Chatbot Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)

The chatbot market was valued at USD 17.17 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach USD 102.29 billion by 2026, registering a CAGR of 34.75% over the forecast period, 2021 - 2026. Virtual assistants are increasing because of deep neural networks, machine learning, and other advancements in AI technologies. Virtual assistants, such as chatbots and smart speakers, are used for various applications across several end-user industries, such as retail, BFSI, healthcare, etc. For instance, the banking sector has been a significant adopter for newer technologies, primarily due to reliance on speed, trust, and communication. Chatbots in banking sector facilitates the communication and build customer relation through cognitive analytics through learning customer’s thinking for instant response.

• A chatbot is basically an artificial intelligence-powered application that converses with a human being to solve a problem or to answer a certain query. This reduces the operational time and enhances efficiency, that aides to the market growth. According to Salesforce, 69% of consumers prefer to use chatbots for the speed at which they can communicate with a brand.
• Moreover, the demand for voice-activated smart devices is gaining high traction due to high convenience and fully-automated processes. In January 2020, Google launched Meena, an AI chatbot. It is a multi-turn open-domain chatbot trained end-to-end on data mined. The neutral network of Meena contains about 2.6 billion parameters.
• Chatbots are poised to grow at a significant rate, owing to which the companies are ready to adopt the technology to their existing business portfolio.According to MIT technology review, 90% of the business reported faster complaints resolution with the bots.
• Chatbot adopters are looking towards establishing such connection with their customers to leverage on long-term relation for steady stream of revenues. This has led to incorporation of their customer service through diverse major messaging applications, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.According to a study by Accenture Digital, 57% of business claimed that chatbot delivers large Return on Investment on mininimal investment.
• The chatbot are increasingly deployed in various end user industries such as Healthcare, BFSI, Retail, among others. For instance, in September 2019, YES Bank, an Indian Private sector bank introduced YES ROBOT, an artificial intelligence-enabled chatbot to support its customers. Developed by Microsoft, YES ROBOT enables customers to perform financial and non-financial banking transactions by using conversational AI, which has extensive financial knowledge.
• In January 2020, QliqSOFT, specializing in secure, HIPAA-compliant clinical communication solutions, announced the launch of its healthcare chatbot platform, Quincy. Quincy offers chatbot templates that address care-specific use cases that include pre-configured intents and dialogue flows or customized chatbots that can be built to suit unique customer needs. As a chatbot platform, Quincy enables healthcare providers to build and deploy HIPAA-compliant, AI-driven, conversational chatbots that help them put more care-related information in the hands of their patients, facilitate self-service, improve workflow, drive better outcomes, and reduce costs.
• With the recent outbreak of COVID-19, the chatbot has been increasingly deployed by various organizations to respond to customer queries and other related information. As remote working has been adopted by the different organization due to lockdown imposed in states/countries, the company are heavily dependant on chatbots to reduce the burden of customer query due to minimal availability of customer service employees.
• Also, the chatbot is providing millions of people with the necessary information pertaining to COVID-19 daily. For instance, in April 2020, WHO has launched a Facebook Messenger version of its WHO Health Alert platform that offers instant and accurate information about COVID-19–via Facebook’s global reach.