How AI is driving mobile app development in 2018

According to a report by Statista, the total number of mobile app downloads in 2017 went up to 197 billion. This clearly shows that people are increasingly getting comfortable with and dependant on mobile apps. Learn, how AI is driving mobile app development in 2018

However, research also shows that, customers either abandon or uninstall 70% of the mobile apps within 7 days. Wondering, why?

It is the lack of satisfactory user experience or not meeting customer expectations with loading speed, bugs etc.

This is where AI comes into the picture. Incorporating AI into your mobile apps enable you to provide a much more personalized experience to your customers.ELSA Speak: the English Accent Coach,Google assistant, and Siri are few of the AI mobile applications that people have loved and NOT abandoned in 7 days.

According toConstellation Research by 2025, the AI market will be valued over $100 billion.

AI market estimation by 2025

Source:Multidots

Also, a study by PwC shows that 72% of business leaders termed artificial intelligence as a “business advantage”.

All this put together clearly indicates that businesses need to start investing in AI fueled mobile apps already.

So, how does incorporating AI in mobile apps help businesses?

We have already discussed how AI can help personalize user experience. Besides that,

AI in mobile apps can collect massive amounts of data and understand consumer behavior, preferences and demographics. It can also help you segment buyers, create detailed buyer personas and carry out predictive analysis.

With all this, AI in mobile apps help increase customer retention rates and boost lead generation efforts (details later). Many companies are beginning to adopt artificial intelligence as one of many tools to intuitively engage and ultimately retain their users.

Incorporating AI in mobile apps positively impacts any business, and that is why Gartner predicts that intelligent apps were one of the top ten strategic trends for 2017. In fact, Gartner anticipates 200 of the world’s largest companies will develop intelligent apps within the next year i.e 2018.

Let’s look at how AI has been incorporated in mobile apps by various businesses.

1. Enhance user experience and personalization

We already stated that AI powered mobile apps can gather large amounts of data on customers. Smart businesses have been using this data to augment customer experience and personalize services.

For example, Starbucks launched an AI mobile app called My Starbucks Barista. Now, customers can place an order via voice message instantly. The chatbot also helps them with payment and the pickup location for their product. Look at this

Similarly, Taco Bell launched an app named TacoBot which teams up with slack. According to Tim, instead of someone jotting everyone’s orders on a post-it and hoping the drive-thru attendant gets everything right, they can ask TacoBot to put in the order for them. TacoBot also recommends personalized menu suggestions by anticipating user-specific purchase trends.

2. Pattern Analysis

You can infuse intelligence and data processing capabilities to enable your app to read customer behavior and actions while interacting with a service.

The best example of behavioral pattern analysis is SnapTravel. The chatbot travel portal has combines all user interaction (feeds, patterns and frequencies for different actions and behavior they exhibit) and use this data to refine service inputs and show better results.

You can also use AI for detecting other patterns. According to Dzone, “pattern detecting AI algorithms are also developed for certain mobile apps that deal with credit or debit cards. The mobile app will understand the patterns in the card usage and learns the customer’s behavior pattern through previous bank statements and purchases. It will detect when an unusual payment is made and notifies the customer.”

AI infused mobile apps

3. Recommendation

AI can refer to your preferences, understand your search goals and find context-aware answers that match your request. Basically, such apps provide you the right amount of assistance.

For example, Netflix. When you search for a movie it will auto-suggest them based on first entered letters and even allows you to get extended suggestions reading your key phrases and relating it with close possibilities. Taking this further, Netflix also suggests you movies based on your last viewed or most viewed genre of movies or other such parameters.

4. Voice-based search

This is our all time favorite. We have already moved into a world where tasks can be completed on voice commands. For example, Amazon introduced Alexa in Echo. With Amazon Echo, all you have to is command and Alex would do it for you.

Voice based search apps are an opportunity for businesses who are researching on incorporating AI into their apps. As per the research of the ComScore, by 2020, 200 billion searches per month will be done; creating the market opportunity of voice search of $50+ billion per year

Voice interface allows users to interact with the apps seamlessly and make tasks convenient to complete. But, voice interface cannot be the end of it, users are looking for apps that are predictive, can perform pattern analysis or are context-aware.

Just like the Starbucks app or Alexa.

5. Generate leads

With all the information an AI based app can gather, marketing campaigns can do wonders. For one, they can qualify prospects and show the sales team where each prospect is on the buyer's journey.

Also, AI bots can be trained to send

coupons and offers at the right time, and

Follow up emails to your customers

Finally, and in support of this point, MarketingProfs reports that businesses that implement AI see 59% better close rates for sales, 58% increased revenue, 54% more traffic and engagement, and 52% higher conversion

6. Predictive analysis

One of the major reasons, e-commerce giants have implemented predictive analysis with AI is that it increases revenue by leaps and bounds.

Predictive AI algorithms use a customer’s previous purchase history and browse history and predict what a customer will wish to buy. For example, Amazon. They are rolling out anticipatory shipping, that will be able to send you products even before you need them.

Other than that, predictive analysis is enhancing user experience by reducing human efforts. For example, Allo. While it may seem like another messaging app, Allo is Google’s AI-filled app. The messenger comes along with a feature called smart replies. The app suggests words or phrases throughout a conversation. Not only that, the app has image recognition feature. It is able to suggest replies not only based on the text but also the images shared within the conversation.

Another example of a predictive AI app is Socratic. This app makes the job of a parent super easy. Socratic is an app that says "Homework in a Snap".The app gives answers to math problems and shows you how to solve it by taking a picture of the problem. It uses AI to analyze the information required and then returns explanations along with videos to give step-by-step help.

The company explains that "Socratic’s AI combines cutting-edge computer vision technologies, which read questions from images, with machine learning classifiers built using millions of sample homework questions, to accurately predict which concepts will help you solve your question."

There you go.

Businesses are actively utilizing the strengths of AI to give the best app experience to their customers. In 2018, AI fueled apps will rule because they are smarter, faster, and makes every task much easier for humans.

Are you thinking of building an AI based mobile app for your business? Or have you already started building it? Let’s talk about it.