how chatbots have begun revolutionizing brand messaging

We all hate being stuck on a long customer service call, trying to start a chat session, or waiting a whole day or more for a company to email us back on a complaint.  Interacting with a chatbot is easier than waiting on the customer service helpline number. Now consider is if you have the option  of brands connecting you via Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, or other messaging app? 

OOT messaging companies  are on the cusp of  creating messenger bots are used for everything from sending delivery notifications and confirming reservations,making a payment  to displaying specific pages from company websites without leaving the messaging app.

This messaging revolution has actually started .Retailers ranging from Nordstrom to DSW and Sephora have started to offer chatbots to find presents for your friends and family through Facebook Messenger. Need advice on making a dessert that’s gluten free? Whole Foods’ bot makes it easy to find a recipe for any occasion and dietary preference

 Chatbots offer immense potential for consumers to interact with a brand in an organic way, through one-on-one conversations within the messaging or social apps they already use. Facebook Messenger bots  have already started to accept payments natively without sending users to an external website 

What that means that the credit card information people already have stored in Facebook or Messenger can be used to instantly make purchases in bots that are part of the new closed beta the developers can apply for. To support payments in Messenger, Facebook is working with all the major players in the industry including Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Visa, MasterCard and American Express 

 And instead of forcing all bot interactions to happen through text, developers can now build web views into conversations to pull in interfaces from their websites. This way you could scroll a list of flights, consume different types of media, or even play basic games while still in the chat window. 

If the recent  findings  from the UK based marketing firm Kenshoo, which commissioned a poll of 2,000 consumers split equally between the UK and France are anything to go by ,it seems that by and large consumers( (53%) of all people in the UK and France who use mobile messaging apps  are open to interacting with bots  they can choose to block brands and  they get to control and choose  brands allowed to message them.

• Over half (51%) of messaging app users in Kenshoo’s study see messaging as faster and more immediate than email interactions with companies, while 48% feel it would be less hassle than voice calls.
• According to the Kenshoo study,  46% said they would be tempted by the prospect of receiving exclusive deals and offers, while 25% said they would use messaging to respond to ads, — 35% to participate in games and competitions in which they could win prizes, and — 24% said they would like to use messaging to receive updates on products and services they have expressed an interest in. “

Of the 2,000 UK and French consumers polled as part of Kenshoo’s study, 71% use mobile messaging apps with 51% saying they use Facebook Messenger and 40% using WhatsApp. Snapchat and Skype (for messaging on a phone) are each used by 20%. About 29% said they did not use messaging apps.