Introduction and smart agents
Anyone who has a smartphone bursting with downloaded apps is a rare breed – and getting rarer. Apps are on the wane. According to analysts at Comscore, most people (65%) aren't downloading apps at all, and get by with whatever comes pre-installed on phones.
Not that apps aren't being used. They are, but we're now in a one-app world; 42% of people spend most of their time on a single app.
We'll soon see a paradigm shift in terms of where people get their information from. By 2020, smart agents and virtual personal assistants (VPAs) will handle 40% of mobile interactions, and the post-app era will be in full swing.
"We are witnessing a shift from apps to new advanced forms of using artificial intelligence to create smart agents," says Mark Armstrong, European MD of global app development platform Progress. "They can positively and autonomously generate the next decision or suggestion."
He adds: "Autonomous decision-making will be taking place on a grander scale, and involves an ecosystem of complex data sets acted on dynamically, and based on user-preferences." With that kind of tech on the horizon, apps are beginning to look archaic.
What and when is the post-app era?
It depends who you ask. "This is not really about replacing apps," says Nils Lenke, Director of Research, Nuance Communications. "What you will see is new Internet of Things (IoT) software platforms appearing in addition to apps, and you will also see cloud-based systems … as long as there are smartphones and tablets, there will be apps." For Lenke, post-app is about pairing-up devices, but for many companies, the mobile web is already replacing apps.
"Mobile marketers face a constant dilemma whether to create an app or a website," says James Rosewell, founder and CEO of 51Degrees, a device detection company. Why create bespoke, native apps for myriad platforms and devices when a single-codebase website will do?
"Mobile websites can offer the same functionality as apps for a fraction of the cost, are easier to maintain, and can be more profitable," says Rosewell, adding that it's easy to deliver a personalised experience for every visitor by detecting the device accessing the website. "It's the obvious choice." However, there are other reasons why apps are losing their shine.
Sneaker tracking and app crawling
Another cause of the demise of apps is Google's recent use of 'sneaker' tracking, which allows its algorithms to find and index data stored within apps. "This effectively streams content direct from an app without the user having to download the app itself," says Nick Braund, Head of Technology and Innovation at PHA Media. "App developers will need to continue to evolve, as Google is doing, in order to stave off this attack and entice similar download levels that we have seen to date – approximately 185 billion in the past year," says Braund.
This is a big shift for app developers. "Making apps searchable is now a do or die tactic," says Pete Trainor, Director of Human Centred Design at Nexus Design. "If they can't be crawled, they won't be found."
What are smart agents and virtual personal assistants?
Think a supercharged Siri for whom saying 'Here's what I found on the web' would be tantamount to self-deletion. While using Siri ties you to a device and its manufacturer, in the post-app Internet of Things era there will be many specialised assistants available. Nuance is now providing toolkits and cloud-based platforms that help developers create their own assistants using Nuance's automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech, and soon, natural language comprehension tech.
"General-purpose assistants like Siri promise to solve many different problems for you, and while the list of supported domains keeps growing, the user's challenge is that when making a query, they are uncertain whether they can expect Siri to be helpful and add real value, or whether the query will just end in a web search," says Lenke.
In the future, assistants won't be focused on just one device, their abilities and limitations will be clearer, and they will reside in different places – some on the cloud, some embedded, some hybrid.
"Smart agents differ from things like Siri in that product and service companies will ultimately be behind them, with tailored customer services," says Matt Mould, Technology Enablement Lead, Slalom Consulting. "One of the new battlegrounds will be which complete smart agent service do I use and subscribe to?"
A world without apps?
Smart agents and productivity
Gartner predicts that by year-end 2016, more complex purchasing decisions – such as where parents buy back-to-school equipment – will be made autonomously by digital assistants. That kind of spending will soon reach $2 billion (around £1.3 billion, AU$2.8 billion) annually.
"That translates to roughly 2.5% of mobile users trusting assistants with $50 a year," says Armstrong, who thinks it's significant, and that businesses will begin to partner with those in the supply chain to collaborate and deliver ultra-personalised, real-time offerings from which the digital assistant can then consciously choose between. "This may mean that businesses build their own digital assistants and platform offerings or chose to integrate their data with existing or new artificial intelligence tools," says Armstrong.
Expect smart agents to appear in the workplace, too, serving up information for employees on appointments, project priorities, productivity and software choice based on how you're interacting with your smartphone, desktop PC and the cloud.
How will banks use smart agents?
Got a query about your account? You can currently call, login to your account on a website, open an app, or use web chat to speak to a customer support agent. That's all about to change.
"Over the next 18 months we'll see single point of contact digital assistants used to triage people through to the correct answer to their problem," says Trainor, who thinks it's akin to every customer of a major bank having a personal banking assistant in their pocket.
"Instead of hunting, you just ask, and your next best action – a piece of content, a balance transfer, a payment to a provider, a phone number to call – is given straight to you," he says. "That's the next generation of concierge banking, and it's going to be facilitated by artificial intelligence-driven personal agents and virtual personal assistants."
VPAs and machine learning
Next-gen VPAs go way beyond basic keyword searches, such as the Xerox-owned WDS, an intelligent, virtual customer care agent that can understand, diagnose and solve customer queries in the same way a human agent would. The cloud-based, learning WDS Virtual Agent's avatar, tone and manner can be changed to suit the brand, but its unique selling point is that it taps into data that's already in call centres about customer sentiment, described symptoms, problem types, root causes and the techniques agents use to resolve problems.
The result? It's using the very latest customer data, and it knows the newest issues and problems that customers are facing. "Digital care tools often lag behind the intelligence that resides in the contact centre, with outdated content or no awareness of new problems. Our research in artificial intelligence is changing this," explains Jean-Michel Renders, Senior Scientist at XRCE. "With our machine learning technology, the WDS Virtual Agent has the ability to learn how to solve new problems as they arise."
How should the IT industry prepare for the post-app era?
Realise the pivotal role that artificial intelligence will play in how we will all navigate information is what the IT industry should do – and quickly. Much of that is about embracing new IT skills. "Finding new types of skills to employ will be crucial," says Trainor. "People who understand cognitive computing and complex data structuring are important." He also suggests bringing more psychologists in-house to help create effective personalities for VPAs.
"Open source projects and investing in skills is the answer," says Mould. "The biggest software giants have all learnt this lesson and, as a result, their products and services serve a much wider ecosystem."
A world without apps?
The post-app world is fast approaching, but don't expect a world without apps. "Apps will exist and evolve in some shape or form, and smart agents and VPAs will become more like the search engines that get people to them," says Trainor. "Virtual personal assistants will create a better connected digital world, rather than replace it."
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