Around the noise. Chat bot: empty HYIP or new era?
We are continuing a series of interviews with speakers at the DUMP conference.
HYIP around chatbots does not subside. Why is everyone talking about them? Is it difficult to program them? How to earn them? Is there any chance that chat bots will replace mobile apps? What about people? Our questions were answered by the founder of the ConfBot project , Alexey Mogilnikov, and the technical director of JetStyle , on whose account a dozen chatbots were developed, Alexey Spiridonov.
- Why did you do chat bots? Why is this now such a popular topic? Everyone is talking about chat bots, coming up with chat bots, trying to invest in chat bots. Why did everyone decide that this is the future?
')
Aleksey Mogilnikov: Lena (my wife and co-founder) organizes IT conferences: RailsClub, PyCon Russia, FPConf and DUMP. And the organizers have such eternal topics: how to make the schedule convenient for the participants; how to collect their opinion on the conference; How to organize effective networking?
Once we discussed how to solve all this. Nobody especially puts mobile applications, it is always a pity to spend money on booklets, and it is inconvenient to use them, it is difficult to use the site from the phone.
The idea with the bot appeared precisely because it met all the criteria for solving the problem: easy to connect, convenient to use from the phone, a fun interactive format. That is, not “let's invent and make some bot”, but “oh, it is the bot that will solve our task perfectly”. Well, and then the sacramental "tyzh programmer", and I sat down to write. So ConfBot appeared.
Chat bots have become a popular topic for a very simple reason: the sharp rise of instant messengers over the past 4 years. Now the messengers audience more than in social networks. And if 2.5 years ago, only the lazy did not laugh at Zuckerberg, who bought WhatsApp for $ 22 billion, now these people are not funny: MAU WhatsApp - 1.2 billion people, and the counter continues to tick.
And since there are people in the messengers, and these people have needs, then you need to somehow interact with them, provide some services, sell something. Chat bots are the natural way to do this, right where people are comfortable - in their favorite messenger.
HYIP associated with chat bots will pass, but chat bots will remain. It seems to me that we have already seen enough HYIPs to roughly guess what will happen next. Direct analogy - HYIP on mobile applications 5-7 years old. Everyone made mobile apps. The mobile application was the answer to any question. Some, of course, have not yet been released, but the HYIP has ended, but the mobile applications remain. And they will be with us for a very long time. It will be the same with chat bots. This will be another way to interact with users. With its pluses and minuses.
Alexey Spiridonov: Today everyone has a smartphone and at least one installed instant messenger, and the chat has become more familiar with SMS and mail.
Previously, people sat on sites and searched for information through search engines. Then most of these functions moved to the social network. We got to know each other, shared information, and arranged meetings. Now we spend more time in messengers.
It is logical to assume that they will become a new channel for providing services and solving problems with which websites or social networks cope worse.
We at JetStyle are always experimenting a lot with what technology development offers us - be it chat bots or augmented and virtual reality. Now is the time to accumulate expertise and try new technologies, build them into customers' business processes. This is what we do.
- Why do they talk about chat bots, but use little?
Alexey Mogilnikov: They say, because HYIP :) Not enough, because we are only at the very beginning. Plus, “conversational chatbots” (chat bots that communicate in natural language) do not work well. Interface chat bots (bots that interact with the user through the user interface: buttons, pictures, webview and other elements) are much more convenient, but only Telegram and Facebook Messenger have a more or less serious platform for interface chat bots. No matter how much we love Telegram, its MAU is 170 million people, which is quite a bit (compare to WhatsApp). Everybody has Facebook Messenger, but the majority of users do not like it and use little. Game changer will be the platform for interface chat bots from WhatsApp, I believe that sooner or later it will appear.
And, perhaps, the reason is that chat bots are still quite a “geeky” topic, “ordinary” users are not used to them yet. But it is a matter of time.
Alexey Spiridonov: If it seems to you that chatbots are not used enough, then you are simply not looking there. For example, in China, out of 900 million people with WeChat installed, about 800 million use bots. For many Chinese, this is almost the entire Internet. Almost everything is done via WeChat: goods are sold, gifts are given, written to the clinic, a plumber is called, etc.
