Innovative Chatbots: Untapped Capabilities Able to Boost Your Business

Due to recent advances in communication technology and artificial intelligence, customer interactions are evolving to a new level of quality. According to American Express research, 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. Chatbots are one of the primary drivers of the customer experience.

In our article, we’ll cover the topic of chatbot development experience that can help your business, market trends, and which solutions are more promising today and why.

What are Chatbots and How Do They Work?

Chatbots are applications that mimic written or spoken human speech to stimulate a conversation with a real person. They can be applied to most customer interactions, making their communication more engaging and exciting.

Market trends are leading to bots incorporating conversational speech using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in the business. You can create customized chatbots for different domains: eCommerce, banking, healthcare, and more, which can be used, for example, in messengers, apps or on the web.

The leading technologies behind AI chatbots are natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning. One of the main aspects of AI-based chatbots is that it is dynamic and constantly evolving from analyzing conversations. When a chatbot is asked a question, a series of sophisticated algorithms process the received information, understand what the user is asking, and determine an answer appropriate to the question. However, dealing with complex conversations is a considerable challenge; when different figures of speech are used, it can be difficult for machines to understand them. In this case, developers help by training a part of machine learning to fit the necessary patterns so that the bot can identify and interpret the essential conversation components even from a problematic query.

Today chatbots are used in many business areas, taking over the functions traditionally performed by people, speeding up all processes related to processing requests. Let’s take a look at these and other benefits.

Chatbots Prevalence — Development Platforms

Covering the topic of the prevalence of chatbots, it’s important to mention that according to Accenture and Gartner ~50% of large companies are considering increasing investments in chatbots. Here are some statistics:

• 56% of companies say conversational bots are driving transformational change in their industry
• By 2022, an estimated 75-90% of requests will be handled by bots

In this context, let’s talk about the experience of chatbot development:

#1—IBM Watson

One could say that Watson is one of the most preferred platforms when it comes to creating AI chatbots. The main advantage of the platform is the ease of managing complex interactions and the ability to serve different verticals. Also, Watson is ideal for developing bots on various social media platforms along with your website.

1. When developing a bot on this platform, start by gathering requirements to understand in what scenarios the bot should run. 
2. Once you’ve defined the scope, defining personas will help you create an empathy map.
3. Prepare goals and objectives (a list of intentions) in the context of user input. 
4. During chatbot development which will interact with Watson Assistant, implement business logic to handle the context of the interaction and implement other components that complement the business requirements.

Tips:

#2 — Microsoft Azure Bot Service

This cloud service is accessible from virtually anywhere and provides support for multiple languages. The tools of this service help create highly-interactive bots and it is considered a highly-scalable service.

#3 — QnA Maker

Another bot from Microsoft lives up to its name. It can be beneficial for any business in which customers often ask questions about their products. It allows you to develop and train bots to answer simple questions based on URLs of frequently asked questions and structured documents and product manuals within minutes.

What’s more, using Microsoft Cognitive Services allows the bot to interact with a human as best it can. It also allows you to integrate third-party APIs and solutions, providing a better user experience.

#4 — SAP Conversational AI

A chatbot development platform that allows you to build and train your bots by using preconfigured chatbots for specific industries, reducing integration time and speeding up deployment.

After chatbots are developed, one should choose deployment platforms. Let us mention some of the advanced bot platform ecosystems:

• Facebook Messenger (Facebook chatbots)
• Slack
• Skype for Business
• Kik, etc.

Benefits of AI-Powered Chatbots

Speaking of AI-powered chatbots, it is worth mentioning the large number of advantages they have and how their implementation is crucial for your business, not only when working with clients but in other areas.

24/7 Availability

The inability for users to get an answer immediately is often why they refuse to buy. The ability to help customers at any time is a huge advantage of a chatbot for business.

