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Want to order pizza, schedule a meeting, or even find your true love?

There's a chatbot for that.

Just as apps once were the hot new thing that would solve whatever problem you had back in 2009, now we're moving into the age of chatbots.

Chatbots make life even easier for consumers. With chatbots, there's no more long waits on hold to talk to a person on the phone or going through multiple steps to research and complete a purchase on websites.

Millions of people already get it. They're using chatbots to contact retailers, get recommendations, complete purchases, and much more.

Adoption of chatbots is increasing. People are discovering the benefits of chatbots.

All of this is good news for entrepreneurs and businesses because pretty much any website or app can be turned into a bot.

Now is the perfect time to hop on the bandwagon. Even I've jumped on the bandwagon with my new startup.

What's so great about chatbots?

Check out these 11 interesting examples of ways you can use chatbots right now.

1. Order Pizza

It's ridiculously easy to order pizza with the help of chatbots. You can order by texting, tweeting, voice, or even from your car.

Domino's was one of the early adopters of chatbots. Today, Domino's lets you easily build a new pizza (or reorder your favorite pizza) and track your order all from Facebook Messenger.

2. Product Suggestions

Many consumers know they want to buy some shoes, but might not have a particular item in mind. You can use chatbots to offer product suggestions based on what they want (color, style, brand, etc.)

It's not just shoes. You can replace "shoes" with any other item. It could be clothes, groceries, flowers, a book, or a movie. Basically, any product you can think of.

For example, tell H&M's Kik chatbot about a piece of clothing you have and they'll build an outfit for you.

3. Customer Support

Last year, brands including AirBnB, Evernote, and Spotify started using chatbots on Twitter to provide 24/7 customer service.

The goal of these customer support chatbots is to quickly provide answers and address customer complaints, or simply track the status of an order.

4. Weather

There are numerous weather bots to choose from. Most are pretty basic, though a few are designed to be a bit more fun.

You can use these to ask about the current conditions in your area and find out whether you should bring the umbrella before you leave for work. Some bots allow you to set regular reminders for a certain time of day.

5. Personal Finance Assistance

Chatbots make it easy to make trades, get notifications about stock market trends, track your personal finances, or even get help finding a mortgage.

Banks have created chatbots to let you check in on your account, such as your current balance and most recent transactions. And there are tax bots that help you track your business and deductible expenses.

6. Schedule a Meeting

With so many schedules to juggle, setting up meetings can be a pain. Unless you let a chatbot do the work for you.

Meekan is one such example. Simpy request a new meeting and this Slack chatbot will look at everyone's calendars to find times when everyone is available.

7. Search for & Track Flights

You can use chatbots to get some vacation inspiration. Others will let you search for and compare flights based on price and location. Kayak's chatbot even lets you book your flights and hotels entirely from inside Facebook Messenger.

Once you're all booked, there are other chatbots that will let you track current flights, wait times, delays, and more.

8. News

Chatbots help you stay up to date on the news or topics that matters to you.

You can get the latest headlines from mainstream media sources like CNN, Fox News, or the Guardian. Or you can get the latest tech headlines from TechCrunch or Engadget.

9. Find Love

A match made by chatbots? It could happen.

Instead of swiping left or right on an app, you could use Foxsy. This Messenger bot promises to help you find a "beautiful and meaningful connection with the right person."

10. Send Money

You can easily send payments to your team or friends with chatbots. All you have to do to send money on the Slack PayPal account is type /paypal send $X to @username.

That's it. Crazy simple, right?

11. Find a Restaurant

Where do you want to eat tonight? Not sure? Ask a chatbot.

Much like the product recommendation chatbots, restaurant chatbots can provide recommendations based on cuisine, location, and price range. Some chatbots will even make reservations for you or take your order online.

Summary

These are just 11 examples of how businesses are already using chatbots. There are nearly limitless possibilities for what can be done with chatbots. So don't miss out on this huge opportunity to help, engage, or sell to your customers.

A friend of mine has started up a sweet technology company all by himself. He's launched a few projects and soon expects serious university and corporate collaborations. In a sign of imminent success, he recently hired an engineer to write the grants.

Except it is not working that way. The engineer, a young man who comes from a prestigious background, is all over the place. Literally. As in, making appointments at the university, critiquing the corporate partners, attending meetings to which he was not invited.

My friend, the owner, has tried only one tactic: pleading. As in, "Please, I asked you not to interfere in outside projects!"

Underneath this, I suspect, the engineer harbors a profound immaturity that will be hard to deal with. But we must try.

It is almost as if the young man is looking for some sort of personal show-down. He just continues to walk outside the lines.

Wait a minute--here's a serious question: What lines? As tempting as it might be to wring the engineer's neck, perhaps it is easier at this point to blame the process, rather than the people.

The Blame Name

So what process can we blame?

It turns out, as I asked my friend what procedures he's used to control employee behavior, the answer is: none.

No job description. ("He knows what he has to do")

No quarterly goals. ("Build grant revenue. What else?")

No update meetings ("For two of us plus a couple of subcontractors?)

(This is without stating what is by now painfully obvious: thoughtless hiring never works out.)

Execution Needs

Here's how I would answer my friend's questions:

1. Write a simple job description.

Many people hate this phrase. OK, then call it a job expectation. What will your employee do on a day to day basis? (And, speaking of bright lines, what will he not do?) How will he report his progress formally and informally?

Discuss the job description with the engineer, and hand it to him in writing with due formality.

2. No goals? Then everything is good, right?

Oh, I see. Everything is not good, because you have not articulated, discussed and agreed on specific goals. What relationships will he foster? How many grants, yielding how much revenue? How many prospects?

Discuss the quarterly goals with the engineer, and hand it to him in writing with due formality.

3. No staff update meetings?

Let me get this straight. You have put your life into this venture, and you are not interested in learning how it is growing on a daily basis? Or how you can put your personal stamp on it?

Have a daily update meeting--the meeting itself can be informal, but the fact that your are having a daily meetup should be impressed--you got it--with due formality.

The Reaction

My purely technical reaction to my friend is: You're killin' me, Smalls. You are not using process tools to manage personality.

Which tools? I refer you to exhibits One through Three above.

These work as management tools because they help create clear expectations, clear deliverables and clear outcomes. If or when our people don't comply, the tools--and not precious brain space or risky personal conflict--provide the signal that something is wrong, and a clear indication of appropriate corrective action.

Remember that it is hard to manage personality with personality. That is, responding to a non-compliant person with a general coaching response ("please change") is not going to work. Much better to use a process that indicates what behaviors have to change, by whom, and by when.