IBM Watson Fueled Chatbots — For Our Health

This has also been published at my other site — dtoczala.wordpress.com.

With Covid-19 and all of the changes in our world, it’s interesting to think about how this impacts businesses all over the world. What can a chatbot do that is relevant in our new situation — with stay-at-home orders, social distancing, and the closing of non-essential businesses? Chatbots can do something that most local organizations need — communicate to your customers and users with a limited amount of staff, on a 24x7 basis. How many businesses are unable to staff call centers — wait times on many “help lines” can be up to two hours long. Chatbots enable you to “talk” with your customers and give them the information that they want, when they want it. Coupling your chatbot with some speech services can give you a solution that will work for your call center. A recent study by Forrester Consulting indicated that companies saw a benefit of over $5 per contained conversation handled by Watson Assistant. So what are you waiting for?

The Objections

A lot of companies and organizations would consider chatbots, and other AI technologies, but they feel like those technologies are too expensive. They might feel like they don’t have the expertise to build a chatbot on their own. They might have been right — in the past. This week, IBM announced it’s “Citizen Chatbot” campaign. This is targeted at government, healthcare, and other public agencies, and it provides for 90 days of FREE access to a fully functional…