5 emerging technologies that will shape the future of you and your business
The future is now — or so they say. So-called emerging technologies are taking over our minds more and more each day. With the advent of chatbots, the mainstreamification (yes, now a word) of blockchain a la bitcoin and VR chatrooms — I think they are right.
These are very high-level emerging technologies though. They sound like tools that will only affect the top tier of technology companies who employ the world’s top 1% of geniuses. This is totally wrong. Chatbots, virtual/augmented reality, blockchain, Ephemeral Apps and Artificial Intelligence are already shaping your life whether you like it or not. I’m going to dive into how each of these can help your business.
1. Chatbots
We’ve already written about chatbots a lot — and for good reason. Chatbots are an additional channel and platform that brands can reach their customers with high impact. We spend our lives in messenger applications whether we like it or not. Active daily messaging users have surpassed social platform users across the big four of each category:
There are three fundamental ways you can reach your customers through chatbots: campaigns, commerce and customer service.
Campaigns are the low-hanging fruit. Open rates for instant messages far outperform their clunkier cousin email with more than 240% increase in some cases! Opt-in is more organic — instead of asking for the sacrifice as an email, users just have to confirm verbally (or textually) that they want to receive updates. Boom you’ve got another subscriber.
Commerce is next. China is already all over this. Buying things online requires the user to move outside of channels they are comfortable in (like facebook, messenger, whatsapp, email) and onto websites that can be unfamiliar. To keep consistency, platforms like Messenger are about to roll out in-chat payments. This is huge. You can browse and buy, all without leaving your favourite app.
Customer Service is the final pillar. Technology is getting super smart (which we’ll get into with A.I.) and we’re finding that many repetitive human tasks can easily be automated. A simple example is changing an address over the phone. This call can take 5–7 minutes — extrapolated over a year and many customers this results in millions of dollars of support time. Instead, a user could jump on live chat and ask to change their address. The chatbot verifies them with an SMS, and then gives them a conversational interface to make the update. Far future, this will move out of chat and into the call-centres — but that’s another post. Chatbots are one of the emerging technologies that are going the change the game.
2. Virtual, Augmented & Mixed Reality
The VR hype train is real. Augmented/mixed reality is hot on its tails and in our opinion have the most potential. VR is huge for gaming and entertainment.
VR is so immersive that people are forgetting the real environment around them. In the future, movies will be in 360º, 3D reality.
Augmented and mixed reality is a blend of real-life and fake. Apple has lead the way on the software front with AR-Kit — bringing Augmented reality to the masses. Just check out PlaySide’s portfolio for some amazing examples.
Once AR hits the mainstream market, this provides another marketing opportunity for brands. Take, for example, IKEA. They’ve leveraged AR to allow you to put their entire product suite in your home before you buy it. Customers will be able to purchase your products right after they’ve trialled it in their own home when the feeling is fresh once payments are combined with AR. That is huge.
Mixed reality is an emerging technology that we don’t really know much about. The top MR firms are either super secret or super expensive. Watch this space.
3. Blockchain
The blockchain frenzy is real. Some call it a bubble. Whilst the current price of popular cryptocurrencies is very reminiscent of a bubble, the underlying technology is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. It’s the most valuable of emerging technologies to keep your eye on.
The idea of a blockchain is that it’s a public transaction network. When a transaction occurs, this is put into a ‘block’. When the block is full, miners around the world race to complete the complex crypto-algorithm to guess the correct ‘hash’ of the block. Whoever guesses it first is awarded the bitcoin.
This database or ‘ledger’ of transactions is a publically accessible and explorable history of every transaction ever made on the network. This means that it’s ‘trustless’ — anybody who has completed a transaction with someone has done so directly. There are no banks in between these people.
So how will this affect you? Certain blockchains employ things called ‘Smart Contracts’. These are what they sound like — when certain criteria are met, the contract is executed. Let’s put this into a story.
You’ve set up a smart contract with your client and the agreement is that when a new feature is live on their website, the contract is over and you need to be paid. The payment is put in escrow until the contract is completed. Instead of chasing the client for this payment your funds are released automatically when the feature is live. This removes the need for ‘trusting’ your client to pay you on time and paves the way for a more secure, collaborative future.
4. Ephemeral Apps
Remember when apps exploded on the scene? They were the new hottest thing — and you had at least 132 of them clogging up your home screen. In the past couple of years, that trend has reversed. Now, people download less and less apps — to the point where we are, on average, downloading zero per day.
Everyone has their favourite apps — but to penetrate this elite club of apps is increasingly harder and harder. Huge tech-giants with billions of disposable income are dominating the scene. But never fear, you don’t have to compete.
Enter Ephemeral Apps, or known in the tech industry as Progressive Web Apps. Ephemeral Apps live in your browser and are designed to give you exactly the same experience as a native app. Same smoothness, same access to your device’s camera, geo-location and other hardware. They have a tiny footprint, don’t require downloading and expose much of the same functionality.
The results are huge. Just check out the pwastats website for some great examples.
Building an ephemeral app for your business will drive more conversions, more retention and give your customers a better experience.
5. Artificial Intelligence
Don’t be scared! Artificial intelligence is here to make your life easier, not deadlier. There’s a common misconception that A.I. is going to get so smart that it’s going to realise humans are actually rather inefficient to their survival and snub us out completely. Of all the emerging technologies in this post, A.I. is the one I am most excited about.
That’s not the case. A.I. is designed to do one thing and one thing really well. It can beat the best Go player in the world and make him cry (I made that up). It can smash you in chess, is really good at identifying dick picks and can understand how you feel just by listening.
These are all things that humans can do too — but we can do them together. If you’re playing a game of chess with your friend, they show you a dick-pick and are clearly sad about it you can process all of this quite easily. You know to respond with compassion, maybe let them beat you in the game and together shame the person who sent it to them.
A.I., on the other hand, doesn’t know what to make sense of all these inputs together. And this is with just three examples. Humans can handle thousands, if not millions of soft, hard and learnt skills throughout their life.
So how is this affecting you? Siri is Okay. Google Assistant warns you about impending traffic and Alexa can order you batteries with a simple command. AI is here to make your life easier. But we’ll maybe leave this one to the tech giants.
The bottom line
At the end of the day, you can either adapt or die. The emerging technologies outlined in this article are pretty much already here and already affecting your life. Begin to notice them, begin to appreciate them, and begin to harness them — both in your personal and business life.
Do you think your business is ready for these emerging technologies or just love to geek out about it? I’d love to chat!
Originally published at Mayte.
