There is a definite rise in on-demand messaging, which is now how consumers prefer to communicate with a business. And it's only going to be more significant in the year ahead.

It is safe to say that chatbots are altering how businesses across multiple industries connect with customers. Chatbots are now being recognized as a critical resource for providing excellent customer service.

It is predicted that by 2021, 80% of businesses will be integrating some style of chatbot structure to their website or online selling platform. The industries profiting the most out of chatbots are finance, healthcare, education, travel, eCommerce, and real estate.

So who wants the chatbots?

It's all of us. We now have a dependent culture where the expectation is to access information immediately or contact customer service 24/7. And this process needs to be fast and easy; otherwise, we get frustrated and look elsewhere – who has a chatbot to help them.

Chatbots are giving real-time help precisely when consumers need it all over the globe. Accessible communication is at the fore of this chatbot trend. They deliver swifter, superior online encounters to your customers.

There has been some pushback that people want to deal with humans in some circumstances. They have received bad suggestions or unhelpful responses with some chatbots hindering interaction with a live representative. However, the trends for 2021 are indicating that these issues will be overcome reasonably soon.

2021 and beyond

Human Experience

Chatbots are being transformed with deeper integration of AI. They will collect data, normalize, and aggregate customer feedback data to help train the chatbot to have more human-like features.

Chatbots currently can't perform technical commands, pick up on customers' intent, or understand different accents or cultural meanings of phrases or words that potentially lead to incorrect responses. However, this is changing.

With developing conversational AI technology, chatbots will soon overcome all these challenges in the future. This will enhance customized experiences and build positive relationships, improving the perceptions of poor experiences. It will be just like talking to a human.

Websites with integrated Messaging Platforms

These will be the driver of growth for chatbots. Websites with chatbot functions will leap ahead of the competition in the areas of lead generation, sales, marketing, and responsive customer support.

Voice Bots

Both types of bots will boom in 2020, but voice bots will offer personalization that reduces current problems and issues. Because of AI, they are becoming more sophisticated and able to understand the intention and accent difficulties that have hampered voice bots in the past.

Simplify Internal Workflows

Chatbots will be used to answer frequently asked questions and possibly finish frequent HR-related transactional functions. They will continue to grow in the employee onboarding process through mandatory education delivery and policy and procedure familiarisation. Chatbots can also potentially fix basic IT problems, leaving the more complex issues to humans.

Transform Business Processes

With more data being collated and transformed, processes such as predicting consumer behavior, simplifying customer support experiences, and recommending products are only a short time away.

AI Integration with Social Media

Currently, social media user data is collected in a haphazard way, which makes utilization difficult. But integrating AI technology will help your business comprehend and pursue data on customer behavior, such as time spent online and favored social media platforms.

Integration into Business Apps

Chatbots are now easily integrated into mobile apps, and this is becoming an increasing option for businesses.

Chatbots will revolutionize the way we do online business

They are innovative and branching out into all industries, with enormous marketing promise, quality improvement, data collection, cost reduction, and sales.

With the increased consumer expectation that customer service and businesses should supply information and assistance 24/7, chatbots will be trending towards speech analysis, text, and facial expressions. Then chatbots will genuinely be able to provide truly personalized customer support.

You could also potentially have different chatbot characteristics and personalities to tend to individual customer target markets.

There is no looking back. Chatbots are becoming mainstream. By implementing chatbots now, you will acquire a deeper understanding of your business and your customers.