Texting is one of the most widespread communication ways preferred by more than half of smartphone users worldwide. That’s why making an intelligent automatic helper is advantageous for automating routine business procedures like customer service or bill payments while also saving money because of decreased staffing workloads.
This post will reveal how to increase your company’s revenue through the chatbot building, what technologies to integrate into it to make a bot more functional, and other necessities.
A Brief Marketing Survey on Chatbots
First off, let’s start by defining a chatbot’s essence. A chatbot (a bot) is a software product that lets you have a text-to-speech conversation in real-time mode instead of speaking with a live agent through a messenger chat.
Most businesses have found a way out of pandemic restrictions by creating a chatbot. Gartner marks that 70% of employees will design their own chatbot by 2022. According to Juniper Research, the talkbot market would be worth more than $110 billion by 2023. So, let’s find out factors contributing to such popularity.
Benefits of Talkbot Creation
Profitability. The customer support bots of JPMorgan Chase & Co. bank can handle roughly 1,7 million access requests instead of 140 employees, which is both cost-effective and time-saving. These chatbots may allow access to the bank’s software, reset user passwords, and perform other tasks.
The simpler purchasing process is available with chatbots: being accessible 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, it assists clients in receiving speedier services. For instance, TacoBot, intended for sales automation, helped Taco Bell, the US fast-food corporation, reach more profit.
Personalized services. The chatbot service delivers all kinds of information about a product, as well as assistance and interaction with the client. It makes them an excellent communication alternative with users throughout the whole customer lifecycle.
Improved customer experience. Customers often use your services and buy products but seldom communicate with you. This problem can be rapidly solved with a chatbot: it may give you documented insights about the most critical challenges faced by your clients. Due to such data, you’ll be able to improve your products and make them more personalized.
We listed only the most common chatbot building benefits to show its profitability for businesses. But you should remember that a building process can be challenging if you don’t know the bot’s peculiarities.
Talkbot Types Distinction
Chatbots are often classified into two types: rule-based services and AI solutions. Let’s take a deeper look at them.
Rule-Based Talkbots
This chatbot type is ideal for small businesses with specific goals (e.g., a bot answering FAQ). Rule-based bots are less complex than AI ones, but they may complete a variety of tasks they are accustomed to, working on the basis of a conversation map using ‘if/then logic.
A rule-based bot is also:
- Cost-effective and secured
- Easy for storing/transferring files
- Simply integrated with legacy systems
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbots
The capabilities of AI chatbots let them comprehend users’ intents in messages in order to provide better feedback. They are also self-educated ones: the more you teach them, the more accurate their responses will be.
The AI bots are also beneficial for customers because of:
- Customer behavior analysis
- Decision-making ability
- Multilingual communication
The Chatbot Working Principles and Architecture
Let’s dive deeper into how the considered chatbot types work. Rule-based chatbots often operate by offering alternatives to select. For instance, if the customer looks for shoes, they may use the rule-based chatbot of the shoe shop to choose the shoe color.
AI chatbots rely on machine learning and artificial intelligence to interpret data in order to function. However, AI bots require training, and their creation is more time-consuming and expensive.
How does a Talkbot Work?
Adding more components for more natural communication makes talkbots complex, but their architecture is more or less accessible. Let’s look at the illustration to find out how it works.
Talkbot Integration With The External Systems
By integrating your chatbot with external systems, you may speed up chatbot tasks completion, improve service quality, or save money and time.
What systems are you able to interact with? APIs, CRM and CMS systems, Google services, and other services are among the most common interactions today. You may put data you require in a Google Sheets doc, and the bot will utilize it as an answer to a possible inquiry if you interface your bot with Google services (let’s say, Google Sheets).
For instance, you have to create a phone number reminder. You may enter your friends’ names and phone numbers in Google Sheets, and the bot will display this information on your device’s screen. You have only to write down the name of a person you need to call.
Crucial Steps to Build a Chatbot
Building a chatbot, you can make your job easier by breaking the process down into simple stages and following them. That’s why we’ve provided step-by-step development instructions for your future chatbot.
