The Beginner’s Guide For Startups – Chatbots Works and Importants

Introduction

A chatbot is a true magic, chatbots are highly productive and are proven to proffer excellent customer service, these AI-powered virtual assistants would act as the turning point of the tech industry that will open a new door for all the companies to interact with their clients. They are swift, sociable, provide answers to the questions and are available at all times, due to this reason the number of online business integrating these chatbots is increasing every day. Users also find it helpful as they get instant support for their queries. So, let us understand in detail how these chatbots work.

What is a Chatbot ?

A Chatbot is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software program that encourage conversation when a human user interconnect with an interface, it responds according to the user’s questions and commands. It can be in two forms either in auditory form such as Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa etc. or in the text form like most of the chatbots which popup on your desktop whenever you open a website which has a message box at its bottom.

A chatbot translates the words and phrases of the user’s command and then respond with a programmed message. But there are certain advanced chatbots which use machine learning that can understand the context of the command and also analyze the past information to provide more relevant and natural responses. Google Duplex, is one of the best examples of machine learning in chatbots.

How a chatbot works ?

In General, a Chatbot works on three classification methods

1) Pattern Matching

Chatbots make use of pattern matching technique in which it first group the text and then produce a relevant response from the clients.

Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) is a typical structured model to create human interfaces for the implementation of patterns which can simply understand and get back with a suitable response from the clients.

For example-

“

User Input– What are the timings of the train?

    Term – “timings”

    Term – “train”

    Chatbot– Which train timing you want to know?

    User Input– Chandigarh to Delhi

    Term – “Chandigarh”

    Term –  “Delhi”

    Chatbot– Following are the train timings- 7:20AM, 12:10PM, 4:50PM

”

2) Natural Language Understanding

Natural Language Understanding (NLU) directly allows a human-computer interaction, NLU is assigned to communicate with untrained individuals and to understand their intent, which means that NLU goes far beyond understanding words and interpreting the meaning. NLU is even programmed with the ability to understand the meaning of the phrase in spite of common human errors like mispronunciations or interchanged letters or words.

3) Natural Language Processing

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the technology used to assist the computers to understand the human’s natural language. It is similar to teach a computer that how humans communicate, which is not an easy task to perform. It is a branch of artificial intelligence that deals with the interconnection between computers and humans using the natural language.

The eventual objective of NLP is to read, decode, understand, and to make sense of the human languages in a manner that is worth.

Where are the chatbots ?

There are various application programming interface (API) service providers for creating chat bots. And most of these are working on to proffer natural language programming (NLP) APIs.

Currently, some of the major APIs used by developers all over the world include the following:

1) Facebook Messenger API

Send and receive messages using a Facebook Messenger API, the Messenger platform does not require any payment to use. It is meant for businesses to manage inquiries from their customers. Once you develop your experience for the customers you interact with, you can then leverage Ads to bring people to your experience, like for example Click-to-Messenger Ads or Inbox Ads.

2) Slack Bot API

Enable conversations between users and apps in Slack by building bots through Slack API, A bot is the same as a regular app: it can access the same range of APIs and can perform all of the magical things that a Slack App can do. But when you build a bot for your Slack App, your bot can send DMs, it can be mentioned by users, it can post messages or upload files, and it can be invited to channels.

3) Telegram Bot API

This API allows the user to connect bots to Telegram system. Telegram Bots are exceptional accounts that do not require an additional phone number to set up. These accounts serve as an interface for code running somewhere on the user’s server. Bot developers can also make use of Telegram Payments API to accept payments from Telegram users around the world.

4) Skype Bot API

Skype bots enable exclusive cards with quick actions, provides real time audio and video which can be used 1:1 or in a group. The easiest way to get started is to follow the steps on the Microsoft Bot Framework. Bots registered using the Microsoft Bot Framework are automatically provisioned for Skype.

There are various other deployment channels available on Android and iOS (via SMS), and even through Email. Different developers and software companies have come with several Bot API’s that can be integrated across different platforms.

Why are chatbots Important ?

1) Automated Customer Assistance

Chatbot is the best engaging tool to answer the similar set of questions asked by the customer, which makes it easy for variety of businesses to keep a track of customer’s requirements, therefore chatbots can be helpful for taking the load off from the customer support team.

2) 24*7 Service Accessibility

Chatbots are available around the clock, which makes it easier for the business and as well as for the customers to request an order or get quotes for the service all within the chatbot, this helps the businesses to target the customers easily, providing them with relevant information irrespective of time

3) Cheap Development cost

One of the most significant benefit, that the development of chatbot is less expensive as compared to the development of the application, chatbot provides overall better experience to the customers, which makes it worth of every penny being invested in it.

4) Easy-to-use service

Chatbots are one stop solution to communication, according to a survey 55% of customers prefer chatbot to talk to a business as it is a well-established system to communicate, this simple interface practice can increase the sales of the company and could increase their customer base.

5) Save the Human Resources

Chatbots are the perfect replacement of the human resource for speaking, doing uninteresting and basic analytical tasks, as it will never get tired of providing service of the customers, this will reduce the overall cost of the customer support.

Wind-up

In the recent years there has been a lot of controversy that rather bots will succeed or will fail in the near future, the answer to this question in my opinion is simple, Chatbots were designed to reduce the work load of customer service and Chatbots have been successful in providing the same, Chatbots have been extremely helpful in the service industry and has enhanced customer experience as well. We at Appwrk IT Solutions, have been working on different platforms such as-

1) Kore.ai

2) IBM Watson

3) Dialogflow

To provide a superior and secure end to end solution to develop, design, test and deploy AI-powered chatbots. Hope you had a good read. To know more about chatbots, Reach out to us at Appwrk IT Solutions.