Chatbots introduction
Chatbots are an increasingly popular topic in the technology sector. Chatbots, short for “chat robot,” is a conversational agent that’s designed to simulate conversations with human beings through text or audio channels. They can do anything from conducting research to sending reminders and notifications–and they’re only going to get smarter!
The first chatbot was developed by Weizenbaum in 1966; his program would respond to questions typed into it with simple answers. It wasn’t until 1995 that Carnegie Mellon University introduced SmarterChild, the first major commercial chatbot, which could answer general knowledge questions and play games like trivia. These days there are many different types of bots and virtual assistants on all sorts of platforms–Facebook Messenger, Amazon Alexa, Kik messenger–designed to suit all sorts of needs and uses.
Some chatbots, like Siri and Cortana, are designed to hold and engage in conversations with users in order to complete certain tasks. These bots can be set up to give you weather forecasts or notify you when a package is shipped, for example.
Personal chatbots
There are also personal assistants available for purchase. Personal assistants can answer questions, provide directions to nearby restaurants and give you information about your schedule for the day. Some of these bots also work with third-party apps like Uber and Venmo in order to complete transactions like calling an Uber or split a restaurant bill while speaking with the user through the personal assistant interface. Of course, there are “conversational bots” that can do a variety of other things, too. Some, for example, will give you an update on the weather each morning or share a joke (we could all use some cheering up).
Chatbots are often used in business contexts as well. For instance, companies like 1-800 Flowers and Whole Foods have chatbots on Facebook Messenger that can take orders or answer questions about delivery times.
Chatbots are also being used to improve the customer experience by providing personalized information, suggestions, and advice based on what a user is looking for online.
We’re only beginning to see the possibilities of chatbots for business needs. As they become more integrated into our daily lives, we can expect all kinds of businesses–from big corporations to small start-ups–to hop on the bot wagon!
How chatbots work and what they can do for you
Chatbots are a new chat medium for all sorts of things, from conducting research to sending reminders and notifications. They’re only going to get smarter through the use of machine learning! Creating chatbots is one of the fastest-growing trends in the tech world right now.
Today’s chatbots operate by interpreting language input (text or audio) and then responding with natural language output.
Natural language processing is the machine’s ability to understand human speech or text. It has mainly been used in chatbots to improve conversations with humans, but it’s also starting to be used in machine translation and other areas. The automated learning capability of natural language processing is important because it can identify what are called “patterns.”
With machine learning, AI chatbots can learn from previous instances of speech or text input to better respond to future iterations. This means that machines are becoming increasingly efficient at their tasks–and don’t think they’re coming for your job!
Learning where patterns exist will help artificial intelligence identify the necessary steps towards completing a task, which will make it easier for machines to do the work you need them to do.
The chatbot will analyze its response based on keywords that it has been programmed with, which means you can teach chatbot specific words or phrases to respond to–or even just certain types of questions or statements!
You can also program your own chatbot so it remembers your responses over time, making it more intelligent as it ‘learns’ about you. Chatbot technology is evolving rapidly, but it’s already proving to be very useful.
People are getting chatbots to perform all sorts of tasks for them, including:
- Researching chatbot technology itself! Chatbots offer an unparalleled ability to gather data quickly and accurately by asking questions.
- Researching anything you need! Find the chatbot that matches your needs best–whether it’s for chat, audio chat, or text chat.
- Checking the weather! That forecast is just a chatbot away.
- Scheduling an appointment with your doctor. You can chat directly with doctors through chatbots.
- Finding information about news stories you might be interested in reading more about, including ones that you wouldn’t normally read.
Right now chatbots are best used for gathering information quickly and easily–but as chatbot technology evolves, chatbots will become more and more powerful! You’ll find chatbots in everything from our appliances to the phone we keep in our pockets. The possibilities really do feel endless!
Why chatbots may be the future of technology
You chat with chatbots all the time without realizing it. Chatbots are an advancement in artificial intelligence that many believe will soon take over human jobs.
With chatbots becoming more advanced every day, it’s no wonder people believe they may be the future of technology. The next generation of chatbots will offer a service that feels as natural as talking to another person—only better because you don’t need to worry about chatbots getting tired or cranky.
Chatbots can pretty much take on any task, but chatbot developers are narrowing down the focus to tasks chatbots do consistently and better than humans. This way chatbots can free up human beings for more important things like creative thinking and problem-solving.
Developers at major chatbot companies like Facebook Messenger are using automated learning to create super-smart chatbots that can learn from their mistakes. With this technology, chatbots will only get smarter with time, so the possibilities are endless.
