I think we set the goals way to high. It seems like everyone expected "chatbots" to be in their final form right away. Currently, the best "chatbots" aren't really chatbots, but act of as sort of human backed, virtual assistant in a narrow but widening domain. For example, real estate. Most real estate companies have an insides sales agents that does lead qualification, sets appointments, etc. There's a company in the space doing this now and judging from their website, they are doing alright.
I don't see one mention of "chatbot" on their page, it's always virtual assistant. Even just checking out their marketing material it looks pretty compelling. https://research.structurely.com/customers
We made a deliberate decision not to call ourselves a chatbot, as the stigma around them is poor and didn't want to get lumped into that category.
We decided that an A.I. assistant is more aligned with our product - which is backed by humans - but a very vast majority of our conversations are handled entirely by A.I. only.
Good chatbot companies have to deliberately not call themselves chatbots. X.ai is another good example who calls their "chatbots" A.I. assistants on purpose.
https://structurely.com
I don't see one mention of "chatbot" on their page, it's always virtual assistant. Even just checking out their marketing material it looks pretty compelling. https://research.structurely.com/customers