44% of US consumers want chatbots over humans for customer relations

US consumers appear to be warming up to the idea of using of chatbots as a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, according to new research from Aspect Software Research. In its online survey of more than 1,000 18- to 65-year-old US consumers, 44% said that if a company could get the experience right, they would prefer to use a chatbot or automated experience for CRM. That's up four percentage points from the share of respondents who noted the same response in 2015. Chatbots can best be thought of as software programs that use messaging as the interface to carry out various tasks for users. They're generally integrated into messaging apps to capitalize on these apps' vast reach and the conversational interaction they promote.