Ready for the next digital revolution?
Back to the future: it's the image from the poster of the Zemeckis movie that opens the Chatbot - Get Ready for the Next Digital Revolution meeting organized by Deloitte Digital and Hej in Milan.
In place of 'Doc' Emmett Brown, driving the DeLorean is Andrea Febbraio, co-founder of Teads and lead investor of Hej! a creative agency focused on creating chatbots for brands.
And off we all go with him, on a journey with dreamers and mad scientists, among robots that learn to walk by themselves and software that can discover for itself the rules and tricks for playing Atari Breakout. That's deep learning, beautiful.
With 1.4 billion smartphones sold in 2015 and 4.8 billion users by the end of this year, we are increasingly connected and interconnected, with people and brands. It is Luigi Esposito - Senior Manager at Deloitte Digital - who points out in this regard that the overtaking has already happened: people use major messaging systems more than social networks and seem to be less and less interested in new apps. Therefore, the way forward is to integrate services into the various Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and WeChat.
Consider that just on Zuckerberg's Messenger, more than 35 thousand chatbots have already been developed since its launch in April 2016; while Oracle has published a study that predicts that, in less than 4 years, more than 80 percent of brands will use chatbots to communicate with their users.
Essential role in the success of chatbots will be the inclusion of the tool within a clear marketing strategy. On this point, Esposito himself points out that "To make the process of launching and adopting chatbots effective for companies, it will first be necessary to articulate a clear value proposition, then limit the scope to specific products and/or services, make sure you have relevant data, and finally create 'learn & adapt' mechanisms." 'Money follows eyeballs,' finance sniffs out opportunities, and Venture Capital funds have already invested more than US$170 million in this area.
From the panel discussion with Hej!, TheBigBow, Sky, FCA, WeAreSocial and Kettydo to emerge, however, is for all the importance of creativity in support of technology. A chatbot without personality is useless: that's the next challenge, that's what we will fight over to win market share.
Stefano Argiolas, co-founder and CEO of Hej!, explains "we focus on creativity: we have built a team of writers, storytellers and scriptwriters to create real characters, who have a defined story and personality in line with the brand. Brands will then be able to interact with their users in natural language, engage and excite them."
The revolution has begun