In 2016, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella declared that “Bots are the new apps.”1 The world at the time was riding a wave of optimism around what chatbots would be able to do. It was clear that messaging applications were growing faster than social media, and users were suffering from app fatigue.2
Chatbots looked like the ideal way for companies to position themselves where users were (i.e., within messaging applications). In addition, since adding a chatbot was as simple as adding any other contact to your messaging app, it meant that you didn’t have to download and install something separate. ...
