Are we on the verge of anoth­er major shift where apps are replaced by bots? We could be. Many mar­ket­ing experts say con­sumer behav­ior is forc­ing brands to think about how to pro­vide bet­ter user expe­ri­ences by adding bots to the mar­ket­ing mix.

“Just like the web and app par­a­digm shifts before, every busi­ness and brand will have to build bots,” said Beerud Sheth, CEO of smart mes­sag­ing plat­form Gup­shup. “The risk of not doing bots out­weighs the risk of get­ting start­ed. Of course, there’s a lot of learn­ing and iter­a­tion involved, along with speed bumps along the way. But the time to get start­ed is yes­ter­day.” Here’s a clos­er look at what bots are, how con­sumers use them and what’s dri­ving this alleged sea change.

What Are Bots?

Bots are soft­ware pro­grams that can send and receive mes­sages – and rep­re­sent the fourth major par­a­digm shift in con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy after desk­top clients, web­sites, and apps, Sheth explained. But bots are noth­ing new to the tech scene. In fact, Richard Smullen, CEO of mobile mes­sag­ing app Pypestream, said an ear­ly ver­sion of bots was an inter­ac­tive voice response line in which con­sumers dialed in to a call cen­ter and chose from a menu of options.

“The response you’re get­ting – that in essence is a bot,” Smullen said. “It’s just a very broad term. There’s a lot of jar­gon now and a lot of hype – I’d say we’re at the top of the bot hype curve, which hap­pened overnight. “There’s a mis­con­cep­tion about AI, machine learn­ing and nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing bots and that this analy­sis is like sen­ti­ment analy­sis,” he said. “Bots are not a new con­cept at all. If you’ve called a call cen­ter and got­ten a robot­ic response or emailed a busi­ness and got­ten an autore­sponse – those are forms of bots.” For his part, Ben Kosin­s­ki, head of the Col­lab­o­ra­to­ry, the inno­va­tion unit at mar­ket­ing agency iCross­ing, defined bots as “AI that can com­ple­ment or mim­ic human inter­ac­tions with brands” and not­ed the main pur­pose is “to pro­vide one-on-one yet scal­able con­ver­sa­tions.”

The bonus, he not­ed, is that bots elim­i­nate the need for con­sumers to wait on hold for cus­tomer ser­vice reps or to search a brand’s FAQs. “These tasks are con­stant­ly repeat­ed and there are only a set num­ber of out­comes,” Kosin­s­ki said. “AI and bots can now replace fric­tion and inef­fi­cien­cy by help­ing to con­nect [brands and con­sumers] more effi­cient­ly.” Fur­ther, Chris Teso, CEO of social media mar­ket­ing firm Chirpi­fy, said bots fit with­in the cat­e­go­ry of “con­ver­sa­tion­al com­merce,” which he defined as “any short- or long-form dia­log between a con­sumer and a brand or ser­vice provider” that can be “con­duct­ed by a bot or a per­son.” Con­sumers like­ly inter­act with bots more than they real­ize on a day-to-day basis, accord­ing to Eddie Fran­cis, research direc­tor at mar­ket research agency Alter Agents. This can take the form of ask­ing Siri, “Who won the Dodgers game?” or telling Alexa, “Order more paper tow­els.” These bots should also not to be con­fused with fraud­u­lent tech­nolo­gies that dri­ve non-human traf­fic, added Adam Cohen-Aslatei, senior direc­tor of mar­ket­ing at adver­tis­ing com­pa­ny Jun Group.

How Do Bots Work?

