The rise of electronic business activities in Nigeria, its substantial contribution to the growth of the economy as well as the significance of constant development of new age technology cannot be over emphasized.
A lot of information technology (IT) companies who have monitored the growth of businesses in Africa as a result of improved technology have predicted that the next phase of business of revolutionisation will be due to an increased adoption of artificial intelligence, blockchain and of course chatbots.
Although there has been some adoption of chatbots since late 2017, especially amongst e-commerce and telecommunications companies, oracle predicts that the use of chatbots will become more popular by the end of this year.
The Chatbot also known as a web chat robot is a software application that runs automated tasks over the internet through messenger apps.
In order to increase knowledge on the impact of these technologies, Oracle recently hosted its chatbot Week Africa in different cities across the continent to drive awareness of chatbots for different industries and to demonstrate the power of the technology.
According to Craig Nel, mobile & cognitive experience (MCX) leader at Oracle Middle East, Africa and Turkey, ‘Companies from a range of industries will be impacted by intelligent chatbots in a similar way to the rise of mobile devices. Business to consumer use cases for chatbots are being seen in retail, financial services, travel and hospitality and even in utilities, for service-related and transactional conversations.’
The roundtable discussions which were hosted in South Africa (Johannesburg and Cape Town), Mauritius, Kenya, Nigeria (Lagos and Abuja), Senegal, Ivory Coast and Ghana from July 2 to July 6, 2018, offered a number of demonstrations and real-world examples as well as discussions around the business opportunities that chatbot technology can bring for organisations in each country.
‘Technologies such as artificial intelligence, natural language processing and machine learning come to the fore in African countries with their many cultures and languages,” says Nel.
‘In South Africa we have eleven official languages, but take a country such as Ghana where more than 250 languages and dialects are spoken. One way to attract new customers in Africa is through intelligent chatbots that better understand and process customers’ needs, desires and requirements, in a language preferred by the user,’ he says.
Just last month, Oracle announced the availability of its next-generation Oracle Cloud Platform services featuring built-in autonomous capabilities, including Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise.
With embedded artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), this platform automates operational tasks to enable organisations to lower cost, reduce risk, accelerate innovation, and obtain predictive insights.
In addition to the self-driving, self-securing, and self-repairing foundational capabilities that are shared by all Oracle Cloud Platform services, additional autonomous capabilities by functional areas now include Mobile and Chatbots.
In the rapidly expanding mobile economy, businesses are looking for smart and personalised ways to engage with customers via mobile devices. With an estimated five billion mobile phones used worldwide, Oracle says it is helping enterprises meet growing customer demand by being able to seamlessly build, integrate, and secure reliable mobile services.
As user behaviour dramatically shifts to mobile and messaging platforms, it is critical for enterprises to evolve to support stakeholders’ preferred channels.
‘We are continually improving algorithms around user sentiment, image analysis, language translation, self-learning and behavioural analysis, to both simplify chatbot development and enhance users’ experience. In Africa, we will soon see chatbots that will add significant value related to ease of use for healthcare and education amongst many others,’ says Nel.
According to Oracle, its intelligent bots use cases range from the public to private sector. Public sector organisations benefit from Facebook messenger chatbots that enable citizens to book appointments online, which reduces call center costs. Citizens benefit by having an easier way to access services and shorter waiting times. Similarly, a Facebook messenger chatbot can help citizens access election results.
In the conference industry, web personal assistants enhance the conference experience by helping attendees with everything from pre-registration and the agenda to a map to the event and how to get there.
In the healthcare industry, chatbots answer frequently asked questions around diseases and hospitals using chatbots now interact with patients and families in new ways to give a better service, reduce waiting times and maximise service hours.
All these use cases were built in the past year using Oracle Intelligent Bots.
Jumoke Akiyode-Lawanson