As for Russia, there are several points worth noting, including the availability of the API of popular instant messengers for developers. It seems that as soon as WhatsApp opens the API, the number of bots will increase, because whatsApp is the most popular among us.
Yes, in 2016 there was a HYIP related to chat bots. Now he falls, technology moves along the Gartner curve further to the abyss of disappointment. And then, if the chat bots justify themselves, we will come to the widespread benefits and applicability. But those who are engaged in the development of chat bots and are looking for their place in their business processes will be the first to receive feedback.
In January 2017, Alexey and Elena presented a bot at the Eurasia Mobile Challenge competition and won it, surpassing 1000 other projects.
- Now many have the illusion that absolutely everyone needs chat bots. What are they good for, and why not?
Alexei Mogilnikov: Everyone really needs them, just not everyone else knows about it :) And the chat bots themselves have not yet reached that level of maturity so that everyone can use them.
Now it makes sense to use them for some time-limited small tasks: the first line of support, some kind of reference information, an auxiliary channel for ordering food, and so on.
Alexey Spiridonov: We must understand: chat bots are needed not for absolutely everyone, but for those whose user cases contain dialogues. If your tasks are solved through communication with customers, then instant messengers are well suited to you as a communication channel, and chat bots will complement them. Therefore, the answer to the question: “What can be assigned to a chat bot today?” Is very simple: “Everything that can be arranged as a dialogue.”
If we talk about our cases, the chat bot, for example, is well suited for ordering food, it helps to make an order and arrange delivery, sends notification of the order status. With the help of a chat bot, we started saving quite substantial amounts that our client used to spend on sending SMS notifications.
- In what area are chat bots and instant messengers really able to make money in the near future?
Alexey Mogilnikov: Here it is necessary to divide: messengers and chat bots.
Messengers will not earn serious money in the near future, and they don’t need to. The mechanics of a billion-dollar product business is a bit different. Most likely, something will slightly change when payments come to the instant messengers, and they will sit on the flow of money between businesses and their customers. It remains to wait a bit, Facebook Messenger is already testing payments in the United States. Rumor has been circulating for a year that Telegram plans to screw up payments. The newly announced new Veon messenger from VimpelCom will support payments. In general, the caravan goes, but not quickly.
As for chat bots, they are already making money. Not everything is a bit, but the process goes on and as the general development of chatbots and people get used to them, there will obviously be money.
Most likely, by analogy with the gold rush (where the owners of brothels and saloons, not gold miners, primarily earned), designers for chat bots, such as Chatfuel, ManyChat and Botmother, will earn.
Chat bots that automate routine tasks for a business will “earn money”, saving business money. The first line of tech support is a great example.
E-commerce through chat bots is already feeling pretty good now and will feel better and better. For example, chatify for Facebook Messenger from Shopify obviously takes off.
Alexey Spiridonov: Chat bots are already earning, just, perhaps, not to the extent and extent desired. We have a client to whom the chat bot earns millions of rubles. But nevertheless, yes, this is just an additional channel. You need to understand this.
As for instant messengers, the question is more complicated. And I have no clear answer now.
It can be assumed that instant messengers will take a commission for payments within themselves. They may be making money from developers — for example, charging for access to advanced functionality, hosting, user limits, development licenses, or something similar. But this is nothing more than assumptions. We must wait for the actions of the messengers themselves.
- Do you believe that chat bots will kill mobile apps?
Alexey Mogilnikov: They will not kill them, but will press them. Mobile applications are a pretty hard story, they need to be downloaded and installed, they are anorexia, they take up space on the phone. Chat bots in this sense are much easier: quickly connected to the link, got what you need and forgot about it. If spam, then just deleted. Less "friction" when connected - more conversion.