Con­sumers can access bots in one of three ways:

1. Via Chat

The aver­age con­sumer is most like­ly to encounter a bot via a chat app like Face­book Mes­sen­ger, WeChat, Slack or Kik, or even a text mes­sage, accord­ing to Sheth. “Chat­ting with bots is almost the same as chat­ting with friends on any mes­sag­ing app. To chat with a human friend, you search a name, which appears from the local con­tact book, and start a con­ver­sa­tion. To chat with a bot, you search a name, which appears from the glob­al address book, and start con­ver­sa­tion,” he said. “The expe­ri­ence in both these cas­es is iden­ti­cal and in many cas­es you will not know, nor care, whether the enti­ty on the oth­er side is a per­son or a pro­gram.” This lat­ter inter­ac­tion is applic­a­ble to a range of brand sce­nar­ios, from tex­ting a menu bot from a restau­rant for dai­ly spe­cials to chat­ting with an air­line bot to make a change to an upcom­ing flight.

2. Via Bot Shops

Bots have user names on var­i­ous plat­forms, which they are active­ly pro­mot­ing via social chan­nels, said Paul Gray, direc­tor of plat­form ser­vices at chat net­work Kik. Those plat­forms include Kik, which just launched a Bot Shop, or what it called “a place to find bots to chat with in Kik.” In fact, Rod McLeod, PR Guy at Kik, said con­sumers can go direct­ly to the Kik Bot Shop and search for a desired bot in order to begin chat­ting, not­ing “all bots are opt-in, mean­ing that a bot can nev­er start a con­ver­sa­tion with you – a user has to ini­ti­ate the con­ver­sa­tion.” Face­book recent­ly opened up Mes­sen­ger to allow brands to cre­ate bots to inter­act with con­sumers via its chat plat­form and was report­ed­ly on the verge of launch­ing its own bot store – with Digi­day even call­ing bot stores the new app stores.

3. Via Codes

Con­sumers can also use codes like Kik Codes, which are sim­i­lar to QR codes in that con­sumers can scan them to ini­ti­ate con­ver­sa­tions, Gray said. Face­book Mes­sen­ger also uses these scannable codes, which Kosinksi said allows con­sumers to eas­i­ly add brands to their address books. So, for instance, an air­line could dis­play this code through­out its ter­mi­nals and in-flight mag­a­zines to make it easy for pas­sen­gers to find and com­mu­ni­cate with the airline’s bot. “It def­i­nite­ly is a way to bridge online and offline and could poten­tial­ly rep­re­sent unique oppor­tu­ni­ties for CPG brands to increase their pres­ence,” he added.

Why Are Bots So Hot Now?

There are sev­er­al rea­sons 2016 may be the per­fect time for bots to rise. Here are the four biggest dri­vers.

1. Chat Proliferation

Mass adop­tion of mes­sag­ing, as well as a shift in con­sumer pref­er­ence toward texts over phone calls, is one main rea­son bots are poised to dom­i­nate, Smullen said. But even though con­sumers are over­whelm­ing­ly opt­ing for mes­sag­ing over talk­ing, this pre­ferred form of inter­ac­tion has yet to infil­trate the busi­ness world, he added. Gray agreed con­sumers nat­u­ral­ly chat with fam­i­ly, friends, and col­leagues, so bots enable brands and mar­keters to extend this behav­ior to their own ser­vices. “I think the fact that chat is so increas­ing­ly the fun­da­men­tal appli­ca­tion that most peo­ple use is a big dri­ver,” Gray said. Plus, Smullen not­ed, while con­sumers don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly want to talk to a bot, they don’t mind chat­ting with one. “The first real imple­men­ta­tions of bots failed dis­mal­ly in the voice category…but peo­ple don’t want to speak to a robot­ic voice,” Smullen said. “Enter mes­sag­ing. For the bot on the back­end of that, you have some­thing that con­sumers want.” Fur­ther, Sheth not­ed, bots don’t ask con­sumers to make any kind of behav­ior change. “You sim­ply con­tin­ue to do what you’ve always done – text and chat in your favorite chat apps,” he said.

