One of the most important prerequisites of running a successful business in 2018 is round the clock availability of a company to their customers. This requirement can best be fulfilled by  AI (Artificial intelligence ) powered chat bots which offer solutions to limited manpower capacity at reduced costs with better results.

Chat bots are typically technological machine-learned programs that can simulate human conversations and serve as the first point of interaction between a company with its customers. This can result to a better interactive shopping experience, and beneficial overall user experience on a website.

Chat bots are partially prepared with everything that a beneficial conversation requires for a successful business transaction. This is made possible by the various human interactions as a learning source for the bots. However like any other form of innovative technology, chat bots come with several expected advantages as well as a few disadvantages and potential risks.

While the benefits of chat bots are straight forward, we are going to take a look at the major reasons why chat bots may not exactly be the best for business.

• Misleading chat bots

Armed with mechanical learning capabilities, the AI powered chat bots have the capability of becoming skilled at imitating human conversations.  This may be the expected result but unfortunately hackers can utilize this single point of weakness to create bots that may pose as buyers or suppliers and strike up conversations with the in-house employees of a company. The hackers can use the bots to convince the users to provide personal information or sign up for inappropriate or malicious content.  Many forms of such phishing attacks are launched by hackers using chat bots.

• Chat bots are too mechanical

Despite the various advancements in artificial intelligence and predictive behavior, chat bots are at the end of the day, still mechanical robots. They have to be pre-programmed by programmers to handle conversations with humans only when an overall conversation follows the pre-programmed path.

The chat bots performance can be greatly affected whenever a customer may ask a query that has not been programmed into the bots chip. The only way that the chat bot can remedy such an issue is by asking more qualifying questions which can be repetitive or irritating the customer. This can cost a company its business.

• High chances of confusion affecting a customers buying decision

One of the biggest advantages of using chat bots is the fact that they can allow a customer to buy and checkout products, just within the chat box. Potential customers can limit the tedious activity of going through the different product categories in the store to find their desired products.

However, confusion is likely to occur as the computer program could show all the item categories at once. The customer is left with the hustle of narrowing down their requests by mentioning their specific requirements down to the product size/color or material. This is very time consuming and the bot might not understand the search parameters, ultimately failing to show the customers intended purchase which can affect their purchase decision.

• They use standard web protocols which are prone to hacking

As much as chat bots use the latest innovative features in technology, they do have one major downside though. The chat bot programs use the open internet protocols which have been in existence for the last decade.

This is especially on bots used on Facebook, Whatsapp and messenger. This open internet protocols can be easily targeted by hackers to fulfill their own malicious needs. This makes chat bots very risky to use in financial institutions.  To mitigate such risks, financial institutions have to utilize the reliable HTTP protocols or invest in the TLA (Transport Level Authentication) to enhance data security.

• Displacement of low level positions in a company

AI powered chat robots are best suited for low-level repetitive jobs in an organization. These chat bots are sufficiently equipped to carry out the menial jobs faster and with more accuracy than human employees. This may be very beneficial to a company’s productivity but they may also pose a serious risk of displacing low level employees in an organization. This threat is especially so in developing countries where the demands scale for chat bots is higher than that of people. Job openings for online marketers and customer relationship are likely to be phased out in the future.

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