You might have heard about chatbots and for sure interacted with one too. And if you thought like a businessman, you probably thought it could be of use in your business. Here where you are right, most companies tend to choose newer and unique ways of communicating with their audience. And that's what chatbots are in trend.
In short, a chatbot is an AI-powered software that can do several already programmed tasks without human interruption. As the name suggests, the most apparent function is to have a dialogue with the users. Every bot performs different functions as the range differs, such as personal assistant, restaurant reservation, providing requested dates in other provinces, like the flight schedule or weather forecasts.
Why Do You Need to Think About Chatbot Development?
Bots have a lot to offer to every business out there, struggling with effective communication with the audience. Notably, if you determine its purpose and functionality based on the needs of your business or brand. Here are some of the highlights listed below that every sphere going to like:
#1. Saves human staff/resources
Bots don't get tired of answering repetitive questions, or inquiries like human staff do. With this, you can save more of your human resources and their efforts. Instead, they will be of use in more complex and prominent business jobs or areas.
#2. Showcase a better brand image
With chatbots, you can be present for your audience round the clock, and customers can get the desired information anytime they decide to make a purchase, which creates a sense of being heard. Hence, it develops a better image of your brand in the eyes of your prospects.
#3. Cost-effective
You might be wondering that Chatbot development bears higher costs than you are mistaken here. As ai chatbot development costs less than app development. And you will save a lot of money and serve a great bunch of benefits too. Hence, replace the human target factor for more superficial inquiries from prospects.
#4. A great way to fight the competition
As you already know, chatbots tend to be adopted by most businesses in numerous sectors shortly. Thus, being among the first ones will give you leadership in your industry to build a tech-savvy user interface.
#5. Quicker processes
An ai chatbot isn't limited by the number of conversations and can respond to multiple prospects simultaneously. And have the ability to read the customers effectively, unlike humans do. It makes the whole process more efficient and faster.
How do they Function?
Now let's discuss how exactly chatbots function and what helps in smart Chatbot development. The leading technologies termed as the backbone of ai chatbot development are machine learning, artificial intelligence, and NLP (natural language processing). The moment any question or query is presented to a bot, complex algorithms process the input and understand the query's right tone and context. The user is asking and determining an appropriate answer. Hence, they have to rely on the algorithms' ability to detect the complexity of both written and spoken words. It might have noticed some bots perform this task quite well, and it's tough to differentiate it as a human or machine. Moreover, handling human talk or text is one of the biggest challenges, but the bot does quite well if trained and utilized tightly and in the right position.
Technology behind Bots
There are some of the elements that make sure your bot functions well. API (application programming interface) makes it possible for your chatbot to interact between your application and users via voice or text message. Whereas, during the Chatbot development process, your bot's intelligence will depend on the way you apply machine learning while deploying the bot in your systems.
Moreover, if you want to know deeply about the whole Chatbot development process, it is not enough to know only about technology. For instance, you would be excited to find out different tools and design elements and have a more comprehensive picture before making a final decision. It is always wise to go with proper research and study before deploying anything to your business, directly impacting the functioning and growth. But before moving forward, let's take a quick look over some of the technology.
Rule-based: a user asks a particular question or inputs the query, bot replies with an answer as per the pre-set answers.
Under adaptive AI: here, the bot will learn from the unlabeled data in addition to the probabilities of two former generations and past inputs.
Under supervised AI: a massive bunch of labeled data is created to imitate prospects' future situations and behavioral patterns.
During the initial Chatbot development, the first generation bots can perform more straightforward tasks and be built by ordinary programming languages. Whereas, in the second and third generations, NLP steps gave birth to more intelligent and smart bots ever in the marketplace.
Tools to have AI Chatbot Development
One of the prevailing confusion is between Chatbot development and publishing platforms. The main difference is that the publishing platform is the sphere where you can interact with your bot. Ai chatbot development platform is like tools that enable you to build or deploy the bot on your system. You can quickly get partnered with a chatbot development company that offers an easy peasy way of developing bots without any coding. Let's discuss some of the famous platforms.
#1. Microsoft Azure Bot Service
It provides Chatbot development services with SDK and portal and a chatbot connector that enables you to connect with other social media platforms. It also helps you debug your bot and a plethora of sample bots, from which you can quickly get the ideal bot for your brand.
It goes best for developers and gives the power of creating highly interactive chatbots.
#2. QnA Maker
Another bot from Microsoft is that it is quite helpful for businesses that need to ask frequent questions from their target audience about products and services. QnA Maker helps you in Chatbot development for FAQs URLs and other structured documents and manuals within a few minutes.
#3. IBM Watson
It is one of the most preferred, where you can develop AI bots. The benefit of it is its capability to serve different spheres and manage complex conversational circumstances with ease. If you think of doing a Chatbot development, you must start while considering all your requirements and what scenarios need to be addressed by your chatbot.
#4. BotPenguin
Last but not least is "BotPenguin," which has been making its mark since its existence. Quite popular among small-scale businesses because of its full-fledged suite of tools at a very feasible pricing chart. You can have a highly competitive and smart chatbot serving your customers within a few minutes. Moreover, it considers all your needs and industry types and offers you an ideal bot for your marketing strategy.
Best Practices for Chatbot Development
To grow in the long run, you need to focus on the latest technology and trends, and that's what you can achieve via ai chatbot development. With the innovation of a rich set of bots, you can make your business more comparative and robust in the digital marketplace. Moreover, many companies may ask- what's the strategy behind successful Chabot development.
#1. Recognize the right use case scenario
With the improvisations in chatbot technology, businesses in different sectors find their way into more use cases. Some companies use cases are finance bots, virtual assistants, supplementing HR practices, and more. The type of use case will solely depend on you and the business type or area you are thinking of deploying.
#2. Select the right Chatbot development framework
Businesses can develop bots from scratch or use comprehensive frameworks. These are aimed to mass-produce chatbots. You can take support from a chatbot development company with its frameworks and specialized offerings.
Prominent frameworks: Microsoft bot framework API.ai Facebook bot engine (Wit.ai) Kik Chat script Pandorabots
#3. Know your audience base
Before initializing the actual development, one of the most important steps is to have a deep understanding of the product and its audience base. Hence, the first motive should be to understand your bot's role for your audience base. As there are some main categories of bots:
Commerce bots News chatbots Entertainment chatbots Utility bots Customer service chatbot
#4. Connect the relevant systems
A bot is said to be well designed and programmed if it can automate daily tasks. Hence, it should fit into your business model like an employee to help you in the long run. A bot should have understood the main brand idea and logic to communicate with the prospects effectively. Implement your bot with internal communication channels such as Trello and Slack. With this, you can directly export the leads to the existing sales management without any delay. That's how you can function both internally and externally more smoothly.
Conclusion
Bots are considered the ultimate future of the marketplace. With easy peasy developing ways, soon every individual will be able to integrate bots into their systems. So, why do you think for a long time?
Gear up and partner with the best chatbot development company, get on the new wave of the technological market, and lead your business thrift to ultimate success. So, "BotPenguin" is here to support the Chatbot development process. For any questions, feel free to contact us.