2. App Fatigue

Gray agreed chat is a nat­ur­al con­sumer behav­ior and inter­act­ing with a bot is much eas­i­er than find­ing an app, down­load­ing it, authen­ti­cat­ing it, and fig­ur­ing out the UI. “Dif­fer­ent brands have dif­fer­ent apps and there’s a learn­ing expe­ri­ence each time,” Gray said. “We see in brand apps there are low install rat­ings because there’s a lot of fric­tion.” Or, sim­ply put, con­sumers have app fatigue. “Apps have been around for close to 10 years now and peo­ple sim­ply are not down­load­ing them as much as the past,” Gray said. Think about it: Con­sumers already have many apps they hard­ly use and are reluc­tant to down­load yet anoth­er one to car­ry out a sin­gle func­tion like, say, to order flow­ers. And that’s pre­cise­ly where bots come in handy – they allow con­sumers to per­form tasks eas­i­ly with­in the plat­forms they already use, with­out hav­ing to down­load anoth­er app, Gray added. (And, indeed, 1–800-Flowers recent­ly announced the abil­i­ty to order flow­ers via bots in Mes­sen­ger.) Fur­ther, it’s a lot eas­i­er to build a bot than an app, Gray not­ed. “I think it’s an excit­ing ear­ly stage. I feel like it’s the same as when web­sites first came out, and then mobile sites and then apps – they were step changes dri­ven by what con­sumers were doing,” Gray said. “They were get­ting iPhones, so we had to devel­op apps, which was great for proac­tive, inno­v­a­tive brands.” Indeed, per Oliv­er Guy, glob­al retail indus­try direc­tor at soft­ware com­pa­ny Soft­ware AG, Face­book Mes­sen­ger – or anoth­er mes­sag­ing plat­form – has an oppor­tu­ni­ty here to act as an inter­me­di­ary between con­sumers and brands so the for­mer only need a sin­gle app.

3. Support From Big Players

Per­haps most impor­tant­ly, heavy hit­ters like Face­book and Microsoft are dri­ving forces as well. Face­book CEO Mark Zucker­berg announced bots for Mes­sen­ger at F8 in April. In the release, the social net­work said these bots pro­vide auto­mat­ed sub­scrip­tion con­tent like weath­er and traf­fic, along with cus­tomized com­mu­ni­ca­tions like receipts, ship­ping noti­fi­ca­tions and live auto­mat­ed mes­sages. And in addi­tion to allow­ing busi­ness­es to build bots for Mes­sen­ger, Face­book also launched bot dis­cov­ery tools and Mes­sen­ger Codes to make bots eas­i­er for con­sumers to find. Facebook’s inter­est in bots report­ed­ly lies in part as an effort to posi­tion itself as a dri­ver of Mes­sen­ger-based com­merce, but also, Ad Age said, as a means of har­ness­ing con­trol of mobile expe­ri­ences away from the likes of Apple and Google. Fur­ther, Kosin­s­ki not­ed, Face­book is more than hap­py for brands to pay for spon­sored posts to encour­age con­sumers to add them as con­tacts on Mes­sen­ger. “Face­book, WeChat, and oth­er pop­u­lar social and mes­sen­ger apps want to keep users in their apps for as long as pos­si­ble and chat­bots can help these devel­op­ers reach this goal,” Cohen-Aslatei added.

4. Consumer Demand

Fur­ther­more, always-on bots sat­is­fy mod­ern con­sumers’ demand for instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion. That’s because bot mes­sag­ing is avail­able 24 hours a day, which gives con­sumers the impres­sion com­pa­nies are real­ly on the ball and care about them. “Hold times and delays are the rea­sons why [con­sumers] leave a com­pa­ny. No one leaves because the expe­ri­ence is amaz­ing and they are tak­en care of,” Smullen said. “You can have bots mas­querad­ing as peo­ple, respond­ing with empa­thy that is per­ceived to be from a human and they can even be very intel­li­gent and inter­pret an inter­ac­tion such that they know if a response should come from a human because it requires the next lev­el of empa­thy or care and will for­ward the mes­sage to a human.”