Chatbots – also known as “conversational agents” – are software applications that mimic written or spoken human speech for the purposes of simulating a conversation or interaction with a real person. There are two primary ways chatbots are offered to visitors: via web-based applications or standalone apps. Today, chatbots are used most commonly in the customer service space, assuming roles traditionally performed by living, breathing human beings such as Tier-1 support operatives and customer satisfaction reps.
Efforts by servers hosting websites to counteract bots vary. Servers may choose to outline rules on the behaviour of internet bots by implementing a robots.txt file: this file is simply text stating the rules governing a bot's behaviour on that server. Any bot that does not follow these rules when interacting with (or 'spidering') any server should, in theory, be denied access to, or removed from, the affected website. If the only rule implementation by a server is a posted text file with no associated program/software/app, then adhering to those rules is entirely voluntary – in reality there is no way to enforce those rules, or even to ensure that a bot's creator or implementer acknowledges, or even reads, the robots.txt file contents. Some bots are "good" – e.g. search engine spiders – while others can be used to launch malicious and harsh attacks, most notably, in political campaigns.[2]
Human touch. Chatbots, providing an interface similar to human-to-human interaction, are more intuitive and so less difficult to use than a standard banking mobile application. They doesn't require any additional software installation and are more adaptive as able to be personalized during the exploitation by the means of machine learning. Chatbots are instant and so much faster that phone calls, shown to be considered as tedious in some studies. Then they satisfy both speed and personalization requirement while interacting with a bank.
Beyond users, bots must also please the messaging apps themselves. Take Facebook Messenger. Executives have confirmed that advertisements within Discover — their hub for finding new bots to engage with — will be the main way Messenger monetizes its 1.3 billion monthly active users. If standing out among the 100,000 other bots on the platform wasn't difficult enough, we can assume Messenger will only feature bots that don't detract people from the platform.