Here’s What’s Trending in Chatbot News This Month
Here at Helpshift, we love chatbots! And if you follow our blog you probably are pretty interested in them too. We know that you don’t have a lot of time though, so here’s a quick digest of the top chatbot headlines we found for the last month.
The St Louis Blues are using chatbots to increase fan engagement at live sporting events
It turns out that even when we go somewhere to be entertained, like a hockey game, we have a tendency to become overly distracted by our smartphones. One sports team, the St. Louis Blues, are tackling that problem with chatbots. They’ve employed a Facebook chatbot to keep fans engaged with the game, even when they’re looking at their phones. In the future, the chatbots may even help with customer service queries and food orders while at the sports venue.
Chatbots are gaining ground in financial services
Banks and credit unions are finding that chatbots can be a great first-tier customer support option, providing answers to straightforward financial questions or account information, saving time for both customers and agents. However, there’s a big trust component when dealing with people’s money, so financial institutions will need to proceed thoughtfully to reap the full efficiency gains of chatbot technology.
Universities are leveraging chatbots to improve communication across the board
Universities are complex organizations, and it can be very stressful as an individual to navigate a multitude of departments to get a specific question answered — especially if you go to the wrong department to begin with. That’s why chatbots have become an attractive piece of tech for higher education. They can provide a singular information hub where individuals can ask a question and be provided an answer immediately, or directed to the right person to help.
Researchers are looking to chatbots to combat loneliness among seniors
Researchers at the University of Alberta are developing a chatbot that can converse with seniors to help combat loneliness. As a conversational bot that needs to be able to have fluid conversations on a variety of topics, it’s a monumental challenge. The chatbot apparently learned the fundamentals of language after being trained with millions of lines of dialogue from movies and TVs. The next phase is to teach it nuances in human speech that AI typically struggles with.
People don’t trust chatbots to provide them with medical advice
Finally, new research by HBR shows that patients have trust issues when it comes to AI in medicine. While the research looked at AI in general, they also included chatbots in their research. What they found underscores people’s skepticism of ‘cold’ algorithms to understand their health concerns, which they perceive as being unique to them.
