We are now used to talking to machines, and the latest chatbots are impressively human-like. However, when companies deploy natural language processing, they should be aware of these five mistakes.

1. The 5 Biggest Mistakes
Chatbots
Companies Make With

2. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
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IntroductionIntroduction
We are now used to talking to machines, and the latest chatbots are impressively
human-like. However, when companies deploy natural language processing, they should
be aware of these five mistakes.
If you’ve ever started a sentence with “Alexa…” or “Siri…”, you’ll know that we humans are
now well used to communicating with machines through natural human language.
Chatbots are underpinned by the same technology as voice interface systems like Siri,
but instead of responding to spoken commands, chatbots interact with users via a
written chat interface, such as Facebook Messenger or a web-based application.
The 5 Biggest Mistakes Companies Make With
Chatbots

3. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
The 5 Biggest Mistakes Companies Make With Chatbots
Like many other AI-driven technologies, chatbots have become a key technology trend.
Today, businesses big and small are using chatbots to interact with their customers, drive
sales, solve user problems, and more. In fact, chatbots are being used in a wide range of
business functions – customer service, sales, marketing, tech support, HR – across a
surprisingly diverse range of industries. But, impressive as the technology can be, there are
some pitfalls and challenges to be aware of. In this article, I look at some of the most
common mistakes businesses make when deploying chatbot technology.

4. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Mistake #1: Not using chatbots in a strategic way
As with any technology trend, there must be a strategic reason for introducing the new
technology to your business. Adopting technology for the sake of it can be costly and
counter-productive. Rather, any new technology has to deliver real value for your
business, whether that’s by improving the customer experience, answering queries more
quickly, providing a more personalized experience on a large scale, or whatever.
Philippines-based company Globe Telecom shows how chatbots can deliver serious
strategic value. The company deployed a Facebook Messenger chatbot to help ease the
load on its call center. The result? Call volume decreased by 50 percent, while customer
satisfaction increased by 22 percent. What’s more, employees were 3.5 times more
productive.

5. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Mistake #2: Using chatbots when you should
have used a human
It’s true that chatbots are now capable of impersonating humans pretty well and holding
impressively natural conversations. But there are times when only human interaction will
do. Unless you want to alienate your audience, you’ll need to think carefully about which
tasks are suited to chatbots and which are best left to humans.
Consider the use of chatbots in HR. Vera is just one of many HR-focused chatbots that
have hit the market in recent years. Vera is a recruitment chatbot, capable of interviewing
as many as 1,500 candidates a day, by telephone or video, and sending personalized
follow-up emails. The tool is designed for companies that need to recruit a lot of
employees, quickly. As such, it's proven particularly useful for retail and distribution
companies – IKEA Russia is one Vera customer.
Clearly, recruitment chatbots could become a valuable part of the recruitment process,
helping human recruiters save time on first-round interviews and taking some of the leg-
work out of communicating with candidates. But that doesn’t mean they should replace
human recruiters altogether. The final decision on whether to hire someone should always
be left to a human.

6. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Mistake #3: Underestimating the potential for
brand engagement
One error that many businesses make is to conflate chatbots with self-service offerings
like online FAQ pages. Chatbots offer so much more than just helping people solve a
particular problem or complete a certain task. Because they’re conducting a real
conversation with the user, chatbots provide a genuine sense of interacting with a
company or brand – in a much more meaningful way than, say, accessing information on a
web page or completing an order online.
In other words, chatbots can seriously boost engagement. That was certainly the case for
National Geographic, who created an Einstein-inspired chatbot for a new show called
Genius. The bot replied to interactions like Einstein would, which definitely kept people
coming back for more. Conversations with the bot lasted an average of 6–8 minutes and
resulted in 50 percent user re-engagement.

7. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Mistake #4: Not communicating as your audience
would
Any successful chatbot must be designed with the target audience in mind and be able to
chat in the same way as the real-life people it’s communicating with. The Whole Foods
Facebook Messenger does this particularly well. The chatbot dishes out recipes, cooking
inspiration, and product recommendations and drives users to the company's website. So
far, so normal. What's special about the bot is it lets users search for recipes using emojis
– thereby reflecting how people communicate in real life. Love them or loathe them,
emojis are now firmly part of everyday communication, and they’re here to stay.

8. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Mistake #5: Not improving the service over time
Chatbots are underpinned by AI. And the thing about AI is it’s constantly getting smarter.
We need only look back at some of the high-profile, toe-curling examples of chatbot fails
to see how far the technology has come. (Microsoft's racist, Holocaust-denying Twitter bot
Tay springs immediately to mind. Although, to be fair, it was Twitter users who taught Tay
to be racist.) Therefore, you must be prepared to tweak your offering over time in line with
user feedback and technology improvements. In other words, it's not a case of introducing
a chatbot; then you're done. It's a constant cycle of improvement.
The increasing use of chatbots and voice interface technology is just one of 25 technology
trends that I believe will transform our society. Read more about these key trends –
including plenty of real-world examples – in my book, Tech Trends in Practice: The 25
Technologies That Are Driving The 4th Industrial Revolution.

9. Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website
© 2020 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved© 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website

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