Small and medium-sized businesses are finding it difficult to compete with large tech companies due to limited resources. When developing an app, you must create a web version, an Android app, and an iOS equivalent. To work on the various platforms, you’ll most likely need a user-experience designer as well as a few developers or programmers with diverse skill sets. The entire procedure is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and costly.
With the current landscape of available digital media options, your app will struggle from the start if it lacks the ability to go “viral” and the necessary marketing budget. If you look at the Tiktok and Triller platforms, you’ll understand why I’m so pessimistic. Many of you have probably never heard of Triller. Triller was created to compete directly with Tiktok, but due to its virality, no amount of Influencer Marketing could compete with Tiktok’s rise.
Hundreds of apps are already installed on people’s mobile phones. The majority of those people can only recall the last seven apps they used. If you do not uninstall your developed app, it will most likely be hidden in some folders and forgotten forever.
That’s why we suggest creating a chatbot to replace the traditional app which will solve a few problems all at once.
Let’s go into detail.
A chatbot is, in essence, an app that interacts with the commonly used chat interface. It does not exist in and of itself, but rather as an add-on tool that can be found on your website or in a chat app such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Line, and so on. This allows us to use digital media platforms that cover a wide range of devices, eliminating the need to develop separate apps for each device.
Let’s take a look at the WhatsApp application. Users can use your WhatsApp bot wherever they use WhatsApp after you build it. Because WhatsApp is one of the most popular apps in the world, customers or clients will have bypassed the first bottleneck by opening the app.
The best part is that you don’t have to worry about operating system or browser compatibility. Users are not required to instal anything. Simply enter your phone number into their WhatsApp and they will be able to use your bot.
The UI design of chatting may change and evolve over time, but the way they communicate does not. You expect a message response when you type something. It’s as simple as that, and there’s no reason to believe things will change dramatically in the coming years.
For many years, form-based user inputs have remained unchanged. Millennials are used to filling out a lot of paper forms. Everything is now online, but it is still form-based. Nothing has changed in that regard. Even if employees try to apply for leave, you give them a form, ask them which “Leave Type” they want to apply for, and what their “Start Time” and “End Time” are.
What users really want to do is simply “apply ABC leave on XYZ date”. A form is unnecessarily complicated and overexaggerated. We know that it is necessary for documentation purposes and imagine if a simple text message can get the job done in a simple and natural way.
Navigation is another issue with traditional interface design. You may have a lot of features in your app, but you can’t put them all on the home screen. Typically, this means you’ll have to create secondary menus to hide them. The fundamental issue is that no matter how well your secondary menus are designed, the possibility of some features being buried deeply and difficult to find is unavoidable.
With a Chatbot, you don’t need to remember where the buttons are or which menu it’s hidden. Every feature is just one message away.
Emails are gradually losing their utility. My personal email is so clogged with marketing materials and useless information that cleaning it out has become a daily chore. I always unsubscribe from many marketing email lists, and I always deselect the option of receiving emails about marketing promotions to many websites. I’ve already set up a slew of filters to keep 99 percent of them out. As a Gen-Zer, I prefer to chat in order to get the information I require as soon as possible.
When it comes to designing your app, I wish you luck with your in-app push notifications because most people will simply clear the unimportant notification as soon as they can and, if you are too aggressive, they will uninstall the app entirely.
The advantage of residing within favourite chat apps is that users can see you. When you really like a girl, you go to her and ask, “Can I have your phone number?” so that when you send her a message, she will most likely read it. Nobody will inquire about an email address, but that is exactly what most businesses do.
This messaging nature also simplifies many company workflows. When something needs your approval, you don’t need to open a separate web page; simply respond in the chatbot. The counterpart will also receive a message in real time.
I conducted research on a chatbot whose use case is to replace/supplement the Employee Self Service app, which allows users to manage leave and payslip records online. The use case is straightforward, and it fits in perfectly with the bots. It is capable of dealing with common scenarios such as
The development time is significantly less than that of creating an entire mobile app, but all of the main features are achieved. In fact, some features outperform those of traditional apps. Workflow actions, for example, are easily integrated into the message, and you can send a voice message if you’re too lazy to type.
Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but it could be a good alternative when considering future app development.
As the demand increases, now is the critical time to offer a new channel to ensure revenue, smoothen the workflow process and continue to service your clients . It is never too late to get a chatbot solution live quickly to meet the current demand.
By choosing ViSight Chatbot Solutions, we can assist you in choosing and obtaining the chatbot that works for you and encompasses all the objectives that you have set for it. Please visit our webpage ‘here’ or call us at 1-800-22-2020 if you have any inquiries.
