• 🕹 Chatbots
  • 🔥 Popular

Chatbots: Everything you need to know

You probably already interacted with a chatbot, whether you know it or not. For example, you are searching for a product via computer, and a window pops up on the screen asking whether you need help.

 

A computer program that simulates human dialog, allowing people to interact with digital devices like they were communicating with a real person – yes, we are talking about chatbot.

 

A chatbot is increasingly being used to handle simple tasks in both B2B and B2C environments.

How a Chatbot Works

A chatbot is using natural language through messaging applications, mobile apps, websites, or the telephone. Chatbot performs two different tasks:

 

User request analysis 

 

User request analysis is the first task a chatbot performs. It analyzes the request of a user to identify his intent and to extract relevant entities. Only by understanding the user’s request will you be able to provide the correct answer.

 

Returning the response

 

After identifying the user’s intent, the chatbot provides the most appropriate response for the specific request. The answer may be a predefined and generic text from a knowledge base containing different answers or data stored in enterprise systems.

 

The answer may also be a contextualized piece of info based on the data user has provided or the result of an action that the chatbot performed by interacting with one or more backend applications.

Why are chatbots important?

A chatbot is one of the most promising and advanced expressions of interaction between machines and humans. Chatbot represents the evolution of a Question-Answering system leveraging NLP – Natural Language Processing.

 

It streamlines interactions between services and people, improving customer experience. At the same time, chatbots offer companies new opportunities to enhance operational efficiency and customer engagement by reducing the cost of customer service.

 

We call a chatbot solution successful if it can perform both of these tasks functionally. Human support plays a central role here; human intervention is critical in training, configuring, and optimizing the chatbot system.

Which Chatbot Application is Right for Your business?

There are different tools and approaches that you can use to develop a chatbot. Combining various Artificial intelligence forms such as machine learning, natural language processing, and semantic understanding could be the best option.

Examples of chatbot use

Chatbot use is rising, both in the consumer markets and business. Between advanced technology and a societal transition to more passive communication, chatbots help fill a niche that telephone calls used to fill.

 

Chatbots have been used in online games and instant messaging apps for many years but recently have segued into B2C and B2B services and sales.

 

In sales, brands can use them to assist consumers in purchasing online by answering simple product questions or providing valuable information that the consumer could later search for, including availability and shipping price.

 

Chatbots are also used in assisting service agents and service departments in answering repetitive requests. Once a conversation gets too complexed, a chatbot will transfer it to a regular human service agent.

IT news and latest trends delivered to your inbox! 📬

Enter your e-mail below and subscribe to receive latest updates from our blog.

    E-MAIL