A virtual assistant will give round-the-clock service, so it’ll be easy to get your chores and tasks done even if you work the night shift. Plus they’ll save you money by performing tasks for free, so everyone wins.
As the technology behind chatbots continues to grow, so will their capabilities.
Chatbots are already able to answer complicated questions and perform specific tasks like finding product listings for your desired shoe. But as they become more intelligent with automated learning, they’ll be able to offer even more assistance by making real suggestions instead of giving a simple or generic answer.
Imagine a chatbot that can look at your social media behavior and usage, get recommendations from friends who have similar interests, and make personalized suggestions for what you might like the most–right down to specific products you could purchase. This is where artificial intelligence can take chatbots in the near future.
Chatbot uses in business contexts
Chatbots have been used in a variety of business needs. For example, a chatbot can be a technology that a company can use to build customer relationships and provide customer service. Chatbots are also being used as machine helpers to conduct research, answer questions or send reminders and notifications.
Chatbots are currently being used all over the world and the amount of businesses that are using chatbots is growing exponentially as well as the technology behind chatbots which makes them more intelligent and better able to provide sales assistance.
A popular software called “Bot Engine” offers developers the opportunity to create their own chatbots by choosing from a list of chatbot templates consisting of various types of bots such as educational, information, reminder, messenger, and about.
The developer then customizes the chatbot’s machine learning, dialogue flow, and machine responses in accordance with its business objectives.
Professional chatbots
A professional chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate conversations with human beings via the web. Professional chatbots are used to determine how well a machine learning algorithm is able to replicate human conversations and recognize intent from human inputs.
These programs can handle basic customer service requests, provide information to customers about a company’s products and services, and answer questions about a company’s locations and hours of operation.
Marketing via Twitter chatbot
Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms with over 300 million active users. Twitter has also become a place for marketers to interact with their consumers. Marketers can follow Twitter trends, hashtags, and brand names to find out what people are saying about their products and services, as well as come up with new and creative ways to engage with their audience.
Twitter has also become a place for people to find automated Twitter accounts that tweet on certain topics of interest. A Twitter chatbot is automatically programmed to monitor Twitter feeds, re-tweets specific keywords and phrases you choose, and reply back with pre-set messages or pick from a list of pre-made twitter responses.
These twitter chatbots are used to draw repeat customers, build brand awareness and increase customer engagement on Twitter. They can also be integrated with Twitter ads as part of a paid marketing strategy to expand your reach and generate leads.
Finally, Twitter chatbots can be used for researching topics such as trends, hashtags, and brand sentiment. This research can help marketers in a variety of ways, from generating twitter content ideas to gauging the effectiveness of their Twitter marketing campaigns.
Facebook chatbot for information, sales, and marketing
Facebook is one of the world’s largest social networking sites with over 1.3 billion monthly active users as of January 2017. Facebook also has some chatbots that you can talk to and interact with. Facebook chatbots are designed to answer basic questions, provide notifications and suggestions, and help complete sales.
For example, if you own a restaurant and have an online ordering system, a customer can send a message to your Facebook page asking about the hours of operation or menu options. Your Facebook bot will then send them a notification or suggest that they order through your website and set up their order.
Or, if you wanted to sell a specific product on your Facebook page, you could use a chatbot to answer FAQs and provide additional details about the product such as pricing information or sales that are going on right now.
Another way to conduct sales with Facebook chatbots is by setting up an ad campaign.
Facebook has partnered with chatbot companies such as Interactions and Driftrock to offer sales via Facebook messaging. These sales can take place directly in Messenger or within the ads themselves.
The sales that take place over messenger are able to provide a more personalized experience where your bot is able to customize responses and ask follow-up questions based on the first interaction.
Facebook sales with chatbots also make the sales process easier and give sales reps more time to focus on providing sales expertise rather than having to answer customer service inquiries all day.
Finally, sales reps working in sales can use sales bots as an opportunity to upsell customers and cross-sell products as well as gather important insight about their customers’ needs in real-time.
Beyond sales, Facebook chatbots can be used to provide information and notifications about your business, schedule appointments at work, send reminders for daily chores or errands, and even book flights and hotels.
And if you want help with research for something like a school or university project, you can use a chatbot to answer any questions you may have.
AI research
Chatbots are also used in AI research. Chatbots can be used to help with the development of algorithms, machine learning, and improving speech recognition. They can answer questions like “why is this happening?” or “what is causing this?” and even help with debugging and code maintenance.