In general, mobile applications are in some kind of crisis associated with saturation. There are statistics for the United States that the average number of new mobile applications that users install on their phones is gradually going to zero. Those. people just don’t need new applications, all their basic needs are met, and it’s not really desirable to set up a new application for rare or one-time tasks. This is the place where chat bots will press mobile apps.
Alexey Spiridonov: I think it’s too early to say that chat bots will kill mobile apps. Today, the functionality of applications greatly exceeds the capabilities of bots. But their range of tasks is different.
But the fact that mobile applications will become less with time is yes. I think that users are saturated with applications: they need to be installed, they require a lot of Internet, they slow down on the coolest phones, sometimes personal data flow through them, you need to switch between them ... the list goes on and on.
- Will chat bots be able to replace living workers in the future?
Alexey Mogilnikov: Yes, of course. It's not even about chat bots, but the fact that software more and more allows us to save humanity from routine tasks. So, people who solve these routine tasks will have to look for themselves in new areas. More intelligent or those that have not yet reached, we are programmers (mu-ha-ha).
Alexey Spiridonov: I think that over time, chat bots will be able to replace living workers in some areas, for example, in technical support. Already there are successful cases.
But here we enter the territory of machine learning and neural networks, for which huge arrays of sorted data are needed. This is now very few people can afford - either because they have never collected such data, or because it is a long and expensive process. Therefore, chat bots will still work in close conjunction with a person.
One of the successful cases of JetStyle under the technical guidance of Alexey Spiridonov is the bot for the pizzeria chain Papa John's Pizza.
- To create a chat bot, you need to be a programmer? What are the difficulties in developing?
Alexey Mogilnikov: No, it is not necessary to be a programmer. There are chat bot designers that allow you to create a chat bot through the user interface by clicking the mouse. More or less complex bots, of course, need to be programmed.
There are no serious difficulties in the development of chat bots. These are ordinary web applications without html frontend. There are a number of nuances, but they are comprehended with experience.
Alexey Spiridonov: It all depends on why you need a bot. If you have enough simple - use the constructor, they now are.
We are moving towards integrating chat bots with the customer’s internal systems, so programming is not enough. Moreover, not only a programmer is needed, the participation of an interface designer and a copywriter is extremely important. Our experience shows that it is too early to start programming without preliminary design of scenarios, and then to redo it.
- Your forecast: how will chat bots develop in the next two years?
Aleksey Mogilnikov: First of all, I believe that the fashion for chatbots (chatbots) will pass. These are chatbots that try to communicate with the user in a natural language. And it turns out they are pretty bad due to the difficulty of recognizing user input. Plus, this is all pretty awkward. The user is simply more convenient and faster to press a button than to type text on the on-screen keyboard of a smartphone. Perhaps the future is for hybrid chat bots that recognize user input where it is convenient, but all other tasks are solved by the interface.
I believe that in the next two years, more or less large instant messengers will provide their platforms for chat bots, payments will appear in them, and chat bots will become another, rather good, channel of interaction between business and customers. They will also become a separate, albeit rather specific, form of software that helps users solve their daily tasks.
Add this post to your bookmarks and check it in two years :)
Alexey Spiridonov: If we are talking about full interlocutors on any topics, then chat bots in Russian are at the very beginning of the journey. And I think that breakthrough solutions will not appear in the next two years.
If we are talking about “interface”, simpler bots, then changes will certainly occur. Almost every month, leading messengers launch new features (while we analyzed the capabilities of different messengers, even the summary table “What's new in bots” collected and updated it), the appearance patterns of chat bots are formed, more designers for chat bots will appear, more hosts designed for them, I think there will be more libraries or frameworks in popular languages ​​for working with chat bots.
But, as I said, now you need to experiment, save expertise and look for a place for chat bots in business processes.
On April 14, at the DUMP conference, Alexey Mogilnikov will show with a simple example how to write an interesting chat bot. An example would be Ruby, but chat bots are a story in which a language is even less important than usual. So, even if you are not a rubist, it will still be clear and useful. Prepare questions and come listen.
Thanks to our sponsors: the general sponsor - E-Soft , the conference partners - SKB Kontur , Naumen , Sberbank-Technology .
