Chatbots: The next frontier for brand and consumer conversation?

"You should be able to message a business in the same way you'd message a friend," said Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook's F8 developer conference last month as he laid out his vision for the social network's future. Bots took front and centre of his 10-year road map – and we're not talking spammy Twitter accounts here. Instead, brands are increasingly experimenting with chatbots to usher in a new era of'conversational commerce', to use a term coined by Uber's Chris Messina. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), Facebook's chatbots will allow customers to interact with partner brands like KLM and 1-800 Flowers inside its Messenger platform to review orders, make customer service enquiries and more. The social giant's long-anticipated foray into AI will help it gain ground on messaging rivals, such as Kik and Chinese giant WeChat, which are investing in their very own branded bot armies.