 My short presentation is on chatbots So I'm going to be looking at chatbots in WordPress So I'm just getting these guys to set up as I also adjust my make Okay So how many of you guys have head of the 10 chatbots? Just various event? Perfect So since all of you guys know, I think we can call it a day Maybe we can just have a discussion instead So Chatbots in short is coming from chat robot which also refer to what we call virtual customer assistance So that's your customer assistant but in the form of a robot it's just a machine or even a system that mimics human interactions I think that's the simplest definition that I can use for now So in Zim, we've got a couple of bots that already are on the market I don't want to make this a one-man presentation I just want us to have that conversation Can you just mention a few that you know? Just one Yes Oh, Batsi The Stuart Bank bot, yes And after Batsi, I hope that everyone else stopped It was only Batsi Batsi cheta cheta Okay, so I think it was Batsi who made a lot of noise first in Zim and they had a lot of media reviews and because they were first in the space they got a lot of mailage But there were other bots that were in existence way before Batsi You know there's KuliBots where you can reach out to your Zesa using WhatsApp And then FBC at one point wanted to introduce their own version of Batsi and they referred to it as chiido Shubi chiido, shupo, chiido I know one thing that you can pick from all these names is that they are taking a person, isn't it? And the reason why bots have to take a person is because they have to identify with a human being If I know I'm talking to a robot then automatically some people feel offended you know that these people would not have a one-on-one you know, in exchange with me they would rather assign a bot to attend to my queries especially when you're in the financial sector So at one point when I was at one of the banks there were a lot of queries that would come through people wanting to know why their balances were disappearing and some would call saying why didn't I get an SMS for my transaction And one of the biggest setbacks was that you have three maybe customer assistants at your call center and you've got a queue of say 50 people at one point in time and because you're all in a queue you get the general statement your call is important to us please hold on whilst we assign you to a customer assistant and you wait for 30 minutes and then after 30 minutes sometimes you run out of air time and then you have to go back and look for air time or the call drops and that is very frustrating That's what chatbots come in now because you no longer want to have you're going to disappoint your customers the whole idea is to have your customers interested and to retain them as well It's all about customer satisfaction Inasmuch you're blogging inasmuch as you're selling online what you also want to do is to retain your customers maintain that customer base and keep them interested in your products and you can only do that once you employ automated systems there is still a gap okay let me just fix this I think I'm already finishing my presentation without people seeing what I'm talking about so if I may have your indulgence thank you I would like to thank Batsi, the bot for assisting us we now have the presentation okay thank you okay so just a brief background on where we are coming from according to the business insider 85% of all conversations online are assumed to be without human intervention by the year 2020 and you know what that means that means if you are in customer services if you are a core center agent you are at risk of being replaced by a robot and that's the ugly truth you know if you have noticed we are moving from print to digital in fact we are already in the transition and if you want to stick to what you know and say print has been our baby since time immemorial you remain behind and robots will take over it reminds me of Star Wars so remember move with the trend isn't it join the band with them and because of that it then means we also as wedpress need to invest in AI even on our websites we also need to employ an element of artificial intelligence it can be through these chatbots that I'm referring to by the way chatbots can be conversational or they can be intelligent chatbots by intelligent I mean they can learn what you want them to know and then they can adjust according to the questions that are being posed to them this is what some of the chatbot plugins that I'm going to mention to you I can do for you and then bringing it back to Zim you find that in 2017 the NCSI was lunged in Zimbabwe and it said that most of the companies had customers that way you know not happy because of the way they had to wait for information for instance how many of you guys have had a situation when you wanted to recharge your ZESA meter and maybe you ran out of power but you don't know how to do it the meter is dead you don't have batteries and you have to call to ZESA to get an agent to help you and then they tell you wait let me look for a technician to assist you when you could have just plugged in your meter on the kuka mains plug and then you can recharge all that information you could have got in from an FAQ isn't it but because you don't have it at your disposal you literally had to go through an agent and some of these people are not as friendly as our lovely chatbots so why bother dealing with humans when we can have people who are not going to waste our time let's go through the chatbots path right so why chatbots? obviously they are cheap the previous speaker mentioned that WordPress is very cheap and because we are still dealing with WordPress plugins it means that you're going to save a lot of money by employing chatbots instead of a human being who wants the 18th check every time again they want even benefits chatbots are there for life once you install them all you need to do is just continue training them isn't it so instead of employing chipot the real human just employ chipot the bot for less money then like I said all the time we are doing the same thing over and over again it's repetitive there are times when you just need to have that in a bot let the bot do it for us so we are automating our systems most of the banks in Zim right now are having that problem because they are doing routine jobs routine work that could have been done by a bot but because they don't want to employ bots they continue employing people and you know instead of realizing profits you realize loss and then it's also like I said it's quite embarrassing that you have to wait for someone who is attending to someone else to get help with chatbots one chatbot can be talking to all of you at the same time now that's value for money instead of you having to wait for the real chipot who is talking to John and then you are number five from the queue just let the chipot do the talking for all of you guys and then also in terms of user experience I think the previous speaker once said content is now king and because content is now king most people are aligning themselves with social media platforms and most of the conversations are happening on social media platforms and because of that you need to have a setup way people think they are doing social whereas they are actually doing their transactions I can be doing my accounts in a bot but I would not realize that as long as it's social I don't know if you get what I mean it's not too formal