Bots as a New Customer Interface and Operating System

(Chat)Bots: Not a New Subject—What Is New?

Bot, find me the best price on that CD, get flowers for my mom, keep me

posted on the latest developments in Mozambique.

—Andrew Leonard (1996)

The topic of bots is new. Back in 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum developed with

ELIZA a computer program that demonstrated the possibilities of communication between a human and a computer via natural language. When

replying, the machine took on the role of a psychotherapist, worked on the

basis of a structured dictionary and looked for keywords in the entered text.

Even if this bot model as a psychotherapist only celebrated questionable success, such bots of the first generation with a firmly predefined direction of

dialogue and keyword controlled are still used in many places.

Especially in the past two years, bots have been experiencing a new quality and significance due to the fast developments of artificial intelligence,

platforms, communication devices and speech recognition so that the unfulfilled wish of Andrew Leonard in 1966 can finally become reality.

Communication and interaction are increasingly controlled and determined via algorithms. Bots and messaging systems are being hotly debated

and frequently have to serve as the mega trends of the years to come. The focus is primarily on communication interfaces that bring along efficiency

and convenience advantages as the next logical level of evolution. But it is

about way more than “Alex, order me a pizza please” or “Dear service bot,

how can I change my flight?”

The popularity of messaging and bot systems is increasing constantly.

Since 2015, more people have been using applications (apps) for communications than social networks. That is almost three billion people worldwide

every day. In Europa and in the USA, the platforms WhatsApp (approx.

one billion people) and Facebook Messenger (900 million) are mainly used,

whereby in Asia, WeChat (700 million) and Line (215 million) dominate.

Two of the most significant companies of today, Microsoft and Facebook,

announced in the spring of 2016 that will be focusing on bots in the

future. Microsoft, whose CEO Satya Nadella describes bots as “the next

big thing”, is said to be fully concentrated on the company-own personal

assistant Cortana in 2020 according to an analysis by the IT research institute Gartner. Instead of the current heavyweight Windows, robots and chat

platforms are to move into the focus of Microsoft’s strategy. All in all, the

Gartner Institute expects that in 2020, 40 percentage of all mobile interactions will be controlled by bots (Gartner 2015).

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