Chatbots and virtual assistants are nothing new. These pieces of digital technology have been around for years, supporting — and sometimes infuriating — human users across a variety of different applications. We say “infuriating” because chatbots have not always been popular. In the early days of the tech, clumsy artificial intelligence and sub-standard responses left customers feeling alienated and wholly dissatisfied with virtual assistance. Humans and AI-based automated chat tools didn’t exactly get off on the right foot.

If your organization isn’t already using a chatbot, you’re missing out on an essential tool that could streamline your customer support process and reduce the load on your operations teams. However, even if you have a virtual assistant as your first line of defence for handling customer queries, you may not be getting the most out of this valuable asset.

“Can machines think?” This was the question asked by Alan Turing, one of the most renowned computer scientists, in 1950. It is a simple question on the surface, yet it allowed Turing to conceptualize artificial intelligence. From this came the idea of the virtual assistants or chatbots that we know today.

The cyber threat landscape is evolving rapidly, and businesses of all kinds are working hard to keep up with the pace of change. Unfortunately, keeping up with the pace of digital threats may not be enough, and businesses may be leaving themselves exposed in their frantic attempts to maintain security and reliability.

Smart systems that support increasingly incisive decision making and data-driven insight are the future of business. These systems unlock the much-trumpeted potential of Big Data, transforming it from a raw material with a great deal of potential into something that can be actively utilized and wielded.

Today, organizations are more reliant on information technology than ever before. Nearly every aspect of modern business is digitized, from customer interactions to enterprise management. Digitization is not necessarily bad, except that criminals have found ingenious ways to weaponize IT against businesses.

Automation is a source of wonder and anxiety in almost equal measure. While automated tools and processes are heralded as ushering in a new era of productivity, sustainability and capability across all areas of business, there is also a dark side to automation in the public perception — the idea that robots will take human jobs.