have you ever been to a bank and you want to request for a what do you call that the statement and then they give you this funny face and they ask you when was the last time you came to the bank who is the branch manager at ETC that is quite stressing and because of that you can just use a bot which acts like a human and doesn't waste your time okay and then the last thing is there have been advances in AI like I said big data is the game of the day artificial intelligence, big data and your internet of things everything is now integrated and because artificial intelligence you know there is now augmented reality that is soon to come to also Africa Facebook introduced I think spaces, Facebook spaces and because of that we also need to tap into that technology through our WordPress blogs so we mentioned the examples of the local chatbots there was a promotion that was run by SHIELD where they asked people to enter their details via WhatsApp but they were actually talking to a bot not a person and all the registrants that registered on that bot managed to interface with the bot which was a good way of saving money that whole promotion was done at a less cost than if we had engaged a human being so we've got chat building platforms that you, as the WordPress can also tap into you've got your motion AI you've got your IBM Watson I personally like IBM Watson and Dialogflow as well as HelloTas all these platforms are already there on the internet you can look into them and IBM Watson also has a course that you can take just to learn how to use the chatbots so they can give you an outline and you can use you can learn how to do it at your own pace and then also IBM Watson has a plugin that you can plug into WordPress you can then use that plugin to collect data to do servers and even to automate your FAQs so the most popular ones are ChatFuel, Watson and Dialogflow it's not on this one so let's look at the chatbot plugins since we are at a WordPress conference let's look at the actual plugins that you can use to employ chatbots in your WordPress website so there is one that is known as IBM Watson Conversation how many of you guys know the IBM Watson framework? perfect perfect when people know their stuff they raise their hands like Superman yes that's good so this is one robust system and if you have time look into it to serve your life it will really go a long way believe you me you can create your own chatbots in Watson at some point IBM was offering scholarships to people in Africa to undertake 100 development bot development and we should also be looking out for those platforms they really help it's not really techy it's what you and I can do the layperson under them right we move to the next one which is virtual spirits chatbots from the name virtual spirits for those who are religious thank God it's a paid chatbot so you are safe so virtual spirits is all good because it also covers other languages apart from English so if you want to do chatbots that can be understood by someone who is in Portugal of France then this is the one for you and then we can move on to the next one which is a a free live chat this one now is a 24-7 automated chatbot that can collect information when you are not online and then it can then send you via the database or even as an export file you can do a CSV of that and then you can later on call your people if you want you can even complete all the conversations within the bots all you just need to do is follow what was happening so this will help you and then we've got the WP chatbot for Facebook Messenger so this one is doping the sense that you are running the chatbot in your WordPress site but it then pushes your notifications to your Facebook Messenger for bloggers I would suggest you use this one why? because if you post something you don't necessarily have to go to Facebook and say I've posted something this can push that content to your Facebook and then we've got WuBot for those who are doing e-commerce this is a bot that was specifically designed to work with your WuCommerce you know your WuCommerce so if you've got a WuCommerce or a Shopify store you can use this one it will help you it can even suggest the products that a person can buy when they type specific keywords remember with chatbots you can also train your chatbot to behave in a certain way all you need to do is write a few questions and then respond to the questions and then the chatbot can learn through those questions okay and then we've got chatx and we also have collect.chats and right I think for now you can use those ones now we have to talk about the do's and don'ts they are important the do's and don'ts are important in the sense that there are a lot of people who think that once you have a chatbot then everything is okay let me give this analogy if you have a chatbot it's like someone who has gotten married and then they think everything is now rosy if you don't work on that marriage it can actually be your downfall so remember chatbots are bots at one point they should be that human element isn't it so always make sure that if you are employing a chatbot a person can identify with that that chatbot is if they are talking to an actual individual for instance this is your intro hello my name is Chido how can I be of help to you that's more conversational isn't it don't be like this to infinity and beyond you know it won't help keep it human isn't it and then the most corporate companies they make the mistake of putting a lot of corporate jargon so if you want the basic plan for our insurance we need you to have done A, B and C that is too formal and remember we are trying to keep it fun and interactive once you do that just chasing me away and keep the the chats short don't give me a paragraph that's what I ran away from your website so don't give me a like chat as to why I need to talk to you so keep it short and like I said we have to keep give the bots a persona that is very important they need to know they are talking to someone that's why Batsi was giving that name so that people can identify with a name right and then it is sometimes easier to just use what are known as batons batons in sense you are guiding the user to follow through what you want them to click on instead of them having to go on a wide goose chest that will take them more time and then the don'ts never use chatbots to handle sensitive information I'm using never why because in this age of digital privacy where a lot of emphasis is on privacy if by chance I send my details to a chatbot and I leave my laptop unattended and someone that can view what I have done then I made a risk you know now there is card cloning so if I was using Wubot for instance and I left my card details you know right you can also you should never leave users hanging for instance hello how can I help you and then you say I want to know about A, B and C then you don't respond that's it the chatbot doesn't know it gets stuck and then the user is still waiting for your response never do that with social media you will be massacred they will take screenshots and then they will post and then some of us like those in the web press group will take screenshots share within the group take it outside the group share within another group so that you get the full impact of what you have done anyway don't use long responses and don't be ambiguous either basically that's that's chatbots in a waitress I think that would be my presentation for today thank you ladies and gentlemen