Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

As brand apps lose their luster, marketers need to reassess how they connect with consumers in a mobile-first world. Chatbots are one way they can speak with consumers one-on-one in a place where they are already spending the bulk of their time.

“Chatbots will replace the search window,” said Will Wiseman, chief strategy officer, PHD U.S. “There will be a rapid decline in app usage. The last three years, we have gone from brands’ desire to have mobile-friendly websites, then apps, and [we] now expect to see app activity get cannibalized by bots.”

But before you get chatty, here are some basics on bots....

While making a robot sounds complicated for most people, creating a chatbot is way, way easier. The term chatbot stands for an Artifical Intelligence (AI) that automatically chats with internet users, and answers the questions they ask.

A chatbot can function in many different ways. Depending on its type, a chatbot can talk to you or provide customer service, tell you what the current weather, and even contest parking tickets (successfully). For businesses, chatbots could respond to a customer’s question and help you do your job.

The question now is where do you get or how do you create a chatbot? Well, these are the chatbot creator apps out there you can try. Most of them don’t require programming knowledge to use....