Insights from the ChatbotConf 2016 Special

1. Curiosity Stop:
The Social Innovation Roundup
ChatbotConf 2016 Special

2. CURIOSITY STOP
‘Social Thinking’ is understanding how and why people communicate. We use this insight to
provide value for our clients. This understanding is an ongoing passion project for We Are
Social.
Our 600+ global team keep a keen eye out for intriguing changes in the social landscape. We
take the best of these innovations and compile them in the monthly
Curiosity Stop.
This Curiosity Stop special focusses on the most interesting topics from ChatbotConf 2016.

3. Luca Della Dora >
Marketing & Innovation Director at We Are Social
ChatbotConf is the the first international Conference on Chatbots
and Mobile Messaging, which brings together industry
leaders and startups as well as more established companies.
At We Are Social we are very much interested in how chatbots will
contribute to the evolution of how people and brands interact from a
business perspective.
It’s interesting to notice how people tend to overestimate the effect of
new technology in the short term, and underestimate the effect in the
long run. Disruptive innovations are vital to drive global change, so it’s
fundamental to balance the excitement of a new tool, and understand
how it will create value in the long term.
To help make sense of the latest developments we have picked the most
interesting insights shared by the speakers at ChatbotConf 2016.
This special edition Curiosity Stop includes: 4 highlights from 4 different
speakers plus a final, personal insight from the sharing session.

4. #1 Reciprocity is the key >
Face to face conversations are all about give and
take, and chatbots are built with this in mind to
make them a genuine conversational tool.
What the chatbot says is an important part of its
training, but how it interacts is crucial from a
branding perspective.

5. #1 Reciprocity is the key >
Amir Shevat, Director of Developer Relations at Slack
What’s it all about?
Amir Shevat talked about the importance of conversation in
his talk “Bot Anatomy”. He highlighted that it’s more
important than ever to know the brand’s audience, its
language and to give people the opportunity to ask for
“human” support at any moment.
The bigger picture
Brands have to strongly invest in building relevant
experiences that will make people comfortable interacting
with the chatbot. This involves properly copywriting every
single response, not spamming, and considering the use of
emojis.

6. #2 Human + Machine >
Artificial intelligence is creating huge opportunities
for businesses and is now more than a hot trend
after years of research and improvement. The key
is not just the technical improvements, but its
ability to be integrated with human support.

7. #2 Human + Machine >
Christoph Auer-Welsbach, IBM Watson Partner Innovation
What’s it all about?
By 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be managed
without a human. This doesn’t mean that robots will
completely replace humans, but they will help people in
accomplishing - in example - recurring tasks, or complex
operations, freeing up time for activities where the “human
touch” is essential.
The bigger picture
IBM challenged its robot - Watson - to create a movie trailer
(Morgan). The result was impressive, but it needed a human
touch to ensure the trailer hit the right notes. This example
highlights that even if machines are now able to accomplish
complex tasks, they need human support to understand
compassion, intuition, common sense, and
other feelings.

8. #3 It’s all about context >
The world is becoming increasingly mobile. In 2015
people conducted more searches on phones than
on desktops. But the evolution has only just begun.
In this mobile world, people increasingly use
speech: it’s easier and faster. This behavior will
become even more natural thanks to new
(non-mobile) technologies (like Amazon Alexa or
Google Home) that work purely through voice
recognition. This makes it more important than
ever for technology to grasp the context of what is
being said.

9. #3 It’s all about context >
Behshad Behzadi, Principal Engineer at Google Search
What’s it all about?
Behshad Behzadi talked about the way search has dramatically
changed during the last few years, and how personal assistants
will improve it even further in the next few years. The future of
search is about creating conversational assistants that will help
people in their daily lives, so they can focus on things that really
matter to them.
The bigger picture
The ultimate assistant should understand three basic things
related to the context: the world, you and your world, your
current context. The Google personal assistant is now able to
interact with humans by analysing three kinds of context: what
it knows about us (what we asked before), what it knows we are
doing in that moment (what’s on the screen right now), what we
are doing in the physical space (where we are, and whom we
are interacting with).

10. #4 Trust is the ultimate challenge >
People are not accustomed to starting conversations
with machines yet, so it’s fundamental to ensure
consumers are comfortable. Complexity and risk are
the key variables that define the way people perceive
interactions with chatbots, and they are key to building
trustworthy experiences.

11. #4 Trust is the ultimate challenge >
Ido Iungelson, Director of Revenue & Operations at Viber
What’s it all about?
A chatbot has to win four challenges to be useful both from a business
perspective and a personal point of view. The first of these is reach which is
achievable through virality, social presence, and discovery.
Second is branding which can be achieved by aligning the bot’s language and
attitude to the brand tone of voice and the way the audience usually interact
with the brand on other spaces. The third challenge is monetisation -
whether the bot is about publishing or about commerce.
The fourth is trust. This will be achieved by giving people the opportunity
to opt out of bot discussion if they feel their trust has been compromised.
The bigger picture
The trust matrix assesses how structured or unstructured
the experience is, and how high the risk is. For example, Miss Piggy
is a risk free chatbot, able to entertain people thanks
to a structured architecture. Financial management chatbots
are often less structured, but they present a higher risk
due to the content being discussed.

12. #5 Technology is becoming more
‘human’ >
Technology is changing the perception of automated tools,
and - more importantly - removing all the factors that
make digital experiences fragmented.
In a world where people jump from one platform to
another repeatedly, it’s crucial to offer a
continuous experience by removing barriers. Thanks
to new technologies like voice recognition (as source
of input) and artificial intelligence (as generator of
output), digital solutions are becoming more
accessible and arguably, more human.

13. #5 Technology is becoming more
“human” >
Luca Della Dora, Marketing & Innovation Director at We Are Social
What’s it all about?
Think about the shift that happened when touchscreens became standard.
People were accustomed to using the mouse as the tool to transform our
inputs into given outputs. Touchscreens completely removed this. When
we wanted to accomplish a task on the screen, we had just to touch the
part of the screen we wanted to interact with.
Voice recognition represents a similar shift in behavior, because it
eliminates the friction between the person and the tool,
and it makes the interaction more natural than ever.
The bigger picture
Artificial Intelligence (and chatbots as one possible expression of
this) is about making people’s experiences more natural. It is
reshaping our behavior and giving us the opportunity to spend
our time on tasks that matter more in our everyday lives, both
from a personal and commercial perspective. Shopbot, eBay's
chatbot, is a great example of this.

14. WE ARE SOCIAL
We Are Social is a global agency with offices in five continents
(Antarctica is a little too chilly for our liking).
We deliver world-class creative ideas with forward-thinking brands, and have fun doing it.
Our clients include adidas, Google and Netflix.
As an international team of 600+, our passion is people.
Our mission is to put social thinking at the centre of marketing.
If you'd like to speak to We Are Social about how to make innovation work for your brand,
email us at talktous@wearesocial.net