Experiences are incredibly valuable as they are delicate. As consumers, when we have a poor experience, it induces anxiety. When you’re acting as a brand, you’re making your first impression. It’s best that you avoid any practices that can upset your consumers through friction, wait times, and unhelpful automation.
It could be said that Human beings have a love and hate relationship with automation especially when it comes to technology. There are times when it can be a helpful tool to ease ourselves of the mundane, repetitive nature of our jobs and other times it can generate quite the level of anger and anxiety for example when you’re trying to contact Paypal or your Cable Company for example.
The most hated automated technology might just be the Interactive Voice Response System. Who hasn’t gotten frustrated when trying to use one of these things? Peggy comes to mind…
All the rage in the tech world lately has been surrounding artificial intelligence, or better known as AI. Chatbots, intelligent apps coming to platforms like Kik, We Chat and facebook messenger, have the potential to make our interactions with brands better than they are currently. Specifically with giving and receiving information quickly, avoiding the annoying task of waiting in a line or on hold. We’re skeptical about the experience. If we’re going to get truly helpful and inciteful interaction it’s not going to come from a bot. We do like the idea however. You’ve got to start somewhere. We’re just not convinced yet. The best memory that can come from an experience comes direct. 
The new facebook messenger platform has a send/receive api, so bots can send more than just text, they can send structured messages which may include images, links and calls to action. This could allow users to make reservations, reviews and more. Facebook plans to add a special search bar at the top of their interface which will allow users to discover chat bots.
Using human beings, we can only reach a small percentage of the consumers as compared to chatbots, where perhaps a single computer can handle up to several thousand simultaneous conversations. Nothing can truly match the effectiveness of a human being when it comes to solving problems and handling complex situations for customers. We do see AI fulfilling simple questions for users who may prefer to directly engage in conversation as opposed to hunting down an answer in a forum of sorts. This can even lend to large-scale customer service operations, lessening the load on human resources.
For the time being, we think brand experiences are best experienced with human to human interaction.
Let us know what you think! If you have questions about experiential marketing, content marketing, digital marketing, event production or mobile tours, contact us today!