• 0

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

Marketoonist is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne. Marketing cartoons, content marketing with a sense of humor, keynote speaking.

  • Campaigns
  • Speaking
  • About
  • Cartoons
  • Contact
  • Book
  • 0

chatbots and the future of customer experience

May 14, 2017 2 Comments

  • Paid licensing options include high resolution download.
  • Presentation $35.00 Add to Cart
  • Newsletter or Website $100.00 Add to Cart
  • Corporate Blog/Sponsored Post $50.00 Add to Cart
  • Looking for other licensing options? click here
  • View Cart
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

I spoke at a conference last week called MarTech, which focuses on the intersection of marketing and technology. One of their founding insights is that technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically.

One of the other speakers talked about the rise of chatbots, and how they will fundamentally change marketing. The speaker shared that 80% of brands expect to be using chatbots by 2020. And yet 70% of current chatbot interactions fail, meaning that AI couldn’t understand what people were saying and humans had to step in.

Chatbots are another example of how we’re living in the awkward adolescence of marketing and technology. The technology shows staggering, glittering potential, and yet implementing the technology can be a bumpy road.

Last year, Microsoft most famously experienced this bumpy road when it unveiled a machine-learning chatbot named Tay on Twitter. Tay was designed to learn about the world through its conversations with users. Within 24 hours, pranksters egged on Tay to make racist statements and brag about smoking marijuana in front of the police.

Most branded chatbots haven’t misfired quite like that. But with 70% of current chatbot interactions failing, the most likely fallout will be customer frustration.

“Tolerance for a mediocre bot is much less than for a mediocre app,” said Sam Mandel, CEO of a chatbot service named Poncho.

Juniper Research predicts that chatbots will save the customer service industry $8 billion by 2022, up from $20 million this year, with the biggest impact on healthcare and banking. They expect that the success rate of bot interactions within healthcare will move from 22% today to over 75% by 2022.

There’s a marketing axiom that the shortest distance between a brand and a customer is a conversation. As marketers experiment with chatbots to make those conversations easier, we’ll need to make sure those conversations are the ones to be having.

Here’s a related cartoon I drew a few years ago on the adolescent stage of technology and marketing.

Filed Under: ad tech, digital transformation

Get a new marketoon each week:

Previous Post Next Post

meetings, meetings, meetings

the emperor’s new marketing plan

Browse similar cartoons in: ad tech, digital transformation

Browse By Category See All Marketoons

2 Comments

Join the Discussion
  1. Bernie Weiss says

    May 14, 2017 at 10:20 am

    Hey, marketers! Aren’t you consumers, too? Does talking to a machine that fails to understand you – and wastes your time going through a decision tree to determine the reason for your call – give you the warm, fuzzy feeling that turns you into a brand ambassador? Or are you a young digital native who never experienced genuine personal service, and doesn’t mind (or even expects and likes) the absence of human contact?

    Reply
  2. Allen Roberts says

    May 15, 2017 at 2:31 pm

    Love the Microsoft example, had not heard it before.
    Those sorts of stumbles are inevitable, as inevitable as the march of this technology, but in a strange way they ‘humanise’ the process and make it more acceptable, probably because we can poke fun at it rather than just be confronted by it.
    Keep on Poking Tom!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Paid licensing options include high resolution download.
  • Presentation $35.00 Add to Cart
  • Newsletter or Website $100.00 Add to Cart
  • Corporate Blog/Sponsored Post $50.00 Add to Cart
  • Looking for other licensing options? click here
  • View Cart
Your Ad Ignored Here Book Image

15 years of Marketoonist compiled for your marketing pleasure.

Order Now

About Marketoonist

tom_image

Marketoonist is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne a career marketer and cartoonist. Learn More...

Subscribe

Get a new marketoon delivered to your inbox each week.

 

Browse Blog Posts

Most Popular Cartoons Browse Categories

Marketoon Campaigns

contentmarketing

Content marketing with a sense of humor.

Learn More

Keynote Speaking

speakingworkshops

Insightful, funny, and visual keynote talks and workshops.

Book Tom to Speak

Search Blog Posts

Interested? Let’s Talk!

Marketoons

Browse Categories

Get New Cartoons Weekly

About Marketoonist

Tom Fishburne is the Founder and CEO of Marketoonist, a content marketing studio that helps businesses reach their audiences with cartoons.

© 2023 Marketoonist