There has been a lot of interest in Bots over the past 18 months, and like many new technologies, there’s been a lot of hype. How will Bots replace current user experiences, what new applications are around the corner? How can Bots be used in the Enterprise?
To date, most of the talk on Bots within the enterprise has been about Digital Assistants. Generally, this means using Bots to find information; “Hey Jeeves, where is the company travel handbook”.
While most of us have dreamed of robot slaves to help us achieve more while doing as little as possible, the reality is there is a significant learning curve to successfully interacting with Bots. By the time I learn how to communicate with Jeeves and ask the right question, I could have retrieved the information myself.
The other issue for Digital Assistant Bots is that in most enterprises, only a small subset of employees use messaging tools such as Skype, Teams or Slack. Email is still by far the dominate communication method within business. This will certainly change over time but Email is here for a long time and Bots need to embrace that.
At Hyperfish we discovered an alternative way to use Bots to retrieve information from people.
Hyperfish helps organizations ensure employee profile information is complete and up to date. Hyperfish understands what’s missing and incorrect within a person’s profile information, our Bot (Hyperbot) then reaches out to the end users to get the information completed. If users don’t respond the HyperBot reminds them and coaches them through the process.
Our HyperBot effectively replaces the role of a person asking a person to complete a task and ensure they do it with reminders and careful coaching. Early on after the release of HyperFish, we were blown away by how well this worked. Typically, customers saw that at least half of their organization responded to the Bot within the first two weeks of implementation.
The other thing we learned at Hyperfish is that Email is a great channel for Bots to communicate. Most of the focus to date is around Bots across messaging platforms such as Skype or Slack, but Email is also a great channel for Bots to operate. Everyone in the organization uses email, so Bots are far more likely to succeed at getting information in the enterprise by using email.
Its still early days for enterprise Bots, but the early signs are very encouraging.