Emotional Stability and Endless Patience

With chatbots, businesses can be confident in the quality of their customer support services. Nothing can compromise the equilibrium of a chatbot who is devoid of emotions.

Instant Data Analytics

If you use chatbots for customer service, they can collect, analyze, and process information in multiple forms and from various sources. Moreover, they have the ability to nip inaccuracies and errors in the bud, thereby continuously improving the quality of customer service.

Constant Self-Learning

Thanks to ML and NLP chatbots have an excellent ability to self-learn quickly. By answering each successive question, they get better at solving problems, thereby increasing their efficiency. This means that even after you develop the chatbot initially, it will continue to get better.

A few more advantages of chatbots allow you to:

• Automate common business processes and operations
• Improve customer engagement and retention
• Reduce customer support costs and customer churn
• Collect and organize customer information from integrated data sources
• Integrate with any social media platform and significant business systems

Customized Chatbots for Your Business Solutions

Chatbots can be adjusted to any of your needs:

• Sales & Marketing. Chatbots work 24/7, providing consumers with complete solutions. Because they are less prone to human error, they can help build a better brand by providing top-notch customer assistance.
• Enterprise Resource Planning. This includes consulting employees on vacations, sick leave, corporate events, and policies, assisting recruiters with applicant inquiries, gathering qualification information, and taking care of simple corporate tasks such as conference room reservations and informing about corporate policies.
• Healthcare. Examples include customized bots for doctors, pharmacists, nurses or patients can schedule appointments, send reminders, and help medical professionals collect and organize patient data.
• eCommerce. Bots can answer questions about products, send reminders for abandoned items, and make it easier to buy a product/service in-app. Other uses can improve upselling, cross-selling, and remarketing.
• Banking. Bots can provide information on personal bank accounts, balances, credit limits, bank services, products, transaction history, report accruals, expenses, calculating and applying for mortgages or loans, etc.
• Travel. Chatbots can help users find and book the most suitable plane, train, or bus tickets, and send notifications of changes and upcoming trips.
• Customer Service. Chatbots can interact with users by following pre-programmed rules.
  
  According to IBM, chatbots can help companies save up to 30% on customer support costs by speeding up response times, freeing up agents for more complex work, and answering up to 80% of routine questions.
  
  Juniper Research claims that chatbots will be able to maintain a 90% success rate in customer interactions by 2022.
• Entertainment. This includes users find movies, buy tickets to a festival or other event, etc.

You may also be interested in our article How AI can Improve Processes in HealthCare, Retail, and Banking.

NIX Chatbot Expertise

The NIX team recently introduced its chatbot — AI-Powered Movie Chatbot: Find Movies to Watch with Zero Pain of Choice.

This is a chatbot that helps users find movies in a minute’s time that are most relevant to their requests instead of listing all movies and series that are available on Google or IMDB lists.

The client was seeking a reliable tech vendor to quickly create a POC of an AI-empowered chatbot with human-like behavior that could run smoothly on the web and through the Telegram app.

To deliver a chatbot experience that is both human-centric and intelligent, NIX used the AI capabilities of Azure Bot Services:

• The adaptive dialogue bot framework enables the chatbot to maintain its consistent behavior when interacting with the user. Thus, when a user interrupts the dialog chain, the chatbot understands how to dialog properly further.
• To teach the bot natural human language, we used an ML-based service — LUIS. The NIX team customized a part of ML patterns and trained it to eventually make the bot recognize fuzzy requests similar to human behavior and then answer questions appropriately.
• To provide an even more user-friendly experience, we used direct line technology.

Contact us today and let NIX help you create a human-centric assistant for your business.

Build your Own Chatbot

If you are ready to transform your business with new technologies and innovative solutions, and gain even more competitiveness, the NIX team offers you our expert assessment of which solutions are best used in your particular business. Chatbots for Facebook and Slack, or AI chatbots—wide variety but the best choice. We will understand your business needs and develop a chatbot to help you achieve your business goals.