, that sector is expected to enjoy a 24.43 percent CAGR (compound annual growth rate) from 2018 to 2022.
When the messenger applications gain traction within business environments, it becomes easy for businesses to add chatbot capabilities to improve customer service interactions and the company's bottom line. Some chatbot benefits, according to the report, include:
- minimum operational costs;
- enhanced customer satisfaction; and
- high functional efficiency.
Those benefits are driving small, midsize and enterprise organizations to adopt chatbots in their business processes.
Three Types of Chatbots
According to the report, the chatbots market is mainly categorized into three types:
- standalone chatbots systems;
- web-based chatbots, and
- messenger-based chatbots or third party chatbots.
The standalone chatbots are one of the fastest growing segments according to revenue generation reports from the last couple of years. The report attributes this growth for standalone chatbots to its capability to directly interact with customers. Web-based chatbots have also witnessed substantial growth in recent years owing to the rising preference towards chatbots for various messaging platforms and customer service bots in web-based applications.
How Chatbots Can Help Companies
In today's multi-channel world, users want to consume customer support in their personally preferred manner. Messenger applications often can be accessed via a mobile device, a computer, and more which also makes it extremely accessible. You don't have to block out a time to contact customer support for an issue, you can do it while you are waiting for your coffee.
Many customer service bots are so good at interactions, customers don't even realize they are speaking with a bot. As we mentioned previously, the handoff to a live individual, if needed, has to be seamless in order for this market to really find success. Otherwise, chatbots will be relegated to a joke, much like the wonderful voicemail prompts that no one ever listens to before they try pressing 0 to speak with an operator.
What regions are seeing more growth for chatbots?
The report also divides the market into different regions such as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Africa. The analysis shows that North America has shown major growth in the chatbot market in recent years due to the adoption of routine customer service activities by large-scale industries and an increase in the number of startups in the region.
