An introduction to AI chatbots

Chatbots have evolved from simple messaging applications to become one of the most revolutionary implementations of artificial intelligence. In this chatbot guide, you’ll discover the capabilities of modern chatbots, as well as the many roles they can fulfill within a business or organization.

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What is a chatbot in artificial intelligence?

An artificial intelligence chatbot is a computer program capable of understanding and replicating human communication. AI chatbots can be used through any major messaging application, where they can handle multiple customer interactions at once.

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Chatbot conversations have become the backbone of modern customer service. Major tech companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon use chatbots to offer the best user experiences. 

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‍The difference between bot and conversational AI

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What is the purpose of a chatbot?

Chatbots simulate human language. This allows people to interact with computerized systems as if they were talking to a real person. Chatbots can be programmed for an expansive range of services and are exceptionally useful in all kinds of industries.

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The implementation of chatbot services can help users in a wide variety of ways, including the following: 

• Resolve complaints and problems via on-demand customer support
• Offer quick answers during an emergency
• Get detailed explanations of complex subjects
• Connect end-users with human agents
• Purchase items and pay bills
• Enable communication with multiple brands using a single software solution
• Facilitate access to mailing lists and news services
• Make reservations at restaurants, hotels, and similar businesses
• AI-led health chatbots can provide education and incentivize healthy habits
• Provide users with recommendations based on their personal preferences

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Types of AI chatbots

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Rule-based chatbots

Also known as button or menu-based chatbots, rule-based chatbots are the simplest type of chatbot software in today’s AI marketplace. These chatbots handle customer interactions via decision trees. This method consists of users being instructed to make decisions by selecting options from a list. The AI itself may not understand to concepts it is communicating, but it has been given instructions on how to react based on user input. 

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Although they are easy to deploy, rule-based chatbots offer very limited functionality. These chatbots are slow and unreliable when compared to their smarter counterparts. More often than not, user conversations with rule-based chatbots fail to provide the desired answers, leading to frustration and discontent. A badly-implemented rule-based chatbot may be a serious hindrance to customer satisfaction.

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Keyword recognition-based chatbots

A keyword recognition-based chatbot works by being aware of specific keywords. These chatbots can read and understand user conversations up to a certain degree. Then, AI technology is used to determine what the appropriate response should be. The accuracy of keyword recognition-based chatbots depends on the complexity of the customer conversations they’re trying to comprehend. If there are many keyword redundancies between similar questions, this may cause the chatbot to produce an unsatisfactory answer.

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Contextual chatbots

These are the latest and greatest AI-powered chatbots. By using advanced AI technology known as machine learning, contextual chatbots can leverage natural language processing (NLP). This competency provides the AI bot with voice recognition, speech-to-text conversion, and many other revolutionary capabilities. 

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Contextual chatbot technology allows businesses and organizations to offer end-users a personalized experience. It also provides professionals in many fields with avant-garde virtual assistants, capable of following directions and handling mundane tasks. Not only are these bots capable of having human-like conversations, but their machine learning capacities help them learn from chat logs and other data, thus improving the AI as time goes by.

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Why are AI chatbots important?

AI chatbots offer surefire solutions to problems that have existed since the dawn of telecommunications. Chatbots improve the availability of information while also providing real-time assistance without the need for human intervention. Intelligent conversational AI is the future of online business conversations.

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Chatbots offer benefits that are unattainable through other communication channels, such as increased speed and availability. Through the use of chatbots, businesses can provide users with customer service around the clock while also gathering customer data they can use for the improvement of operations, marketing strategies, and much more. 

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How does an AI chatbot work?

AI-driven chatbots implement natural language processing (NLP) technology to interpret knowledge, recognize sentence structure, and answer questions. Chatbots are fed data related to the tasks they are meant to fulfill, which they use to learn and improve their functionality. 

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Step 1: Leverage customer data

Before a chatbot service can be built, one must first determine what kind of customer experiences it will be required to create. The best way to achieve this is by gathering data on potential customers. It’s important to know who your customers are, what their needs are, and what words they are more likely to use when expressing themselves. Knowledge about the needs and desires of customers will help create the most accurate and reliable customer service software. 

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Established businesses already possess a wealth of customer data. Users share valuable insights about themselves through social media and other communication channels. This data can be leveraged to understand customer intent and develop customer journey maps. Analysis of different milestones of the customer journey provides businesses with a better understanding of how to maximize the appeal of AI-customer conversations. 

