TL;DR
- Chatbots are pre-programmed that was created to stimulate human conversation
- Chatbots can be a great assistant in helping business managing and improving their customer service
- However, there are still a lot of human’s intervention and developments to be made to improve chatbots.
Introduction
In the last few decades, humans have been fascinated with AI-driven technology. With the explosion growth rate of messaging apps, companies are incorporating chatbots to their apps due to the advantages they offer.
In this article, we will look at chatbots and how they can help to revolutionize the modern messaging apps.
What are chatbots?
Chatbots are AI computer programs designed to stimulate human conversation through messaging interfaces.
Chatbots can range from some simple programs that answer a simple question with a single-line response to something as sophisticated as learning and sending personalized messages to each individual.
How do chatbots work?
The operation of chatbots may be broken down into three easy steps: comprehend, take action, and then answer.
To be more specific, a bot uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to understand the inquiry when it receives it. The bot then looks for the relevant data and formulates the appropriate reply.
Chatbots nowadays use a wide range of technology, including machine learning, NLP, and deep learning. However, the two core technologies of every chatbot are NLP and AI. Instead of utilizing the same structure repeatedly, which could unintentionally change the meaning of the responses, chatbots can now interpret the knowledge and enhance their capacity to learn from prior interactions.
Top 5 types of chatbots
Menu/ button-based chatbots
Menu chatbots offer the users to choose from several options under the form of buttons or menus. They are the most common and basic types of chatbots available in the market.
However, the menu chatbots still lack some functions when answering FAQs with too many variables or too much information.
Keyword recognition-based chatbots
Keyword recognition-based chatbots are programmed to spot specific keywords in the sentence and reply with an appropriate response through data from the internet by using AI and NLP technology.
However, there will be situations where the chatbots cannot answer the question because it cannot find the keywords.
AI-powered contextual chatbots
AI-powered contextual chatbots can be seen as an upgrade of the keyword recognition-based version. The bot uses AI and machine learning to interact with users.
The AI-powered contextual chatbots are context aware and can recall previous interaction to improve itself. The more interactions and conversations a bot performs, the better it gets.
However, the contextual chatbots are quite expensive to deploy.
The hybrid model
Hybrid chatbot is a harmonious blend of chatbot and live chat, which means a human will assist the bot in providing personalized replies when needed.
First, the bot will answer the question based on the way it is programmed, this way, the question can be answered as quickly as possible. However, if the question is too complicated, a customer service agent will come up and intervene to take over the task.
Voice bots
A voice chatbot is an AI communication tool that can capture and translate vocal input into its program language. Users can interact with a voice chatbot via voice commands and receive relevant responses both in words or spoken forms.
4 huge benefits of using chatbots
Instant Response
One of the major advantages that make every company want to employ a chatbot is that, unlike humans, bots can respond to customer’s questions instantly. This can help improve the average response time for a business, thereby enhancing customer’s satisfaction.
24/7 Availability
Customers do not need to wait to contact the customer services during the working hours when they have a 24/7 chatbot available at their service. Chatbots do not take any time off and do not get tired as humans, they are always ready to answer questions and help to reduce work stress during peak hours.
Multilingual
A chatbot with the right program can answer customer’s questions in every language possible. This can significantly help the business expand its reach to the international market and increase its sales volume.
Efficient labor work
Thanks to the automation of chatbots, customers can ask and book any orders instantly without human help. Complex tasks therefore can be left to the expert. This can improve the efficiency of the company while also reducing the work stress of employees as chatbots take one more thing off their hands.
Some drawbacks of chatbots
High cost
A chatbot can be very expensive to install.
Custom development of a chatbot can cost anywhere between $20,000 to over $80,000. The price would include everything from overall design to the integration of data analysis and machine learning, etc.
There are also some low cost options. However, they tend to come with limited features.
Moreover, with technology constantly changing and evolving, companies need to upgrade their chatbots to meet the modern’s requirements. Hence, the cost of using the chatbots also increases overtime.
Limited functionality
No matter how advanced and complicated the chatbots can be, for the time being, they can only respond to simple questions that have been set by humans. Solving other complex concerns of customers is out of the question for chatbots.
High-maintenance
In the end, chatbots are just machines, they need to be maintained in order to function well. If left without any frequent updates, the chatbots may respond differently due to unexpected bugs and vulnerabilities, and may damage the company’s image.
Furthermore, they need to be fed with new and updated data, keywords, content to answer queries relevantly.
Limited personalization
Chatbots can only use information from the available database from previous interaction or sales history to provide appropriate recommendations and suggestions for the customers, resulting in the lack of personalization.
Misunderstanding
Even people can misunderstand each other’s words, not to mention that a chatbot is not a human being. When the customer’s demand is not clear, a bot may experience confusion and fail to answer the question. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of chatbots.
This may result in poor customer service and affect the company’s reputation.
Popular platforms with chatbots
Duolingo
Duolingo is one of the most famous language-learning apps in the world with over 37 million active users in 2021. The site’s bots are famous for their engaging and entertaining responses. Along with answering the user’s questions, it also helps them learn to practice their skills and knowledge along the way.
Heek
Heek is a conversational website builder. It helps create websites simply by chatting over text and answering questions about the site you want to build.
Ready
Ready is a powerful messaging application that enables users to communicate with each other and swap cryptocurrencies in a secure manner. Ready Assistant Chatbots are available to help you easily manage group chat, facilitating smooth operations and enjoyable conversations.
Final thoughts
Chatbots are a great tool to help companies manage their customer service effectively while also reducing employees’s work stress. However, since chatbots are just machines and AI technology is still in its early phase, chatbots still require a lot of human intervention to function at its best capacity.