HYIP around chatbots does not subside. Why is everyone talking about them? Is it difficult to program them? How to earn them? Is there any chance that chat bots will replace mobile apps? What about people? Our questions were answered by the founder of the ConfBot project , Alexey Mogilnikov, and the technical director of JetStyle , on whose account a dozen chatbots were developed, Alexey Spiridonov.
- Why did you do chat bots? Why is this now such a popular topic? Everyone is talking about chat bots, coming up with chat bots, trying to invest in chat bots. Why did everyone decide that this is the future?
')
Aleksey Mogilnikov: Lena (my wife and co-founder) organizes IT conferences: RailsClub, PyCon Russia, FPConf and DUMP. And the organizers have such eternal topics: how to make the schedule convenient for the participants; how to collect their opinion on the conference; How to organize effective networking?
Once we discussed how to solve all this. Nobody especially puts mobile applications, it is always a pity to spend money on booklets, and it is inconvenient to use them, it is difficult to use the site from the phone.
The idea with the bot appeared precisely because it met all the criteria for solving the problem: easy to connect, convenient to use from the phone, a fun interactive format. That is, not “let's invent and make some bot”, but “oh, it is the bot that will solve our task perfectly”. Well, and then the sacramental "tyzh programmer", and I sat down to write. So ConfBot appeared.
Chat bots have become a popular topic for a very simple reason: the sharp rise of instant messengers over the past 4 years. Now the messengers audience more than in social networks. And if 2.5 years ago, only the lazy did not laugh at Zuckerberg, who bought WhatsApp for $ 22 billion, now these people are not funny: MAU WhatsApp - 1.2 billion people, and the counter continues to tick.
And since there are people in the messengers, and these people have needs, then you need to somehow interact with them, provide some services, sell something. Chat bots are the natural way to do this, right where people are comfortable - in their favorite messenger.
HYIP associated with chat bots will pass, but chat bots will remain. It seems to me that we have already seen enough HYIPs to roughly guess what will happen next. Direct analogy - HYIP on mobile applications 5-7 years old. Everyone made mobile apps. The mobile application was the answer to any question. Some, of course, have not yet been released, but the HYIP has ended, but the mobile applications remain. And they will be with us for a very long time. It will be the same with chat bots. This will be another way to interact with users. With its pluses and minuses.
Alexey Spiridonov: Today everyone has a smartphone and at least one installed instant messenger, and the chat has become more familiar with SMS and mail.
Previously, people sat on sites and searched for information through search engines. Then most of these functions moved to the social network. We got to know each other, shared information, and arranged meetings. Now we spend more time in messengers.
It is logical to assume that they will become a new channel for providing services and solving problems with which websites or social networks cope worse.
We at JetStyle are always experimenting a lot with what technology development offers us - be it chat bots or augmented and virtual reality. Now is the time to accumulate expertise and try new technologies, build them into customers' business processes. This is what we do.
- Why do they talk about chat bots, but use little?
Alexey Mogilnikov: They say, because HYIP :) Not enough, because we are only at the very beginning. Plus, “conversational chatbots” (chat bots that communicate in natural language) do not work well. Interface chat bots (bots that interact with the user through the user interface: buttons, pictures, webview and other elements) are much more convenient, but only Telegram and Facebook Messenger have a more or less serious platform for interface chat bots. No matter how much we love Telegram, its MAU is 170 million people, which is quite a bit (compare to WhatsApp). Everybody has Facebook Messenger, but the majority of users do not like it and use little. Game changer will be the platform for interface chat bots from WhatsApp, I believe that sooner or later it will appear.
And, perhaps, the reason is that chat bots are still quite a “geeky” topic, “ordinary” users are not used to them yet. But it is a matter of time.
Alexey Spiridonov: If it seems to you that chatbots are not used enough, then you are simply not looking there. For example, in China, out of 900 million people with WeChat installed, about 800 million use bots. For many Chinese, this is almost the entire Internet. Almost everything is done via WeChat: goods are sold, gifts are given, written to the clinic, a plumber is called, etc.