Understand your customers’ problem issues and expectations. The primary purpose of bot creation is the client experience improvement. That’s why you should begin with a survey to ensure adequate goal execution. Perform a market study, establish a buyer persona, and outline your business goals based on the demands of your consumers.
Identify a platform to integrate with your talkbot. If you want to build a chatbot for an app or a company website, you must first choose which solution is the most fitting one for your intended audience. It’s also worth noting that you may create a chatbot on messengers like Telegram, Skype, or Facebook Messenger.
Select and engage competent staff. There are several chatbot creation tools available on the market. However, their options are restricted, and working with real people would be much better for your bot’s quality in the future. Chatbot developers can be found on hiring platforms such as LinkedIn, Clutch, or Glassdoor.
Define the technology stack to use. You may create a complicated chatbot with the aid of a framework that will assist you in remaining successful or use a chatbot maker solution. However, if you pick the second option, you’ll get a bot with limited capabilities.
Analyze and Implement. You should thoroughly test the newly developed bot and ensure it’s bug-free and simple to use before its release. Keep in mind that reputable IT companies offer a full range of QA services, allowing you to release your bot to the market without any flaws and reducing your chatbot development cost.
A Solution Stack to Develop a Chatbot: What to Choose?
Let’s talk about the chatbot-building solutions and frameworks that you’ll need to construct a bot. We’ll inform you about the most well-known and powerful ones.
Bot Building Solutions
You may utilize a talkbot constructor to create a chatbot that responds to your company’s needs. They’ll assist you in developing a commercial bot, an instructional one, or a bot for healthcare. However, keep in mind that such solutions often have a limited toolkit, so that the future bot will be simple.
Let’s consider some of the most common bot builders.
Chatfuel is a simple and free tool for creating chatbots for social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Customers engage with these solutions by pressing a button. It has a lot of useful functions, such as automatically sharing updates with your customers and collecting data in Messenger discussions.
QnA. Microsoft has developed QnA Maker, which allows users to design chatbots that respond to frequently asked questions. The process of development is swift. Furthermore, the future bot will be self-learning and will support around 50 languages.
Chatbot is another appropriate constructor to create bots for chat applications, Facebook pages, and websites. You may prepare dynamic responses with buttons and pictures during communication. Furthermore, ChatBot allows you to test your customized helper before deploying it.
Talkbot Building Frameworks
A customized chatbot can be built with the help of the following frameworks:
Pandorabots allows users to employ animations to bring their bot ideas to life. The AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) open standard may be used to create conversational bots.
Microsoft Bot Framework. The founders of Microsoft Bot Framework are well-versed in the creation of chatbots. This framework aids in the development of intelligent chatbots that can converse with and listen to users.
Wit. AI. This NLP framework enables the creation of chatbots for many messaging systems using machine learning. Wit.AI may be used with Ruby, Node.js, and Python, among other programming languages.
It’s important to remember that knowing how to develop an AI chatbot using the constructor isn’t enough. After completing a development workflow, you should educate your bot on constructing words appropriately, comprehending pronounced or written requests as a person would.
Following the steps below, from development through bot training and maintenance, you’ll be able to create your own custom chatbot.
What Type of Chatbots is The Most Beneficial?
You can build one of the chatbot types for your business: a rule-based one and a customized product. The challenge is, what kind of chatbots may refund your company’s expenditures and help you reach profit?
Small enterprises should use the first bot option. However, such chatbots functionality is restricted by the capabilities of the chatbot generator that created them. The AI software products are increasingly complicated, and their feature set is only limited by the capabilities of the messenger into which they are embedded.
You should remember that no single chatbot builder will be able to meet all of your demands. That is why you should work with a development team to create a custom chatbot tailored to your company’s specific needs.
Bottom Line
Chatbots are beneficial for businesses due to a lot of factors. You can create a talkbot yourself via the bot builder platform or choose an AI-based custom solution. In case you select the last option, keep in mind that its development may be complex without an appropriate tech background. So, the software development team competent in bot creation can help you.
The skilled specialists will provide you with accurate project estimations, consult you on the most promising technology to choose from, and help you build a modern, competitive and profitable bot solution.