STEP LOGIC experts evaluated the demand for chat bots

14 December 2020

Chat bots are now a common solution for businesses looking to achieve certain corporate goals.

STEP LOGIC experts have evaluated the public information from the tender platforms and the incoming requests to the company, defining the current trends in the chat bot market.

Despite the overall decline of the economy, the demand for chat bots has risen by 17% in comparison to 2019. Voice bots became significantly more popular — there have been four times as many requests for those. Last year, only 17% of incoming inquiries were about voice assistants. This year, it's 44%.

According to Oksana Ivashkevich, Project Manager of the Unified Communications & Call Centers Department at STEP LOGIC, this trend is caused by the rapidly developing voice recognition & synthesis technology and AI — it is now possible to interrupt the bots and ask them some of the questions they have previously answered; there are algorithms that allow for correction of errors within phrases that weren't fully recognized due to noise or interference; long turns of phrase are now recognized much better.

13% more businesses are now looking to purchase several bots for different purposes, which indicates a higher level of business process automation within these companies.

During the pandemic, many businesses have expressed their interest in corporate chat bots. In 2020, 43% of all requests about bots were about bots intended for internal use within the company. Assistants providing quick access to documents and regulations (42%), filing and confirming delivery orders (36%), and booking conference rooms (29%) were in highest demand among those requests.

According to company statistics, the bots are most commonly integrated into Microsoft Teams (32%), Telegram (17%), and WhatsApp (17%). Telegram and WhatsApp are tow of the most popular messengers used for communications, and Microsoft Teams is a platform most commonly used by businesses for communications necessary to organise telework.

The customers looking for a chat bot are now different, too. Previously, more than half of all customers were in banking and retail, but in 2020, state agencies, educational and medical institutions, logistics and delivery businesses, e-commerce platforms, and industrial enterprises have all expressed renewed interest in chat bots.

«This year, we saw the demand for cloud solutions has grow by 20%. The share of requests received from banks and financial organizations is lower now, and those businesses have certain peculiarities that demand an on-premise implementation, and for them, there are no other acceptable options, — says Oksana Ivashkevich, Project Manager of the Unified Communications & Call Centers Department at STEP LOGICBusinesses in other spheres, however, prefer cloud solutions. They tend to be 15–40% cheaper, which is often the key factor in the current economy».

About STEP LOGIC

STEP LOGIC (step.ru) is a member of GKS group of companies (AO Sistematika Group) with 27 years of experience in providing network and system integration services for the Russian market. The company has more than 600 employees with its offices based in Moscow, Kazan, Yerevan and Almaty. The company employs over 350 engineers and system architects certified by the world's leading manufacturers. The company has high-level authorisation with such vendors as APC by Schneider Electric, Avaya, Check Point, Cisco Systems, Crestron, Dell Technologies, Extron, Fortinet, HPE, Huawei, IBM, Juniper Networks, Lenovo, Microsoft, Polycom, Unify and others. The range of solutions and services includes network and systems integration, audio and visual solutions, development of videoconferencing systems and contact centres, integrated security, data processing and storage services, network and engineering infrastructure development for buildings, the Internet of Things, as well as a full range of services for technical support and maintenance of information systems including IT consulting, auditing and outsourcing

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