As for Russia, there are several points worth noting, including the availability of the API of popular instant messengers for developers. It seems that as soon as WhatsApp opens the API, the number of bots will increase, because whatsApp is the most popular among us.
Yes, in 2016 there was a HYIP related to chat bots. Now he falls, technology moves along the Gartner curve further to the abyss of disappointment. And then, if the chat bots justify themselves, we will come to the widespread benefits and applicability. But those who are engaged in the development of chat bots and are looking for their place in their business processes will be the first to receive feedback.
In January 2017, Alexey and Elena presented a bot at the Eurasia Mobile Challenge competition and won it, surpassing 1000 other projects.
- Now many have the illusion that absolutely everyone needs chat bots. What are they good for, and why not?
Alexei Mogilnikov: Everyone really needs them, just not everyone else knows about it :) And the chat bots themselves have not yet reached that level of maturity so that everyone can use them.
Now it makes sense to use them for some time-limited small tasks: the first line of support, some kind of reference information, an auxiliary channel for ordering food, and so on.
Alexey Spiridonov: We must understand: chat bots are needed not for absolutely everyone, but for those whose user cases contain dialogues. If your tasks are solved through communication with customers, then instant messengers are well suited to you as a communication channel, and chat bots will complement them. Therefore, the answer to the question: “What can be assigned to a chat bot today?” Is very simple: “Everything that can be arranged as a dialogue.”
If we talk about our cases, the chat bot, for example, is well suited for ordering food, it helps to make an order and arrange delivery, sends notification of the order status. With the help of a chat bot, we started saving quite substantial amounts that our client used to spend on sending SMS notifications.
- In what area are chat bots and instant messengers really able to make money in the near future?
Alexey Mogilnikov: Here it is necessary to divide: messengers and chat bots.
Messengers will not earn serious money in the near future, and they don’t need to. The mechanics of a billion-dollar product business is a bit different. Most likely, something will slightly change when payments come to the instant messengers, and they will sit on the flow of money between businesses and their customers. It remains to wait a bit, Facebook Messenger is already testing payments in the United States. Rumor has been circulating for a year that Telegram plans to screw up payments. The newly announced new Veon messenger from VimpelCom will support payments. In general, the caravan goes, but not quickly.
As for chat bots, they are already making money. Not everything is a bit, but the process goes on and as the general development of chatbots and people get used to them, there will obviously be money.
Most likely, by analogy with the gold rush (where the owners of brothels and saloons, not gold miners, primarily earned), designers for chat bots, such as Chatfuel, ManyChat and Botmother, will earn.
Chat bots that automate routine tasks for a business will “earn money”, saving business money. The first line of tech support is a great example.
E-commerce through chat bots is already feeling pretty good now and will feel better and better. For example, chatify for Facebook Messenger from Shopify obviously takes off.
Alexey Spiridonov: Chat bots are already earning, just, perhaps, not to the extent and extent desired. We have a client to whom the chat bot earns millions of rubles. But nevertheless, yes, this is just an additional channel. You need to understand this.
As for instant messengers, the question is more complicated. And I have no clear answer now.
It can be assumed that instant messengers will take a commission for payments within themselves. They may be making money from developers — for example, charging for access to advanced functionality, hosting, user limits, development licenses, or something similar. But this is nothing more than assumptions. We must wait for the actions of the messengers themselves.
- Do you believe that chat bots will kill mobile apps?
Alexey Mogilnikov: They will not kill them, but will press them. Mobile applications are a pretty hard story, they need to be downloaded and installed, they are anorexia, they take up space on the phone. Chat bots in this sense are much easier: quickly connected to the link, got what you need and forgot about it. If spam, then just deleted. Less "friction" when connected - more conversion.
In general, mobile applications are in some kind of crisis associated with saturation. There are statistics for the United States that the average number of new mobile applications that users install on their phones is gradually going to zero. Those. people just don’t need new applications, all their basic needs are met, and it’s not really desirable to set up a new application for rare or one-time tasks. This is the place where chat bots will press mobile apps.
