Traditional chatbots were once the bane of our existence – but these days, most are NLP chatbots, able to understand and conduct complex conversations with their users.
NLP chatbots are powered by AI, allowing them to conduct flexible conversations in pursuit of a goal – like selling a product or troubleshooting a technical solution – instead of a brittle questionnaire style of interaction.
In this article, I'll cover everything you need to know about natural language processing AI chatbots, including:
- NLP chatbots vs. rule-based chatbots
- Common NLP terms
- Benefits of NLP chatbots
- Common use cases
- How to build your own NLP chatbot
What is an NLP chatbot?
A natural language processing (NLP) chatbot is an AI-powered conversational software designed to mimic human-like conversations with users.
NLP chatbots can be text-based or voice-based.
They use NLP to understand the intent of a message, extract necessary information, and generate a helpful response.
Many NLP chatbots are LLM agents: software powered by LLMs, but customized by a builder.
By using LLMs like OpenAI's GPT, it's easier thank you might think to biuld your own GPT chatbot.
What’s the difference between an NLP chatbot and a rule-based chatbot?
NLP chatbots use AI to mimic human conversation. Traditional chatbots – also known as rule-based chatbots – don't use AI, so their interactions are less flexible.
Rule-based chatbots are designed to strictly follow conversational rules set up by their creator.
If a user inputs a specific command, a rule-based chatbot will churn out a preformed response.
But any user query that falls outside of these rules will be unable to be answered by the rule-based chatbot.
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NLP chatbots understand natural language
NLP chatbots can, of course, understand and interpret natural language.
A user can send a message as though they were communicating with another human, and an NLP chatbot can decipher its meaning.
That includes:
- Understanding spelling and grammatical mistakes
- Determining whether a message is a question or an intention
- Registering a user’s emotion based on their language
This brings NLP chatbots far closer to the realm of natural human interaction. A rule-based chatbot can only respond accurately to a set number of commands.
NLP chatbots facilitate conversations, not just questionnaires
If a chatbot user interacts with a rule-based chatbot, any unexpected input leads to a conversational dead end.
Because of their strict programming, conversations with rule-based chatbots often feel like questionnaires: How can I help you today? Which model are you interested in? What is your budget?
Rule-based chatbots can often be replaced with a well-documented FAQ page. But since an NLP chatbot can adapt to conversational cues, it can hold a full, complex conversation with users.
NLP chatbots continuously improve
The only way for a rule-based chatbot to improve is for a programmer to add more rules.
But an NLP chatbot will improve using the data provided by its users.
The ability to improve makes an NLP chatbot better at understanding different ways to formulate questions or intent.
The more conversations it holds with users, the better its gets at understanding questions and holding a conversation.
NLP, NLU, and NLG, oh my!
Understanding NLP chatbots comes with an arsenal of acronyms. Though they’re all related, each refers to a specific aspect of communication between machines and humans.
Natural language processing
The broadest term, natural language processing (NLP), is a branch of AI that focuses on the natural language interactions between machines and humans.
NLP aims to enable machines to interpret and respond to human language in a way that is meaningful and useful.
When referring to NLP, it includes the subfields of NLU and NLG.
Natural language understanding
Natural language understanding (NLU) is a subfield of NLP.
NLU focuses on the machine’s ability to understand the intent behind human input.
NLU includes tasks like intent recognition, entity extractions, and sentiment analysis – components that allow a software to understand the text given to it by a human.
Natural language generation
Natural language generation (NLG) is another subfield of NLP.
It focuses on making the machine’s response as coherent and contextually appropriate as possible.
NLG involves content determination (deciding how to respond to a query), sentence planning, and generating the final text output from the software.
Benefits of an NLP Chatbot
Employee support
When an organization uses an NLP chatbot, they’re able to automate tasks that would otherwise be handled by employees.
A chatbot might take customer support calls, schedule meetings, or conduct analyses and then deliver the results in a report.
When employees spend less time on repetitive tasks, they’re able to focus more of their time on high-level processes – ones that require higher levels of strategy, empathy, or creativity.
Free translation
An NLP chatbot’s language capabilities include translation, allowing organizations to serve users in any language at no extra cost.
NLP chatbots are typically powered by large language models (LLMs), which can function across languages. ChatGPT alone can be used in over 80 different languages.
When bot builders use a platform to build AI chatbots, they can also build in bespoke translation capabilities.
24/7 support
One of the benefits of any chatbot is its full-time availability.
Since NLP chatbots can handle many interactions from start to finish, employees aren’t always needed to assist in individual inquiries.
Since an enterprise chatbot is always alive, that means companies can build lists of leads or service customers at any time of day.
Scalability
By taking over the bulk of user conversations, NLP chatbots allow companies to scale to a degree that would be impossible when relying on employees.
NLP chatbots can handle a large number of simultaneous inquiries, speed up processes, and reliably complete a wide range of tasks.
When aiming to scale an enterprise, AI automation is a necessity.
Integration capabilities
To build the highest-value chatbot, it should be integrated with a company’s existing systems and platforms.
An NLP chatbot is endlessly more useful if it’s able to take action into systems: updating a CRM, sending an email, notifying an employee.
This type of seamless integration into existing business processes requires a) developers to build these integrations between their chatbots and their systems, or b) the use of chatbot platforms that provide built-in integrations to common platforms.
Reduced costs
The cost-effectiveness of NLP chatbots is one of their leading benefits – they empower companies to build their operations without ballooning costs.
