Anthony Onesto argues that conversational chatbots will replace traditional form-based user interfaces across consumer and enterprise software, with particular impact on HR and recruiting. He gives examples (adding a dependent, applying for jobs), cites Satya Nadella’s claim that computing’s future is conversational, and references a Business Insider market projection to illustrate rapid growth.
Chapters
Hey, everyone, it's Anthony Honesto, and here is my Burn the box drop for this week. My thinking around business. I've been thinking about user interfaces. Yeah, I know I jumped out of AI and now back in AI, but it's really more about the chatbot experience. And I know for, I want to say, about a decade or so, we've been thinking about the interaction of people and chatbots. In fact, I actually have a failed attempt to create an HR chatbot. This is before OpenAI and ChatGPT, where you would interact with an HR chatbot and answer questions. Yep. A little bit early or a lot. A bit early, actually. And it was called K AI. But in thinking about the chatbot experience as the interface layer for anything that we need, if we have a question or we need some information or we have to fill out a form, I think the idea of forms is going away. I think chatbots will replace that as a user interface on the consumer side, on the enterprise side, and especially on the HR and recruiting side. The reason why I've been thinking about this recently is I watched Satya Nadella's keynote addressed at Microsoft Build earlier this month, and he said, quote, the future of computing is conversational. It's how we'll interact with technology in the future, and it's how we're building our products at Microsoft. And I think he's absolutely spot on. I think the rise of chatbots and AI specifically is rapidly transforming HR and HR technologies and recruiting technologies. So. And in fact, actually, Business Insider said the global chatbot market will reach $110.5 billion by 2026. So that. And that's up from 2.6 billion. So incredible growth in terms of chatbots. And I think this is how we're going to interact with our software. So let's talk about, you know, how that could potentially play out. One, conversational voice enable interfaces. We've already been familiar with Alexa Siri. In fact, you know, Susie was kind of in line with those type of solutions. I think chatbots become the interface. So if I'm an employee right now and I need to add a dependent to my healthcare, I just had a baby and I want to add that dependent. I have to go into my software and enter fields. I have to, first of all, depending on your software. And I'm going to redact the name of the innocent here. But most HR technologies are terrible. User experience and user interface modules, you have to find the place first and then you have to add all this information and then you miss something and it says you. It's just very frictionful. What a chatbot experience will allow you to do is log in. It'll know exactly who you are within the HR systems. I need to add a dependent. The name is this. The sex is this, the birth date is this. And boom, all of that is completed. And what that does is it fills out the forum and the database and the HR system and then kicks off a whole bunch of processes. That's the future, folks. That is where HR is going. No longer do you have to go into the third menu within some weird menu because some engineers said, hey, this is where we're going to put the benefit section. You're just going to chat exactly what you want and get it within seconds. Same thing on the recruiting side right now. And we've. I've talked about this, right? You know, you can figure out where your pizza is when you order Domino, but when you put your resume into a recruiting system, you have no idea where it is. My pizza is in the oven. My pizza is out for delivery. But where the hell is my resume? So I think also in this experience, a chatbot overlay for the recruiting experience is going to be key, right? What is your name? What are you looking for? What position are you applying for? Upload your Resume, connect your LinkedIn, hit submit. Boom, Done. No forms, no filling out a form, connecting your LinkedIn, then it asking you to upload your resume. Then it asking you for all your information again than your firstborn. So I really believe that the future of HR technologies, wherever you are in the HR technology landscape, is going to be chat bonds. That's my quick drop. We'll see you next time.
