Bots, whether Russian or American made, can also pose as virtual assistants ready to help an existing sales team, or build one where there wasn’t one before. Kochin created bots as sales assistants for the first time in January 2015. Ocher was branching out, but had no sales team. According to Gartner, up to 25% of businesses could be using virtual assistants in customer service within the next few years. For step one sales and cold calls, or even basic information gathering for sales teams looking to build a book of business, virtual assistants are becoming the norm.

Source: Forbes February 09, 2020 13:00 UTC