Alexey Spiridonov: I think it’s too early to say that chat bots will kill mobile apps. Today, the functionality of applications greatly exceeds the capabilities of bots. But their range of tasks is different.
But the fact that mobile applications will become less with time is yes. I think that users are saturated with applications: they need to be installed, they require a lot of Internet, they slow down on the coolest phones, sometimes personal data flow through them, you need to switch between them ... the list goes on and on.
- Will chat bots be able to replace living workers in the future?
Alexey Mogilnikov: Yes, of course. It's not even about chat bots, but the fact that software more and more allows us to save humanity from routine tasks. So, people who solve these routine tasks will have to look for themselves in new areas. More intelligent or those that have not yet reached, we are programmers (mu-ha-ha).
Alexey Spiridonov: I think that over time, chat bots will be able to replace living workers in some areas, for example, in technical support. Already there are successful cases.
But here we enter the territory of machine learning and neural networks, for which huge arrays of sorted data are needed. This is now very few people can afford - either because they have never collected such data, or because it is a long and expensive process. Therefore, chat bots will still work in close conjunction with a person.
One of the successful cases of JetStyle under the technical guidance of Alexey Spiridonov is the bot for the pizzeria chain Papa John's Pizza.
- To create a chat bot, you need to be a programmer? What are the difficulties in developing?
Alexey Mogilnikov: No, it is not necessary to be a programmer. There are chat bot designers that allow you to create a chat bot through the user interface by clicking the mouse. More or less complex bots, of course, need to be programmed.
There are no serious difficulties in the development of chat bots. These are ordinary web applications without html frontend. There are a number of nuances, but they are comprehended with experience.
Alexey Spiridonov: It all depends on why you need a bot. If you have enough simple - use the constructor, they now are.
We are moving towards integrating chat bots with the customer’s internal systems, so programming is not enough. Moreover, not only a programmer is needed, the participation of an interface designer and a copywriter is extremely important. Our experience shows that it is too early to start programming without preliminary design of scenarios, and then to redo it.
- Your forecast: how will chat bots develop in the next two years?
Aleksey Mogilnikov: First of all, I believe that the fashion for chatbots (chatbots) will pass. These are chatbots that try to communicate with the user in a natural language. And it turns out they are pretty bad due to the difficulty of recognizing user input. Plus, this is all pretty awkward. The user is simply more convenient and faster to press a button than to type text on the on-screen keyboard of a smartphone. Perhaps the future is for hybrid chat bots that recognize user input where it is convenient, but all other tasks are solved by the interface.
I believe that in the next two years, more or less large instant messengers will provide their platforms for chat bots, payments will appear in them, and chat bots will become another, rather good, channel of interaction between business and customers. They will also become a separate, albeit rather specific, form of software that helps users solve their daily tasks.
Add this post to your bookmarks and check it in two years :)
Alexey Spiridonov: If we are talking about full interlocutors on any topics, then chat bots in Russian are at the very beginning of the journey. And I think that breakthrough solutions will not appear in the next two years.
If we are talking about “interface”, simpler bots, then changes will certainly occur. Almost every month, leading messengers launch new features (while we analyzed the capabilities of different messengers, even the summary table “What's new in bots” collected and updated it), the appearance patterns of chat bots are formed, more designers for chat bots will appear, more hosts designed for them, I think there will be more libraries or frameworks in popular languages ​​for working with chat bots.
But, as I said, now you need to experiment, save expertise and look for a place for chat bots in business processes.
On April 14, at the DUMP conference, Alexey Mogilnikov will show with a simple example how to write an interesting chat bot. An example would be Ruby, but chat bots are a story in which a language is even less important than usual. So, even if you are not a rubist, it will still be clear and useful. Prepare questions and come listen.
Thanks to our sponsors: the general sponsor - E-Soft , the conference partners - SKB Kontur , Naumen , Sberbank-Technology .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/325812/
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