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They are called Lola, Vicente, María or José Luis. Some wear casual clothes, others wear executive attire and some attend their requests dressed as if they were going to serve a mojito or a cold beer in a summer beach bar.
Beyond their appearance, they are the most formed generation in the last three decades. Their specialization allows them to answer in the blink of an eye almost 38,000 questions with a very high success rate . They also work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without a minimum approved remuneration or a collective agreement that regulates their activity.
As you have understood at this point in the article, we are not talking about human workers but about chatbots. They are the new Siri or Alexa of white label for companies and SMEs that improve their competitiveness in the market thanks to artificial intelligence (AI).
These virtual robots automate routine and ungrateful tasks in business. Classic efforts that so far many employees solve by telephone or exchanging hundreds of emails, one by one, with clients or colleagues. Actions that may go unnoticed, but ballast the work activity in each day.
This year 25% of American companies will use virtual assistants to deal with their customers
Gartner ReportAccording to a report by Gartner, which is based in Stamford (USA), 25% of all these operations in American companies this year 2020 will be carried out with virtual assistants. A fact that is very interesting since only three campaigns ago this technology was used by a scarce 2% of companies.
The same study also highlights that 30% of the income of US firms will arrive in the coming months through this open business path from the digital world. Mainly, in sectors such as retail , healthcare or banking.
Perhaps you have already talked or written with some of these quasi-perfect workers on a website or through social networks such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram or Twitter.
They are the other side, always smiling everything is said in passing, from firms such as H&M , Telepizza , Sephora , BBVA or El Corte Inglés , among others. One recommends the clothes that best suit your tastes, another orders your favorite food order and another tries to explain how to save a little more each month.
In companies, and looking in doors, this digital transformation with chatbots is also a very useful tool to improve production processes. The virtual assistants already organize work shifts , as is currently the case at the University Hospital Complex of A Coruña (CHUAC), or attend to the claims of the clients of the AXA insurance company in Spain. They can report public administration protocols and even facilitate the selection of employees to human resources teams.
1MillionBot: manufacturing chatbots 'made in Spain'
One of the pioneer startups in this area in Spain is 1MillionBot. With the former rector of the University of Alicante Andrés Pedreño at the helm, the young company won last year a round of 1.5 million euros of financing to successfully complete different virtual assistant projects. They are based in the old estate of Torre Juana de Alicante.
Among its portfolio clients include entities such as Bankia , the University of Murcia , the writer Mario Vargas Llosa or the Alicante restaurant El Portal . A case of the latter of reference for the catering sector, recently cited by Forbes magazine, whose assistant Eli answers more than 200 questions to his future guests before arriving at the premises. It also allows you to reserve a table or choose the client's favorite wine when connected to the establishment's CRM.
"The national market has to become more aware of the importance of artificial intelligence in companies. It is a sector that will grow until 2022 , practically all large and small companies will have this service ... Chatbots are linked to the customer acquisition and are data generators. This part is very important in companies because in a second phase they have to apply that quality data , "adds Pedreño.
But how do we react to a chatbot? 30% of people in their first interaction with a chatbot usually insult or make an exorbitant sexual proposal. They perform it as a proof of concept of the man against the machine. Therefore, it is very important in this phase that the chatbot be won to the user. That has been understood by the technology giants with their Siri or Alexa equipment. It is an issue that is not yet 100% resolved, but our technology responds correctly in 90% of cases. - Better with name and figure of man or woman? If it is a woman we interact 30% more, although from Unesco they recommend that both female and male figures be used in chatbots so that there is no gender discrimination. There are all kinds of cases, a dental clinic has increased interactions with its clients by 18% thanks to its male assistant named Felipe.If she is a woman we interact 30% more, although from Unesco they recommend using both genders equally
Andrés Pedreño (1MillionBot)1millionBot has on its board of directors several faces known as the economist José Carlos Díez , the Finnish expert Lasse Rouhiainen , the manager Remigio Iglesias (former Santander) or the current advisor of Universia, José Antonio Villasante.
"The engineers are very good at manufacturing software , but they also need the help of linguists, multidisciplinary teams with advertising and marketing experts, journalists, ... They are areas for the image and corporate style to work based on the manuals of each company ", also highlights the honorary doctorate from the University of Nottingham Trent (United Kingdom).
According to the professor, business chatbots must be brilliant, with a language of empathy, with a certain Marketinian cut and contained attitude. But what investment do these smarty professionals suppose? "From hundreds of euros per month if they are only conversational and six-digit amounts if they execute internal actions of a company such as a bank," he says.
36 years of the first virtual assistant
Chatbots are now a trend among the actions to be taken to digitize companies, but they are not really a new technology. The first virtual assistant was developed at MIT in 1964 for the IBM 7094 model by Professor Joseph Weizanbaum . Eliza, as the project was baptized, answered different questions representing the figure of a psychiatrist.
Years later another version of the conversational robot would arrive within the video game TinyMud (1989). Although perhaps the first ones to reach a certain reputation, and that are still invoked by the most veteran of the office, were the Alice (1995) or Clippy projects of Microsoft Office (1997).
Then they landed Siri and Watson (2011) who made their way to Alexa (2014) and Google Assistant (2016). But also on the road to success there were loud failures like the Microsoft Chatbot Tay three years ago.
As I began conversations, I responded in a more xenophobic and sexist way that included loud insults. The company founded by Bill Gates had to erase all the offensive messages and withdrew the chatbot from the market 72 hours after its launch.
Connected by WhatsApp and voice
Chatbot Chocolate is a Madrid company focused on multi-conversational technology with clients in Spain and Latin America. Since 2017 he has carried out projects with Inditex or Samsung , but also for public companies such as MetroSevilla and Turismo Canarias. During this time he has designed more than 50 chatbots with different profiles and services.
"It is thought that the machine does more magic than it is. There is a certain IT bubble and everything is not gold that glitters. We bet on WhatsApp chatbots because we always carry the mobile phone by hand and it is easy to use with a number of phone. It is very difficult for companies to download an application if you are not a bank or an airline, "says Cadiz engineer Ángel Hernández.
WhatsApp was officially born in 2009, but five years later it went to Facebook after being acquired for 19,000 million dollars. However, until the middle of last year a chatbot could not yet be programmed in this social network . "The channel is more important than technology. In 2020 it will grow, it will be the beginning of the great possibilities of chatbots. Today with Iberia you can check in by WhatsApp, but you still can't buy the ticket," adds Hernández.
The alternative to mobile writing is undoubtedly the voice. Javier Campos Berga of the Alfatec technology company knows it well . This Valencian engineer in a few days will travel to Amazon's headquarters in Seattle (USA) to be one of the finalists of the last application contest in Spanish for Alexa . His skill , as they are called voice apps, informs the expiration date of the products in the home refrigerator to avoid throwing food in the trash.
"I developed it when I was on vacation and then my coworkers helped me. I lived in an apartment with more people, but we didn't have control of the food in the fridge . It often got bad for us. The application reminds you of the products that before they break down and even when you opened them, "says Campos.
More than 1,000 engineers from around the world with 200 projects participated in this edition of the Alexa skills awards. "Every time we write less on the mobile, but we dictate more because voice recognition is better," he adds.
Technology is already in our fridge. But where is our privacy? "It is a very important issue, I think we will advance to a hybrid system . Some questions you ask the system will go to the cloud and others will remain inside the home, the hospital or the company. There will be information that will be consulted on the internet and another to stay on the servers, "he concludes.
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