Learning new things that could help your business can be overwhelming. If you're new to the idea of chatbots, you're in for a good read. We'll give you the basics and throw in top builders you can choose from to build your chatbots!
Table of Contents
- What Are Chatbots?
- How Does a Chatbot Work?
- What Can You Do with Chatbots?
- How Does a Chatbot Learn?
- Top 3 Chatbot Builders
- Key Takeaways...
What Are Chatbots?
Messaging has become one of the most popular means of communication in recent years. Whether it's text messages or messenger apps, it's how a lot of people prefer talking with others. Because of this rise in popularity, many businesses and organizations are beginning to develop and invest in a service called chatbots.
Chatbots are computer programs that you interact with via a chat interface. Using a chatbot is as simple as having a conversation with it. You can ask it questions or give it commands, and it'll respond to you and carry out your actions. Chatbots can be run in any number of chat apps, including Facebook Messenger, your phone's text messaging app, and most others.
How Does a Chatbot Work?
Currently, there are two types of chatbots: those that operate on a set of rules, and those that are powered by artificial intelligence.
Chatbots based on rules are fairly limited. They require you to use specific commands and phrases in order to get them to do what you want. They're also only as smart as they're programmed to be; their creators must update them in order to improve their performance.
On the other hand, chatbots using artificial intelligence can understand language. This means you don't have to use particular words or phrases; you can type more conversationally as you would a natural person. These chatbots will also get smarter as they talk with you, learning from each conversation.
Chatbots work by analyzing and identifying the intent of the user’s request to extract relevant entities, which is the most important task of a chatbot. Once the analysis is done appropriate response is delivered to the user.
Chatbots work by adopting three classification methods.
Pattern Matching
Bots utilize pattern matches to group the text and it produces an appropriate response from the clients. Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) is a standard structured model of these patterns. A bot is able to get the right answer in the related pattern. The bots react to anything relating to the correlated patterns.
Natural Language Understanding (NLU)
Natural language understanding (NLU) is the ability of the chatbot to understand a human. It is the process of converting text into structured data for a machine to understand. NLU follows three specific concepts. They are: entities, context, and expectations
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Natural Language Processing (NLP) bots are designed to convert the text or speech inputs of the user into structured data. The data is further used to choose a relevant answer. Natural language processing includes important steps such as tokenization, chatbot sentiment analysis, entity recognition, and dependency parsing.
What Can You Do with Chatbots?
Chatbots have all sorts of uses, ranging from entertainment to education to marketing your business. Some can tell you the weather, others give advice, and some merely provide a friend to talk to.
Many businesses have been developing their own chatbots to assist customers with online shopping. For example, instead of going to a company's website and searching through results to find what you want, you can simply ask a chatbot to recommend a certain item. You can even include details about the item you're looking for, as seen in the example below. The chatbot will then provide a suggestion, along with the option of purchasing it.
In addition to helping with shopping, businesses are using chatbots for customer service. When you have a question, you can talk with one to help resolve your issue. Because this technology is still in its early phases, these chatbots can usually only reply to simple requests like Where is my order? or How much do you charge for shipping? If a chatbot is unable to answer one of your questions, it can transfer the conversation to a human representative.
How Does a Chatbot Learn?
Have you ever wondered how a chatbot works? How do they do what they do so well? And most importantly, how do they learn?
If you plan on implementing a chatbot for your business or want to end your curiosity about them, a little knowledge wouldn’t hurt. Chatbots are the newest e-commerce trend. For businesses, customers are more likely to avail of your products or services if they can connect with someone via chat. It gives them easier and instant access to answers regarding their concerns.
Chatbots are tiny programs that use AI to allow understanding of human wants and guide them to providing the desired result with minimal effort from the end-users. With the rapid growth of chatbot usage, evident benefits boost business performance.
Customers always expect to find information without going through so much hassle. That tiny window chat on your site’s lower right corner is the answer. Doesn’t it amaze you when you interact with a chatbot, it immediately gives you the piece of information you need or an answer that satisfies your curiosity.
Before digging deeper into how these AI chatbots learn, there are 2 primary types of chatbots, generative and selective. Both models have their strong points and differences in learning. Knowing both models will give you a deeper understanding of how they work and how they learn.
Generative Chatbots
They learn through listening. These bots alter their word usage and syntax to match the questions thrown at them. They can make up unique responses as you speak to them. Before the bots are deployed, developers primarily set questions and answers usually from the company that will deploy them. From there, the new questions asked from the users either for tech support or customer service, these bots will analyze the intent of users’ questions and come up with their answers using their prediction based on the previous questions asked.
Selective Chatbots
Reading their history of questions and answers is how they learn. They use their system database to find the most appropriate answer for the new questions asked to see if it satisfied the user or not. For every satisfied user, the answer will be stored and marked as a success which can be used in the future.
Questions with similar words or syntax will help the bot identify the right answer to give that is more likely to work. If the user seemed to be not satisfied and asks the question again, the bot will do the same thing and find the most appropriate answer to give. With each success in Q & A, the bot gets better.
Business owners should understand that poorly executed chatbots can still fail to meet the requirements you need and offer poor service to your customers or people trying to avail services or purchase products from you. Focusing on implementing bots that will simplify the existing procedures instead of giving fancy promises will do the trick.
Top 3 Chatbot Builders
A chatbot builder is a piece of software that allows you to create your chatbots without any coding skills. This is a platform that helps brands to automate their communication with clients by setting up pre-determined scenarios. It allows businesses to welcome their website visitors, collect leads, and provide support. Whatever it is that your company needs.
Here are the top 3 best chatbot builders you can choose from,
1) TruVISIBILITY
Chatbots can manage routine work, freeing your team to dive deep into strategic tasks that generate revenue. Route visitors and customers to live staff only when needed. And building AI Chatbots to do these repetitive tasks requires no coding experience or special knowledge. If you can operate your smartphone… you can build a chatbot.
If your business relies on one or two sales superstars, your growth is limited. High-performing AI Chatbots can simulate authentic conversations of your top salespeople… and deliver that message 24/7, with consistency, at scale. They’ll also never get sick, demand a raise, or get poached by your competition. With TruVISIBILITY, you will not only create chatbots that are effective but also cost and time-efficient.
2) HubSpot
This bot creator software is suitable for small to medium-sized businesses who are looking to improve lead generation and help their marketing team.
HubSpot chatbot builder software is part of the HubSpot free CRM service. You can set your chatbot to send an automated welcome message, answer repetitive questions, and book appointments. You can also set your team’s availability to answer inquiries, so clients know when you can chat or you’re away.
3) ManyChat
This bot-building software works best for companies that are primarily based on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
You can use this chatbot maker to connect and chat with your clients and subscribers through Instagram, Telegram, and WhatsApp. It also provides email and SMS integration for your convenience.
ManyChat is a Facebook chatbot builder that offers great educational content for all the know-how and fast onboarding. It also has a structured and flexible interface to create your chatbot with a drag-and-drop editor. On top of that, you can fully customize the content of what your bot is telling your customers.
Key Takeaways...
Building your own chatbot is a relatively simple ‘code-free’ process with ready-to-use templates and drag-and-drop editors.
Ultimately, it comes down to deciding what you want your chatbot to do, and what platforms you want to use it on.
Take advantage of the free trials to test a few chatbots and see which works best for you.
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