Chatbot Services

A chatbot is an artificial intelligence (AI) software that can simulate human conversation. Chatbot services are programmed to respond to textual, visual or auditory inputs from users and leverage mediums such as SMS, website chat window and social messaging services to receive and reply to messages. By creating instant, customized responses, chatbots allow brands to refine customer experience and bolster productivity.

Chatbots are of two types: rule-based and contextual. Rule-based chatbots work with a set of pre-written keywords and are capable of handling only basic, pre-programmed requests. So, they can help you reset your password, tell the location of your cab and inform you of the most lucrative deals out there.

Contextual or smart chatbots rely on natural language processing (NLP) while communicating with users. They can contextualize language and process user input data even when it is distorted or has errors. This simply means they can assume a conversational tone and go ‘off-script’ when needed.

While we cannot compile a comprehensive list of the best chatbots because there are so many being made every day, here are some of the best Chatbots, as of 2019:

Mitsuku: Incepted in 2005, Mitsuku is a relatively old chatbot. It was awarded the Loebner Prize in 2013 and 2016 for its phenomenal ability to have human-like conversations.

Google Assistant: A virtual assistant from the house of Google, Google Assistant is mainly available on mobile and smart-home devices. The Assistant is capable of implementing a range of tasks-from searching the internet, scheduling events and adjusting hardware settings on user’s device to showing information from user’s Google account, the bot can do it all.

Woebot: Launched as an iOS app in 2018, Woebot deploys cognitive-behavioral therapy to reduce the symptoms of depression through active listening and using encouraging words and funny GIFs to uplift users’ moods.

Replika: Built in 2017, Replika is essentially a messaging app where a user spends hours answering questions to create a digital repository containing tons of information about him/her. The repository then passes through a neural network to create a bot that acts as a replica of the user.

Insomnobot 3000: Created by the mattress company Casper, this entertainment bot is your late-night buddy. As you would have guessed from its name, the bot is chatty only during late hours of the night. Insomnobot 3000 is currently available through SMS only.

DoNotPay: Started as a web-only chatbot that helped users contest parking tickets, DoNotPay is now an iOS application offering legal counselling to people who have been wronged by the law. It also gives the option of suing anyone just by a pressing a button.

Today, we have a range of chatbot builders that allow you to create and integrate a chatbot into your WordPress site (for example) in minutes. All you need to do is follow the following steps:

1) Login to your WordPress account. Go to the Admin section and select Plugins. Click on ‘Add New’.

2) Install and activate the plugin selected in step 1.

3) Login to your plugin account and make your bot. Click on Publish and copy the code snippet under "Install widget on WordPress website".

4) Click on settings of the plugin and paste the code snippet in the space provided. Save Settings and that’s all. Your chatbot is ready to go.

Now, whoever visits your WordPress site will be able to see your chatbot.

Chatbots are an immensely useful investment for several reasons:

Chatbots are available round-the-clock: As a business, you may receive queries anytime - even in the middle of the night. Whereas your sales agents may not be available all the time, chatbots will be there to serve your customers 24*7. They will reply to your prospects/customers immediately, creating a favorable impression about your brand.

Chatbots guide users to the right information: Your visitors may have difficulty finding the information they are seeking. Oftentimes, they aren’t even clear on what exactly they are looking for. A chatbot asks the most relevant questions and guides users to the right place - be it a product page, a user guide or the careers section of your website.

Chatbots generate qualified leads: By asking the right questions, a chatbot can select qualified prospects from the set of visitors it interacts with. It can then pass on these prospects to the appropriate sales agent.

Chatbots offer automated support for routine queries: In any industry, there are some basic questions that prospects ask very often. For such questions, some specific answers are required to be given each time. Chatbots are the most appropriate tool for handling such routine queries.

Chatbots save time and money: Developing a chatbot costs far less than a full mobile or web application. Plus, intelligent chatbots reduce, if not eliminate, the need for hiring customer support agents.

Let’s look at the key benefits of using chatbots for your business:

Enhanced Customer Service: Chatbots offer instant, customized response to your visitors. They can route users to the right source of information, encourage them to ask questions and answer routine queries accurately. All these contribute to enhancing customer service. No wonder, 35% of the consumers want to see more companies using chatbot services.

Better Lead Generation and Nurturing: An intelligent chatbot can ask the right set of qualifying questions to weed out unqualified leads from the qualified ones. Plus, they steer the conversation in the right direction to ensure higher conversion rates.

