Chatbots in Russia: Overview of Services

From the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Accenture research, chatbots are growing rapidly in popularity and in 2020 the market volume reached 1.5 billion rubles. Experts assume that every year the indicators will increase by at least 30%.

A chatbot as a virtual "employee" has shown and is showing itself super efficiently: it optimizes resources while the processing client requests, creates competent management and saves working time. Positive effect is "plain to see"! The sooner a customer is satisfied, the higher the level of loyalty of the company will be.

What is a Chatbot and Who Creates It in Russia?

In fact, a chatbot is an artificial intelligence system with a specific algorithm for tasks aimed at automation of work processes. Accordingly, in order to connect such a virtual "employee" to the company, you need to choose a "workplace" for it - a platform that combines all corporate services (social media, messengers, etc.).

At least, this is convenient, since this space gathers all necessary information, statistics and additional functions in one place. A chatbot integrates into a platform, working with client requests according to specified algorithms. In case if the algorithm is not suitable for solving a specific task, the bot transfers a client to a "live" employee.

Of course, most of the errors associated with the incorrect operation of chatbots arise from incorrect algorithms on the platform. Therefore, we highly recommend that you entrust the creation of a "virtual assistant" to professionals in order to avoid negative reviews and risks of losing customers.

Having analyzed the market, RMAA experts have prepared an overview of the most popular chatbots in Russia, which differ in basic functionality.

Nanosemantics

Nanosemantics is an operational chatbot for solving simple tasks with the ability to integrate into many channels (social networking sites, messengers, mobile applications, a widget on the website, Skype).

It should be mentioned that the company is one of the first ones in Russia that has started to develop artificial intelligence since 1997. Over this time the platform has significantly expanded its functionality which enables a chatbot to "speak" 14 languages and "work" under 3,000 ready-made dialogue-scenarios with users.

The leading clients of Nanosemantics are mainly large companies: VTB, Sber, Beeline, HeadHunter, BMW. This can be explained by the fact that, as a rule, such brands have many simple queries of the same type, so they need a bot to promptly solve simple tasks on various channels - from social media sites to a widget on the company's website.

LiveTex

LiveTex offers companies a neural network and as many as 3 chatbots of different functionality: a "universal fighter" for solving simple tasks, a bot for e-mail newsletters, as well as a more complex intelligence that is able to imitate the speech of a "human being" and keep up a conversation with a client.

The main advantage of the platform is that you can try all the options in operation and estimate efficiency of each one thanks to the convenient network integration.

However, there is also a significant disadvantage: bots "work" on social media sites (VKontakte), messengers (Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber) and Skype, but you will not be able to implement them on site as a "virtual assistant". Therefore, the LiveTex platform is perfect for solving more complicated online retail tasks, but it may not be able to process a huge number of requests as fast as a bot from Nanosemantics.

Electra.AI

Electra.Al bot knows Russian at the level of native speakers - the achievement was awarded with the prize of the 3rd All-Russian Turing test, during which many participants were unable to recognize the bot, thinking that they were communicating with a real conversation partner. What's more, a significant advantage of Electra.Al is considered to be the integration of the bot into SMS, Slack, Gmail and Skype, as well as into Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber, Twitter and Instagram.

Carrot Quest

And Carrot Quest offers companies a "personalized" bot that can communicate with a client based on the following data: how the client got to the site, his activity / purchases + personal information. In addition, such a "virtual assistant" is able to place an order outside working hours and hand it over to an employee for further implementation.

However, it is rather difficult to create such chatbots because of enormous number of algorithms for each assistant. In spite of this factor, a "personal" bot will be able not only increase the level of loyalty of standing clients, but also attract a new audience by its "awareness" how to respond to a specific user.

The main integration channels are a site widget, messengers - Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber, social media site - VKontakte + Zoom and Slack.

A Universal Assistant for any Business

Of course, it is no longer relevant to say that a chatbot is suitable only for large companies engaged in online retail or the financial sector, as it was at the beginning of 2018. Artificial intelligence has "penetrated" into all spheres and successfully fulfills its functions in the tourism sector, beauty industry and even in the online gaming world.

For example, Nanosemantics offers companies a chatbot to support travelers, which is able to book tickets and hotels, build travel routes and advise customers of interesting places to visit. One of the successful platform cases is A friendly chatbot Sam (FCM Travel Solutions) with a built-in reminder system. According to satisfied customers, it was this function of Sam that "saved" many tourists from being late for a plane, "prepared" for bad weather, etc. Of course, the most of the clients "got back" to the company in time of their holidays due to the convenient bot service.

Besides, in 2021, the Booking press service claimed that chatbots successfully fulfill the requests of 30% of English-speaking users. And according to Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2021, there have been 11 times more chatbots in the tourism sector over 4 years, they are much smarter than their analogues and able to respond competently to about 85% of customer requests.

Chatbots from the gaming industry not only keep up with their "colleagues" in tourism, but also start to outpace them. In fact, integrating a "virtual assistant" into the game is much easier. Firstly, gamers are more loyal to notifications from bots rather than, for example, bank customers who are used to calls from support service operators. Secondly, game developers, as a rule, set quite simple tasks: to find new gamers, optimize gameplay and build a community in social networks and messengers. Almost any bot platform with a wide range of integration channels is suitable for these purposes.

But this is only "one side of the coin".

In spite of the simplified tasks that the game bot faces, we should not forget that online games themselves are getting more "complex" every year and the bot, accordingly, shall meet these parameters. Special attention should be given to voice-controlled games and sophisticated graphics for smart screens that are growing in popularity all over the world. It should be understood that for such "software" you will need a bot that, at least, can solve not only simple tasks, but also is able to "talk" with gamers "in their language", such as, for example, the LiveTex complex intelligence or Carrot Quest "personalized" virtual assistant.

Preparing for a Chatbot Implementation is a Serious Matter!

In any case, in whatever sphere your business develops, the issue of creating a chatbot and competent optimization of work processes will somehow appear in the list of important tasks of the company. In practice, this goal does not look as simple as it seems at first glance.

Along with selecting a bot platform and creating competent operation algorithms for artificial intelligence, you should pay attention to the marketing strategy for this task.

• What is the chatbot for?
• What purposes shall it achieve?
• What clients shall it "talk" to and what language shall it speak?
• What channels is it needed to integrate a chatbot operation on?
• How to analyze the results of this integration to increase loyalty of users?

If you are not ready to go into these matters and do not have clear insight which artificial intelligence system is best suited for your business, entrust this task to experts of the RMMA marketing agency.

The faster you integrate the "virtual assistant" into the company's work, the better, faster and efficiently your service will become.

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