1 in 3 would rather live without sex than without a mobile phone. How does this affect the Customer Journey?

Various retailers brought their own app to the market in order to communicate even better with their customers. Social media icons such as WeChat, Facebook, Apple and WhatsApp made it even easier by opening up their platforms for this communication. For example, consumers no longer have to download a retailer app, instead they simply invite a chatbot for a Facebook conversation, for example, to chat with a company.

Success stories
There are several examples of companies that have successfully used the chat functionality. For example, beauty brand Sephora launched a chat functionality via messenger with which people could schedule appointments for instore makeovers. After the introduction of this functionality, the number of bookings increased by no less than 11%. Retailer Whole Foods launched a so-called recipes chatbot. This robot chef gave customers culinary recommendations (tips and ingredients) via a chat functionality.

New developments
These first generation chatbots are fairly rudimentary in their functionality; they are used for basic customer service and order processing. Thanks to machine learning, the next generation of bots will be able to learn from customer interactions. Speech activated virtual assistants such as Alexa from Amazon, Apple's Siri and Google Assistant will also make communication much more human and natural.

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