We’re hearing a lot about Artificial Intelligence. One such AI that keeps popping up is chatbots (bots). Some say if you don’t have a bot you’ll miss out. What’s a bot? I hear some ask. It comes in many forms, but you’ll most likely be familiar with the screen pop up which generally appears at the bottom right of the screen when you land on some websites. A conversational and friendly ‘bot’ up appears on the screen “Hey there, it’s (fictitious name) can I help you?” And if you’re so inclined you start to engage in a conversation. I wonder what would happen if we told bot to “piss off!” Siri doesn’t like profanity. I wonder what bot would say.

There’s no doubt for some industries bots can revolutionise business. Travel, automotive, insurance, retail to name but a few. It can screen the tyre kickers, it helps finesse the sales funnel, it doesn’t use humans so it works public holidays, weekends, all night, has no sick days, doesn’t need super, so it’s very cost efficient (I have visions of the self-scan check outs in my mind), #valethecheckoutchick

In fact, bots claim to automate up to 90% of messaging conversations on your website, Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp and more. In fact, some companies specialise in “complete solutions to create, manage and optimise bots for any size business”

In the technology frenzied world we live in, please pause and ask yourself, will a ‘bot’ be better for my customers? My advice, just because it’s out there, doesn’t mean you have to have it.

There are hundreds of articles on Artificial Intelligence versus Human Intelligence including the pros and cons of bots. I’ll leave it to you to Google.

But I will leave you with one final thought …… Teaching empathy to something “Artificial” is going to take a whole lot longer and, at the end of the day, business is still personal.