Chatbots are some of the most exciting new tools in the customer experience environment.
With bots and chatbots, businesses can automate the process of answering repetitive questions for their customers, speeding the time to resolution for clients, and reducing the pressure on agents.
However, bots and chatbots are still relatively new concepts in the modern marketplace. We're still discovering what this kind of technology to do, and how it works to transform the CX space. Here's your essential guide to the wonderful world of bots and chatbots.
What are Bots and Chatbots?
A bot is a program that automatically completes an action based on specific triggers and algorithms. A chatbot is a computer program that's designed to simulate human conversation. Users communicate with these tools using a chat interface or via voice, just like they would converse with another person. Chatbots interpret the words given to them by a person and provide a pre-set answer.
Chatbots, like regular applications, have application layers, databases, conversational user interfaces (CUIs) and APIs. There are 3 common kinds of a chatbot available today:
- Rule-based chatbots: The most straightforward option, these bots simply provide a pre-defined answer to very specific questions. These bots are great for things like qualifying leads or offering customers an interactive FAQ experience
- Intelligent chatbots: These intelligent bots use machine learning or "ML" to learn from the user's requests and information. Intellectual bots are trained to understand specific words and phrases that trigger a reply. They teach themselves over time to understand more questions and deliver better answers
- AI-powered chatbots: These bots combine the benefits of rule-based bots with the power of intellectually independent programs to solve user problems. They can remember the context of conversations and understand user preferences. These bots use a combination of natural language processing, machine learning, and AI to understand customers. Natural language processing helps the interactions between humans and computers to feel more natural
How do Bots and Chatbots Work?
There are 3 fundamental classification methods used to run a chatbot.
The first option is to create a pattern-matching bot. Pattern-matching bots classify text and produce a response based on the keywords they see. A standard structure for these patterns is AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language). In pattern-matching, the chatbot only knows answers to questions that exist in their models. The bot cannot go beyond the patterns already implemented into its system.
Another option for today's chatbots is to use algorithms. For each kind of question, a unique pattern needs to be available in a database for the bot to provide the right response. With various combinations of trends, it's possible to create a hierarchical structure. Algorithms are how developers reduce the classifiers and make the structure more manageable. The classic algorithm for NLP and text classification is Multinational Naïve Bayes.
The final crucial methodology for chatbots is to use artificial neural networks. These are solutions that give the bots a way to calculate the response to a question using weighted connections and context in data. With artificial neural networks, each sentence provided to a bot is broken down into different words, and each word is used as an input for the neural network. Over time, the neural network becomes stronger and more advanced, helping the bot to create a more accurate set of responses to common queries.