Messenger Chatbots

Your customers will no longer need to pick up the phone or fill out an online order form. Instead, they’ll login to an app and quickly place their order. This can take place on Facebook, WhatsApp, Slack or various other chat apps. Doing so will significantly reduce friction since people spend so much time on their phones today. There are already many inexpensive online tools that will make it easy for you to create chatbots — including ManyChat, ChatFuel, and Chatty People. These will help you to build a powerful AI-driven chatbot even if you don’t have any coding experience.

Top Articles on How Businesses are using Bots:

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) is focusing on product visualization today. With the help of technology, small businesses will find ways to use AR to showcase their products in real time. Succeed as Your own Boss says there are four main ways in which AR will shape small businesses. These include:

· Entertainment

· Safety and rescue operations

· Shopping experiences

· Urban exploration

This is a trend you need to monitor. It started with Pokemon Go and now we’re seeing it in the form of Oculus Rift Glasses and Snapchat glasses. In a few years, our customers will view our products in real-time in 3D so they can try them before they buy them. This will have a major, immediate impact on your business.

Automation

Adopting automation tools will almost instantly help your business improvement since you’ll no longer waste as many resources on menial but necessary tasks. This will grow even more powerful when machine-learning and AI start extending to impact software’s functionality. Practically speaking, automation software can be integrated with existing systems to speed everything up, create the updates you need, and even re-order the products your business depends on. There are already some online platforms (e.g. Marketo, Salesforce) that you can use to automate many of your most common marketing, sales, and management tasks. These platforms are easy to set up and integrate seamlessly with the software you’re already using.

IoT’s(Internet of Things)

The Internet of Things (IoT) uses the internet to bridge gaps between specialized sensors, actuators, networking, and real-world objects. This is creating a lot of new opportunities and products that we’d either never imagined or only dreamt of before now. Technology makes so you’re in control of these objects and operations — including things like the smart home, car automation, intelligent security alarms, and smart offices. Those who are embracing this have found great reasons for their devices to view, listen to, and even smell the information in real-time. In fact, there are now about 11.4 billion of these devices in use around the world today. These devices are proving to be very valuable for making investments, seizing new opportunities, and reducing the total cost of operations. In the future, we’re bound to see more real-time actions occurring through IoT platforms, sensors, networks, and data analysis techniques.

Cloud Technology

Software as a service (SaaS) seems out of place since it’s been around for so long but in actuality, it’s still in its infancy and its potential hasn’t yet been fully realized. This is especially true in the small to medium business market. Yet, there are many different tools being offered here today that are fully targeted at small businesses — things like a cloud-based phone system. The reasons for targeting small businesses is obvious. They include easier improvements, more frequent updates, backend management without the headaches, and decreased roadblocks that are paving the way for other new tools.

Digital Currency and Blockchain

Blockchains are a type of electronic ledgers that are almost completely reliable in their record keeping. Their underlying technology is complicated, but their benefits are clear: security, speed, and full control. One of their best-known applications is cryptocurrency — a type of digital currency that’s stored on a huge network of buyers’ and sellers’ computers (e.g. Bitcoin). You don’t have much to lose in choosing to prepare for what some experts are calling “the inevitable move towards cryptocurrency.” You simply set up a wallet and integrate it with your point of sale or online payments system.

We’re also starting to see many alternatives to Bitcoin being created today. These are all based on the same underlying technology though. One thing that’s important to remember here is that while the trends and currencies are changing over time, the underlying technology and implications are bound to eventually influence businesses of all sizes. This is why it’s a good idea for you to get started with this today, instead of waiting until later to get involved. One of the easiest ways to get started is by using digital currency payments like bitpay to accept cryptocurrency-related payments in exchange for your products or services.

Artificial Intelligence

Top Developers says a combination of AI, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP) can really disrupt your life with their radical computational power. This technology can understand users’ behavior and patterns in milliseconds. It can also solve many problems in an automated fashion. As the amount of information businesses have grown even bigger, it’s going to become difficult for engineers to handle all this information, act on it, and provide us with relevant information. AI can help here because they’re able to work like humans — only much more efficiently. This is why many experts believe that by 2021, automation through AI-powered intelligent software agents and cognitive technology will cost 6% of Americans their jobs, place another 11% of Americans at risk of losing their jobs, and create new jobs for yet another 5% of Americans. Early adoption of this technology will help businesses though.