When properly implemented, automating conversational tasks through an NLP chatbot will always lead to a positive ROI, no matter the use case.
Best Use Cases of NLP Chatbots
Because of their flexible nature, NLP chatbots can be used in a wide variety of use cases, from enterprise chatbots to small business AI agents. You can find NLP chatbots used in:
- Financial services
- Real estate
- Education
- Hotels and restaurants
- Healthcare
- Insurance
- Airlines
- Government
But thanks to their conversational flexibility, NLP chatbots can be applied in any conversational context. They can be customized to run a D&D role-playing game, help with math homework, or act as a tour guide.
Customer support chatbots
One of the first widely adopted use cases for chatbots was customer support bots.
Customer support is a natural use case for NLP chatbots, with their 24/7 and multilingual service.
Since the days of traditional rule-based chatbots, customer support teams have offloaded the simplest calls to chatbots.
With the introduction of NLP chatbots, AI automation can take care of increasingly complex customer queries, from purchasing assistance to troubleshooting technical difficulties.
Lead generation chatbots
Many use cases for NLP chatbots exist within an AI-enhanced sales funnel, including lead qualification and AI lead generation.
NLP chatbots are perfectly suited for lead gen, given the vast volumes of qualifying conversations that sales and marketing teams must sort through.
A chatbot can interact with website visitors, or send messages to contacts by email or other messaging channels.
To reach their full potential, NLP chatbots should be integrated with any relevant internal systems.
A lead gen chatbot needs to be integrated with a company’s CRM, calendar booking system (like Calendly), and deployed across the most appropriate messaging channels (email, website, or channels like WhatsApp).
Internal employee chatbots
While most NLP chatbots are customer-facing, there are a growing number of enterprises adopting NLP chatbots for internal processes.
These can include HR, IT support, or assistance with internal tasks like documentation.
These types of chatbots are most common amongst enterprises with large numbers of employees.
How to Build an NLP Chatbot in 5 Steps
While developers can build their own NLP chatbots from scratch, most organizations will use a chatbot platform to build their AI chatbots.
A platform allows your team to build a custom chatbot with the support of built-in integrations, added security, and pre-built features.
Here’s the step-by-step guide to building your own NLP chatbot:
Step 1: Pick a platform
Plenty of enterprises that decided to build their own NLP chatbot from scratch.
It can be an appealing choice: full reigns, blank slate, no monthly subscription fee. But few undertake this path for long.
Building from scratch is time- and labor-intensive. Plus, it means your chatbot will take much longer to build or be much lower quality – or both.
As you pick a platform, keep in mind your company’s unique needs.
If you want a platform that doesn’t limit the possibilities of your chatbot, look for an enterprise chatbot platform that has open standards and an extensible stack.
If data privacy is your biggest concern, look for a platform that boasts high security standards.
If you have a beginner developer team, look for a platform with a user-friendly interface.
If you need some inspiration, you can browse our list of the best chatbot platforms.
And if you’re interested in taking a call tomorrow, you can reach out to our sales team.
Step 2: Collect your data
If you’re looking to train your chatbot on company information – like HR policies, or customer support transcripts – you’ll need to collect the information you want your chatbot to train on.
Not every enterprise uses original data to train a chatbot. Often, advanced prompting is sufficient to design your chatbot’s flows.
But if you want a chatbot that takes an extra step to customize your company’s offering, then collecting data and using it to train your chatbot is one way to do it.
Step 3: Build your chatbot
When you pick your chatbot platform, make sure you choose one that comes with enough educational materials to assist your team throughout the build process.
For example, we offer academy courses, daily livestreams, and an extensive collection of YouTube tutorials.
Bot building can be a difficult task when you’re facing the learning curve – having resources at your fingertips makes the process go far smoother than without.
And if your team is new to bot building, most enterprise chatbot platforms have a drag-and-drop visual flow builder that allows for easy visualization of your workflows.
Step 4: Integrate and customize
Chatbots don’t exist in a vacuum. Their purpose isn’t just customer interactions or explaining one set of policies.
The most useful NLP chatbots for enterprise are integrated across your company’s systems and platforms.
This might mean tables and documents, your website, or other third-party services – think platforms like Hubspot, AWS, Google Analytics, Intercom, Calendly, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Stripe, Mixpanel, Telegram, WhatsApp, or Zendesk.
If you use an AI chatbot platform, most of your team’s building time will be spent on perfecting your bot’s integrations, rather than building the chatbot itself.
And if you pick a strong platform, it will allow you to customize your chatbot in tone and personality.
You won’t need to select specific words, but you can direct when your chatbot should speak apologetically, or what type of language it should use to describe your products.
Step 5: Deploy
One of the best aspects of a chatbot is that it can easily be deployed across any platform or messaging channel.
Many enterprises choose to deploy a chatbot not just on their website, but on their social media channels or internal messaging platforms.
NLP chatbots are a streamlined way to action a successful omnichannel strategy.
Your users can experience the same service across multiple channels, and receive platform-specific help.
For example, a customer communication coming from a WhatsApp chatbot can ask to change their password on your internal system.
Deploy a custom NLP chatbot next month
The companies that survive the next 5 years will be AI-enhanced.
NLP chatbots allow enterprises to scale their business processes with a cost-effectiveness that was previously impossible.
Botpress allows companies to build customized, LLM-powered chatbots and AI agents. Our agents are deployed across any use case and integrated with any system or channel.
Start building today. It’s free.
Or contact our sales team to learn more.
