Chatbots are quickly becoming one of the hottest trends on the internet. While bots are great for automating repetitive tasks, they can also provide great customer service—if properly architected.
They are the bridge between the two, bridging the gap between humans and machines and letting us communicate intelligently. They are smart, fast, flexible, and engage humans, making them feel comfortable and instilling a sense of personalization.
We use chatbots in a few microservices, which fully replace user interfaces. This has proved to be very effective over the last year or so.
But what about building them?
It takes a lot of effort to build fully functional chatbots because the core lies in Natural Language Processing (or NLP), which is an AI mechanism for building chatbots.
However, chatbots’ benefits aren’t limited to customer-facing business aspects. By improving company-wide efficiency and productivity, chatbots considerably reduce operational costs and boost market growth.
Research sometime back found that by 2022, they could save businesses in the digital banking and healthcare sectors over $8 billion per year. And traditional banking institutions can save up to $1 trillion by 2030, cutting overhead costs by 22%.
But those aren’t the only industries that are set to profit.
To make money from chatbots, you must teach them how to make recommendations. This means you must teach them to understand what kinds of things people want to buy, what features are best, and what words and phrases trigger the best results.
You also need to teach them how to predict what’s coming next, so they can suggest something that hasn’t already been suggested and can respond with something relevant. This requires training them to talk to each other, to themselves, and to other programs.
The final principle on this list is also relatively well known: provide value. A chatbot’s value is the benefit or service it offers its customers.
As with all forms of online communication, chatbots need to be designed to make their user experience as smooth and pleasant as possible.
If your bot is poorly designed or fails to deliver value, users may leave before you realize that your bot isn’t working.
Chatbots are basically full-request chat applications that can respond to specific questions or perform specific tasks. Chatbots have been around for years, but only recently have they been made easy enough for anyone to deploy.
The platform most popular for deploying chatbots is Slack. Thousands of apps are built on Slack, using the API or an app builder that can be installed through the Slack platform. You can choose from thousands of prebuilt chatbot apps or create your own.
Another platform that makes use of chatbots is DevRev. With DevRev, you can bring all of your issues and tickets to one platform. Chatbots are used to enhance the user experience. You don’t have to worry about getting notified of new updates or commits.
As you plan for your bot’s launch, don’t forget about the design of your site. Will it match the aesthetics of your bot? What about your logo and visual identity? And who is your target audience? Make sure your site is ready for prime time.
So, how do you build a chatbot? Well, first, don’t confuse yourself with technical terms. Chances are, you don’t need to be an AI (Artificial Intelligence) or Machine Learning expert to develop a basic chatbot.
Most online services have a simple, easy-to-use bot framework that allows you to design a custom chatbot without understanding the basics of machine learning.
The second thing to consider is if the bot should be human-like or not. Do we need someone telling us how much we’ll save, or will the bot help us decide which offer to choose? Do we want a bot to tell us jokes or help us find a new TV show to watch? Is it more important to give people a feeling of being “in” or “human” with the bot?
This is the time to consider all of these different personality traits your chatbot could have and how they will affect your customers.
For your bot to actually be used, you need to integrate it into other apps, like messaging platforms and content creation tools, as well as platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
If you’re lucky, a company might even let you build an entire bot around their product. This can include any kind of product or service; an online store like Etsy, a social network like Facebook, or a chat tool like Slack.
If you want to design a bot that answers specific questions from your users (aka Conversational Assistants), then a good place to start would be to start building an interactive conversation.
Interactive conversations are what a conversational assistant is all about, so this would be a good starting point.
The best way to build a conversational agent is to start with simple questions, respond with simple responses, and allow the user to guide the conversation.
A good conversational agent will ask the right question based on your user’s responses, and a bad conversational agent will force the conversation in one direction or the other with no regard for the conversation flow.
In conclusion, with AI and chatbots on the rise, you should definitely learn how to build your own chatbot for free. It is becoming a more popular way to engage with prospects and convert leads into customers.
Once you have built your own chatbot, you can start looking for partners or outsourcing your bot to third-party services.
Make sure your bot has a purpose and will not cause more trouble than good. It should be designed to answer your customers’ questions when they want to talk to you, not when they need help.
Once it is set up, your bot should have access to everything it needs. This will allow your chatbot to be flexible and expandable in the future. So make sure your bot is prepared and ready to roll!
Also Read: Business Chatbot Platforms To Watch
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