College students value their smartphones and the apps
that allow them to play games and make purchases. Chatbots could replace apps
as the interface, allowing users to find the things they want and need from the
same messaging applications they already use to talk to friends.
“Chatbots are the singularity that smart devices have
been waiting for, the streamlined experience that will finally unshackle us
from the burden that our apps put on our devices,” Craig Elimeliah, director of
creative technology for the digital marketing agency VML, wrote in a column for VentureBeat. “Apps slow us down. For most of what we do on our mobile
devices, the chatbot and chat interface are ideal.”
Elimeliah said chatbots will be a better way for
businesses to engage customers with their brands because they can be used in so
many places and with so many different platforms. They can also be voice- and
text-enabled.
“The
ability that chatbots have to parse language for meaning and context means we
can now create much more meaningful and precise 1:1 experiences that can scale
way beyond the finite interfaces of an app,” he concluded. “In the end,
chatbots are going to make apps look like clunky experiences that don’t really
take into account that today’s mobile users need the most lightweight and easily
accessible features and functions to blaze through their day.”