New research from text analytics specialists, Warwick Analytics, shows that 59% of businesses who have a chatbot are unsatisfied with its performance. 551 professionals involved in the development or management of chatbots were surveyed by Warwick Analytics.

When discussing the technical challenges respondents faced trying to improve their own chatbots, the most common issues were improving containment rates (90%), reducing errors (83%), and developing the responses for the chatbot (79%).

More significantly, an overwhelming 93% believed that human validation and/or curation was important to maintain and improve the performance of their chatbots.

Dan Somers, CEO of Warwick Analytics, says: “Achieving the right level of human-in-the-loop input is key for chatbot owners and managers. Human validation is required for accuracy and improvement but if too much is required then a business may as well have a human service desk. It’s all about finding the right technology that minimises the human intervention required but still increases accuracy.”

In addition, 21% of respondents who were yet to deploy a chatbot said it was because the performance of chatbots wasn’t acceptable in their opinion.