Sales and leads
A sales chatbot is an automated sales agent that allows sales reps to focus on sales expertise rather than repetitive customer service inquiries. Chatbots can be used for sales and lead generation in a variety of ways:
- Chatbots can answer FAQs and provide additional sales information such as pricing or sales going on – this can happen in real-time when someone is browsing your website, over the phone, through messaging apps, or through other channels like Inbound or Outbound marketing using a real human conversation.
- You can use the chatbot tools to help with cross-selling and up-selling products to increase revenue.
- Chatbots can also be used to monitor sentiment analysis about your business in real-time, monitor website traffic, monitor social media interactions, research topics using natural language processing, sales, sales funnels, sales data aggregation, sales analytics, and sales reporting.
- Chatbots can also be used for sales automation through sales funnel building and sales workflow. They can help with qualified leads generation. And they can even help build out call scripts based on the questions that customers might ask over chat or over the phone so that your sales reps are never caught off guard by sales questions.
- Chatbots can also use NLP (natural language processing) to help sales teams save time on repetitive tasks that don’t require sales expertise such as data entry, scheduling meetings, and other administrative tasks.
- Sales bots can also be used for sales analytics which makes it easier for sales managers to track product sales, sales pipeline, sales performance, sales forecasting, and sales reports.
Chatbot platforms are currently being used all over the world and the amount of businesses that are using chatbots is growing exponentially as well as the technology behind chatbots which makes them more intelligent and better able to provide sales assistance.
Purchasing an item
Chatbots are often used as purchase agents. For example, let’s say you’re shopping online and want to purchase a new pair of shoes.
Instead of manually searching online for the product and clicking through multiple links, a purchase agent chatbot can search your purchase history and find the desired shoe based on purchase preference, size, gender, etc. It will then purchase the shoe on your behalf and send it to your door!
Chatbots are also great purchase reminders. Whether you need a grocery list reminder of milk, eggs, bread–or something more specific, like what you need for coq au vin–chatbots can remind you of purchase dates. This is especially useful when you’re busy and don’t have time to purchase small items.
Finally, chatbots can be purchase assistants. Instead of scrolling through pages and pages of endless listings on an e-commerce platform, purchase assistants will scour through online stores and compare prices for the product(s) you want.
It’ll then let you know which one will provide you with the best purchase. This is a great way to purchase items when you’re in a rush because purchase assistants can purchase specific items from various different stores and have them shipped to your door!
Chatbot use cases in customer service contexts
Chatbot system can handle chat and voice queries, through real, meaningful conversations.
You can create chatbots to provide customer support to your website visitors around the clock, and thus help your existing support team. A chatbot is quicker at responding to chat requests, faster at answering simple questions, and more accurate with complicated or detailed responses.
Chatbot apps are starting to get sophisticated enough that they can even determine when a customer complaint requires escalation. This means chatbots have real potential in customer service contexts to be even more efficient than having multiple chatbots (or humans) answering chat requests.
A chatbot can provide technical support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without the cost needed for extra employees and resources. All that’s required is an employee or contractor who has some time to configure chatbot responses. A chatbot can be in chat and voice chat channels in a matter of minutes.
In fact, chatbots have gone from being a trend to becoming so advanced that many see them as the future of customer service. In fact, 56% of consumers prefer using chatbot support because it is more efficient and saves them time. And with artificial intelligence playing a bigger role in our lives than ever before, customer service tasks will be overtaken by chatbots.
It’s going to be a long time before chatbots are capable of making decisions for us, taking care of everything from work to social life, and even all the way down to something as simple as cooking dinner.
But with the focus on customer service moving towards chatbots for companies looking to save costs, they’re sure to become increasingly sophisticated and take over more responsibilities in the near future.
Whether it’s customer support, technical support, or anything in between, chatbot platforms provide many benefits that help businesses to become more efficient and save costs that would otherwise be necessary.
Conclusion
Chatbots are a growing trend in the technology sector. Chatbots have been around for decades, but they’ve recently begun to take off as more and more companies start using them to provide customer support or sales assistance to consumers via text message.
Many people see chatbot’s future potential as being limitless because of their ability at interpreting natural language input through artificial intelligence algorithms that can be trained with information about specific industries, products, brands, etc., which could allow them to answer any question asked by customers without human intervention.
The expanded use of bots has also opened up new opportunities for businesses looking to improve efficiency while investing less time and resources on building an online presence or hiring full-time employees who will need significant training before they’re able to do much work.
