Financial chat bots are underrated, and here’s why.
In this blog post, we discuss the underrated potential of financial chat bots, our collaboration with OptionsFamBot, and why chat bots are becoming increasingly popular.
At OpenBB, earlier this year we joined forces with OptionsFamBot. This was a bot that had a reach of over 1 Million users on Discord.
Today, OpenBB Bot is one of our more powerful products and I still think a lot of people are sleeping on it.
What is a chatting bot platform?
According to ChatGPT:
“A chatbot platform is a software service or tool that enables the creation, management, and deployment of chatbots. These platforms typically provide a variety of tools and features for building, testing, and deploying chatbots, as well as options for integrating chatbots with other systems or services. Some chatbot platforms are designed to support the development of chatbots for specific industries or use cases, such as customer service, e-commerce, or marketing. Others are more general purpose, and can be used to build chatbots for a wide range of applications.”
Why are chat bots not engaging?
I believe that one of the reasons for this is because people usually associate chatbots with customer service or marketing. Not as a finalized product but as a feature.
If I ask ChatGPT about this, the main reasons are: Lack of personalized conversation, limited capabilities, poor design and high error rate.
But wait.. ChatGPT is LITERALLY a chat bot. Everything happens through a chat interface, which shows that you can build a successful product as a bot, as long as it adds enough value to the user.
One could argue that ChatGPT is not done in an established chatting platform, and that is partially true. The reason I say partially is because ChatGPT has an API, so developers can use it to develop their own chatting bots and deploy it in whatever chatting app they are interested in.
Examples of good chatting platforms
I believe that Discord is in the forefront here due to: Free, easy to use, allows customizing servers with roles/channels/permissions, high-quality voice chat, strong communities.
A testament to this is the fact that midjourney has built a successful chat bot that generates images from text prompts using AI, SOLELY relying on Discord. If you go into their website, the button “Join the Beta” takes you to their Discord server which has over 7 million users!
As far as I know, this is the only example of a company that distributes their product solely through a chatting platform in a successful way.
Why are chat bots getting more popular?
In my opinion, there are a few factors why chat bots are becoming more popular:
Interactivity
The bots are becoming more interactive, almost working like an application within a chatting platform.
Speed
The speed of interaction is increasing over time, making the experience more seamless.
Customization
The level of customization allowed for these bots keeps on increasing.
Automation
You are starting to be able to create automated workflows. Not only for you, but for entire communities.
Notifications
It has notification features that can ping you similarly as if a friend sent you a message.
Monetization
You are going to start to be able to monetize products through it.
Community
You can use it within a server with friends/colleagues, and unlock a better user experience.
Standardization
The product can work similarly on multiple chatting platforms. By keeping the same method of interaction / commands, the user is allowed to pick their favourite chatting platform or even use it in more than 1.
Accessibility
These chatting platforms are developed for all devices and operating systems, making it a very powerful distribution system.
Why Finance?
I’ve spoke with over 100 people in the financial world in 2022. Over 50 are Bloomberg users. From those, 90% agree that their chatting feature is the most attractive feature — some of them going further and saying that that is the reason why they pay for it.
But what if you didn’t need to pay $26 k / year for such feature. What if you could pay to have access to servers with big names in the industry? Or what if you could create your own servers? What if while you were talking with Cathie Wood about ARK performance, you could also access financial data from ARK to back up your arguments? All this while not leaving the chat.
This is the reason why I believe that financial chatting bots will become popular in 2023. And OpenBB Bot will be leading that wave.
Try it out for free on OpenBB Discord server by using a command such as /chart TSLA and let me know what you think.