In this age of technology, we have chatbots, applications, Artificial Intelligence, smart vacuum cleaners and self-driving cars.

We communicate over messages and chatbots, we talk to friends who are across the street on skype, and we are ordering food using a chatbot.

If you see the pattern, you will notice that all of these are computer programs and have no human contact, whatsoever.

Are chatbots Millennials best friends? I would say it depends on the situation.

I`m a tech person, but I would never call customer service and stay on the phone to receive messages that I need to choose this menu if I need help with this or press this number if I need this.

In this case, yes, I will choose a chatbot because people value time over human interaction. In an age where we are all rushing somewhere and all the time that we have is valuable, standing and waiting for a customer service agent to come and answer your request is mission impossible and time that you can spend differently.

Chatbots in Business, such as Healthcare and Travel.

Let’s think about health and sensitive issues and questions that we are not feeling comfortable to talk to a human about. In this case, a chatbot will do the trick. There are health chatbots, which according to a few questions that it will ask you, can give you a diagnosis based on what your issues are, according to your symptoms.

It can`t give you a prescription drug, and it can`t operate on you yet, but it can give you some tips on what to do next or to schedule an appointment with your doctor with no waiting online.

There is also a chatbot lawyer that is giving legal advice, mostly related to parking tickets. But imagine that you are calling a real lawyer, and he said that he is handling more important cases or even says that he is not doing pro bono.

There are so many other chatbots that are helping in everyday life, and that doesn`t mean that we are avoiding human contact, but that it saves us time.

While going to work, I can chat to my banking chatbot to tell me the balance on my financial account and also it gives me several financial pieces of advice, according to my regular income and shopping habits.

On the other hand, to get this information from a customer service agent, it means waiting on the phone, and in rush hour, I could barely hear them. Going to the bank is not an option because I have more things to do, so chatbots will do the trick.

I read somewhere that chatbots will “Kill” the Travel Agent profession because humans prefer to talk to a chatbot instead. Even though I do have a big respect for this profession, it happened to me several times that they wanted to sell me something that I was not interested in. While with chatbots, I tell them what I want and they find a ticket and book a hotel, according to my wishes.

Sephora, when they first started to use a chatbot, reported having more significant revenue in the first couple of days. That doesn`t mean that people are avoiding shops and human contact or are not using customer support anymore, it just means that we value our time more.

Final Thoughts

Chatbots are already part of our everyday life; many people use them, and they can be helpful.

Will chatbots replace humans?

Are chatbots Millennials new best friends?

Are we using chatbots to avoid human contact? I guess time will tell.

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Posted by Maya S.