If your business could talk to you, what would it say?

Help me! I’m not healthy! I need cash to fuel my growth!

In 2016, we are experiencing a Cambrian explosion of chatbot applications and a shift to conversational commerce. Although the idea of automating customer interactions has been around for decades, technology advancements are improving the usefulness of these applications.

At tomato pay (formerly known as Fractal), we believe these chatbots will be transformative in the way our customers interact with their financial information. That’s why we launched the automated financial assistant for businesses in the form of a bot which is accessed via your mobile browser.

Ask tomato pay some financial questions about your company’s performance using your mobile device!

Application interfaces are becoming increasingly conversational because humans are social animals. Ever since the advent of SMS, we have become accustomed to communicating using a chat format on mobile. Improvements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology coupled with the availability of relevant data sets has spurred the growth of the conversational interface.

Conversational interfaces are set to impact the financial sector by facilitating communication and personalisation.

As a business manager, the financial chatbot mimics the experience you would traditionally have with your financial advisor. It helps you interpret the health of your business; by discussing performance, highlighting trends, and presenting strategic options for you to consider.

Good conversational chatbots enhance the software’s ability to understand context. In turn, the software becomes better at predicting behaviours and proactively helping customers find the right information at the right time.

We don’t recommend firing your financial advisor. Machine intelligence has become better at predicting outcomes, but has not replaced the value of experienced human judgement. While messaging bots may not replace your advisor, they represent a significant evolution in automation and communication.

We recommend that you and your financial advisor have your next meeting on-the-move via the Fractal financial communication platform.

Go ahead, ask your business if it’s healthy, growing and feeling efficient. It might just answer you.