About 39.5% of mobile phone internet users in the Middle East and Africa used messaging apps to communicate by 2015. This figure is expected to increase to 42.9% in 2019. Instant messaging is becoming more popular as a means of communicating in the world and Nigeria is a part of that movement.
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Businesses in Nigeria are always looking for ways, they can conveniently use these messaging apps to boost their business without stressing themselves. A Customer service person no matter how calm and calculated is prone to letting their emotions get the best out of them.
Brands then have to find solutions using a technology that is free of human emotions and personality but is still capable of performing hitch-free without being operated by a human being. In a bid to solve this problem, Brands began to adopt chatbots.
A chatbot is a computer program or artificial intelligence which conducts a conversation through audio or texts. In April 2016, Facebook started allowing businesses to deliver automated customer support, e-commerce guidance, content, and interactive experiences through chatbots.
Several Nigerian brands are now using chatbots for customer support because it is an effective way for brands to monitor customer data, gain insights, improve customer service, cost savings, lead generation, and customer engagement. Chatbots works in two ways:
- User request analysis: This is the first task that a chatbot performs. It analyzes the user’s request to ascertain the user’s intent and to extract relevant points.
- Returning the response: The chatbot will provide the most appropriate answer. This answer might be generically and predefined text, a text retrieved from a knowledge base that contains different answers; a contextualized piece of information based on data the user has provided, data stored in enterprise systems, the result of an action that the chatbot performed by interacting with one or more backend application and a disambiguating question that helps the chatbot to correctly understand the user’s request.
Chatbot applications simplify interactions between people and services, improving customer experience. At the same time, they offer brands new opportunities to improve the customer’s engagement process and functional efficiency by reducing the cost of customer service.
To be successful, a chatbot solution should be able to effectively perform both of these tasks. Human support plays a key role here: Regardless of the kind of approach and the platform, human intervention is crucial in configuring, training, and optimizing the chatbot system.
Also, because chatbots are mostly text-based, they can attend to more than one customer at a time and a fast pace without mixing things up. Also, chatbots are always in a good mood, unlike humans that can be overwhelmed by workload or personal issues which in turn affect customer satisfaction. Chatbots are used by Nigerian brands in areas such as finance, education, health, and Romance. Notable chatbots used by brands in Nigeria are:
Leo: This is a digital assistant introduced by the United Bank for Africa in Nigeria. It is a mobile banking chatting platform that is used for financial transactions such as paying bills, checking balances instant responses, football updates, and other entertainments in different languages on the social media platforms to which they were already used. Leo chat banker is currently on Facebook and WhatsApp.
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Ada: This is a highly powered artificial intelligence chatbot introduced by Diamond Bank (Now Access Bank) for online banking. It provides a human-like form of interaction with customers.
Sami: This is an artificial intelligence chat in Nigeria. It is a powered digital assistant is the Stanbic IBTC Bank chatbot. It renders artificial intelligence-powered conversations and banking services to customers.
Aajoh: is one of the Nigerian startups in the Nigerian health sector. It was founded by Simi Adejumo, Zuby Onwuta, Vikas Ramachndra, Ike llochonwu, and Charles Ademola. They collectively came up with this application that uses artificial intelligence in diagnosing the medical condition of patients. Aajoh is being trained with symptoms of different health-related issues/ diseases, Aajoh could correctly predict a disease if fed with a new list of symptoms brought by new patients.
Ubenwa: This is an indigenous Igbo name that means a baby’s cry. It is an amazing artificial intelligence system that analyzes the frequency and amplitude patterns in a newborn baby’s cry to dictate and predict whether the baby’s cry has symptoms of baby Asphyxia. Baby Asphyxia is the third highest killer of babies, especially during birth. It occurs mostly when a baby did not receive enough oxygen before, during, or after birth. The founder of Ubenwa, Mr Charlse Onu has finally given hope to newborn babies, the company Ubenwa is still currently conducting more trials at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital in Nigeria.
Touchbl: This is a Visual or image recognition artificial intelligence application software developed in Nigeria by Gabriel Eze, Mohamed Farah, peter Chibunna, and Chukwuemeka Ihedoro. This application gives its users more information on the pictures of things they see on the app, by just touching on any picture of interest on the app. When the picture of interest is touched by the user, the touchbl app provides predictive information about what has been touched, like the colour of the cloth, the name of the cloth, and the possible price of that cloth. This application has been highly welcomed by the Nigerian fashion industry.
Lara. ng: is a powerful artificial intelligence system that assists its users to get from one place to another via step-by-step description of direction as well as predicting an estimated amount of transport fare at each point of your journey. This was founded by Sam Odeloye, Nnamdi Nwanze, and Ladi Ojora. Lara was designed by collecting, sorting, and systematically arranging transport-related data.
SimbiBot: This is an interactive learning assistant on the journey to prepare students for Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and Post UTME. The bot also assists students in making career choices.
Hyper cv: This application helps people create resumes with many templates to choose from. CV creations have become much easier with this chatbot.
The cost of internet data remains something to contend with in Nigeria as these chatbots can’t function without an internet connection. Despite this, having access to these Chatbots means that customers will get everything information needed at all times.
One of the most insightful things is that major telecom companies in Nigeria offer free daily access to some messaging apps( airtel). They also offer pocket-friendly data plans which imply that users can have access to customer services without breaking the bank. Chatbots would have more important roles to play in our daily lives in years to come, thus, the need for Nigerian businesses to take proper advantage of this enormous potential to better serve their customers while also winning over new ones. Chatbots are the future of customer service and more Nigerian brands should tap into this technology so as to be able to offer round the clock service to customers.
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This article was first published on 22nd January 2022
eyimegwu-ekene
I am an accomplished content creator and recently delved into technical writing. I enjoy using my skills to contribute to the exciting technological advances and create awareness of evolving technological trends in Nigeria.
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