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Customer intent data gathered from journey maps will help establish: 

• What recurring problems or inconveniences drive customers away
• What challenges can be handled by AI without the assistance of a human agent
• The type of conversational experiences that maximize customer satisfaction
• What kind of requests are most likely to be made by customers
• How customers report incidents
• Key questions customers have about a brand’s products or services
• What products can generate the highest volume of customer interactions

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Step 2: Determine the ideal chatbot platform

Once the necessary type of customer conversation is clear, it’s time to plan and decide how the chatbot is going to satisfy customer needs. Chatbots are meant to guide potential customers throughout the customer journey, so they must be ready to handle different operations seamlessly. 

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The ways a chatbot can meet customer expectations include:

• Narrow scope: When it comes to the conversational potential of AI, a less-is-more approach is more beneficial. A chatbot must always provide correct answers and follow an agreeable conversational flow. Instead of drowning customers in a sea of information, a narrow scope helps a chatbot maintain positive customer experiences.

• Consistency: Since a virtual agent is able to simulate human speech, it can also give the semblance of a personality. However, a chatbot’s disposition must align with brand values. The AI’s tone and choice of words must be meticulously formulated to avoid it feeling fake or inconsistent.  

• 24/7 availability: One of the main advantages conversational AI has when compared to traditional customer service teams is the software’s ability to remain perpetually active. Customers can grow impatient waiting for business hours to interact with a brand so having a customer service representative that is able to provide assistance around the clock is a prime asset for any company. 

• Identifying customer intent: Chatbots are trained to decipher customer queries with pinpoint accuracy. Furthermore, chatbots learn from the interactions they have with people, making them more effective the more they speak with customers.

• Streamlining customer experiences: AI chatbots can provide answers instantaneously and keep a professional tone through and through. Customers appreciate smooth conversational flows and are more disposed to interact with a brand if they enjoy their time talking to their chatbots. 

• Multiple language support: In today’s globalized marketplace, companies can access new business opportunities without the need to travel or even learn a second language. Advanced AI platforms are able to communicate in various languages. International customers prefer dealing with brands that talk to them in their mother tongue and chatbots can do that with the fluency of a local. ‍

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The roles and customer outcomes of conversational AI

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Step 3: Assess chatbot effectiveness and plan improvements

Just as a person isn’t capable of doing trigonometry if they don’t understand arithmetics, a chatbot must learn how to behave in controlled environments before it is able to handle real human conversations. Bot metrics should be put to the test by staff members and select users before deploying them in real-world scenarios. Testing a chatbot is also useful to discover factors that can negatively impact the user experience. Loopholes, bugs, and new intents may be discovered, and these in turn can be used by chatbot builders to improve their creations.

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Step 4: Deploy the chatbot service

A chatbot service may be deployed from a vast assortment of communication channels, including Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Telegram. One can also integrate a chatbot into their own website. Launching your new chatbot for the world to see may be an exciting moment, but it is not the last time you’ll have to monitor and manage its activity. Chatbots can be improved indefinitely. This means that a company that decides to invest in the continual enhancement of it chatbot will have a considerable competitive advantage. 

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What AI do chatbots use?

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The particular subset of AI used by modern chatbots is known as natural language processing (NLP). This competency combines linguistics and computer science to boost the ability of computers to understand and employ human language. 

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Linguistic intuition in NLP is developed through the creation of a language model. Millions of data points are used simultaneously to train machine learning algorithms. Data from chat transcripts can be implemented to give the AI hypothetical tasks to complete. For example, sentences can be presented to the AI with missing words and the software must complete them. 

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There are two main subsets of NLP: 

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Natural language understanding (NLU)

This comprehends the use of syntactic and semantic analysis of data to find its meaning. AI uses NLU to establish concrete word, phrase, and sentence structures. Certain words such as “current”, “right”, “pen”, or “book” can have exceptionally different meanings depending on the sentence they’re being used in. While humans use these words without giving them a second thought, they can generate misunderstandings that affect the outcome of chatbot conversations.

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NLU allows AI to grasp consumer attitudes and perform sentiment analysis. This allows brands to monitor customer feedback with greater accuracy. Thanks to NLU, companies can gauge their reputations as well as the success of various products and services.

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Natural Language Generation (NLG)

While NLU’s competency is to allow machines to learn and adapt, NLG gives them the ability to communicate. NLG has a large assortment of applications, from text-to-speech conversion to the automatic summarization of documents.

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Are NLP chatbots any better?

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Chatbot development tools

Create the fastest, smartest, and most reliable chatbots with Botpress. This all-in-one AI chatbot tool allows chatbot builders to design and fabricate the most powerful virtual assistants. Botpress allows users to seamlessly connect with messaging channels and deploy avant-garde built-in AI chatbots.

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