Personalized Experience: Thanks to artificial intelligence and deep learning, chatbots these days offer a highly personalized customer experience. They mostly address customers by their names and recommend products/services based on their browsing or purchase history - all this adds to your brand appeal.

Processing of Large Volume of Requests: If your website receives a large volume of requests, you don’t need to fret when a virtual assistant is at your disposal. A chatbot service can handle multiple queries simultaneously, letting you manage queries efficiently regardless of the volume of traffic you receive.

Platform Agnostic: You can create a chatbot for the platform of your choice. Plus, you can seamlessly integrate it across all the digital channels - even with your CRM.

Low Maintenance Costs: Once you have built a chatbot, the cost of maintaining and updating it is comparatively low.

Of course, they do. By their very definition, chatbots are AI-based computer programs that simulate human conversation using voice command or text chat as input. Artificial intelligence in form of machine learning, natural language processing and deep learning allows chatbots to learn by discovering patterns in data. The chatbots then apply these patterns to similar or slightly different problems. As a result, they develop the intelligence to perform tasks and answer questions without requiring human intervention.

The different kinds of chatbots include:

Support Chatbots: These bots are designed to solve specific problems such as answering FAQs or ordering food. As a result, they need to have contextual awareness and personality. Support chatbots are equipped with sophisticated deep learning and natural language processing capabilities to perform their function well.

Information Gathering Chatbots: These bots are immensely helpful in refining customer service process. Common examples include the voice bots that direct your call to the right customer service representative after taking numerical inputs from your end. By gathering information on what exactly a customer needs, these bots help human agents serve the customer better.

Transactional Chatbots: These bots perform various transactions on behalf of their human counterparts. These may include anything from placing an order and scheduling an appointment to making online payments.

Assistant Chatbots: Assistant chatbots are adept at answering frequently-asked questions and striking conversation with the user. A classic example of assistant chatbots is ‘Siri’ by Apple. They need to be fed with exhaustive information about the user and should have the capability to understand the nuances of his language.

Skills Chatbots: Skills chatbots don’t need as much contextual awareness as other bots do- because all they do is follow a command to perform a particular action. A bot that switches off the light after taking voice command from you is a skills chatbot.

The genesis of chatbots can be traced back to the 1950s when Alan Turing published a paper entitled ‘Computing Machinery & Intelligence’. The paper formulated what’s now known as the ‘Turing test’ that assesses the ability of a computer program to converse like a human being. In a way, this paper laid the foundation for artificial intelligence (and chatbots). Other key milestones in the development of chatbots include:

1966: Joseph Weizenbaum launched a program ELIZA regarded as one of the first chatbots. ELIZA was designed to simulate a therapist who would ask open-ended questions from users. It recognized keywords and phrases in the input and responded accordingly.

1972: Psychiatrist Kenneth Colby created a bot PARRY that could simulate a person with paranoid schizophrenia. In a test given to psychiatrists, only 48% of the psychiatrists were able to distinguish between PARRY and a real human participant. Interestingly, PARRY and ELIZA engaged in a conversation in 1973. Here’s the transcript of their conversation.

1995: Richard Wallace created ALICE in 1995. While ALICE was able to achieve a human-like conversation thanks to the use of Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML), she was unable to pass the Turing test.

As the world plunged into the 21st century, highly intuitive and intelligent chatbots emerged. IBM Watson (2006), Siri (2010), Google Now (2012), Alexa (2015) and Google Assistant (2016) all bear witness to how advanced deep learning algorithms and natural language processing have been leveraged to create state-of-the-art virtual assistants.

If you need a chatbot service with a customized back-end that can be integrated with third-party applications, you’ll have to spend somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000. The more customized your application is, the more maintenance and upgrades it will require and the more you’ll need to spend. You’ll also have to add new features and take care of bugs and other issues as they come up-this will incur additional expenses.

Going by the definition of a chatbot, Alexa does qualify as one. More precisely, it is a voice-controlled virtual assistant integrated with Amazon’s computing devices such as Amazon Echo and Echo Dot. Alexa uses advanced natural languages capabilities to process and act upon user requests. Alexa can do a lot for you: play music, create a to-do list and even control your smart home products. The back-end for Alexa runs on AWS, allowing it to learn your preferences and enhance its capabilities over time.