A chatbot is a designed tool powered by the rules of Artificial Intelligence (AI), acts as a simulator of human conversation for the purpose of automating a business process. Chatbots facilitate user interactions when placed within the messenger apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger that act as a platform for supporting the bots.
They act as an intermediary that imitates human conversations by initiating live chat instantaneously and responding tirelessly to the user queries at any point in time.
Advantages of implementing chatbot technology
Chatbot optimises customer service operations and strengthens the relationship with the customers, supports digital marketing by interacting with brands in the easiest and fastest manner; as a result improves business responsiveness and customer satisfaction. One major advantage of chatbots is that they execute tasks in a human-like fashion through a set of automated & personalised messages constantly learning and improving from interactions.
Chatbots are everywhere
Chatbots let you use the channel preferred by your customers, employees and stakeholders to communicate with you. The world has moved to messaging, and WhatsApp chatbots are on the rise. Chatbots allow you to pinpoint your queries and get relevant answers rather than traditionally using scroll and click to find the information you are looking for. Of course, advanced chatbots eliminate the need for traditional call channels, inconsistent customer service, and long wait and drop times.
How bots benefit in promoting businesses?
Chatbot is a trending model of digital marketing where advanced customer support services, social media, sales, PR, etc., benefit vastly in the long run. chatbots substitute other forms of communication like emails and phone calls. Bots save enormous time and money through its potential in reaching out to a wider audience and in actively engaging customers in your products and offers. Any business that has been adapting to this marketing strategy is witnessing successful gains through it.
Chatbots ascertain users’ preferences while initiating a chat, to promote an offer, and introduce products relevant to their interests for the sole purpose of driving sales in the process. A chatbot keeps customers’ interests intact through alternate posting of videos and images and encourages them to choose and purchase the requested product from the convenience of their mobile phones.
Numerous industries prevalently use chatbots, ranging from Healthcare to News industry, Real estate to Entertainment industry, and so on. These industries largely rely on chatbots, mainly via personalised services, to connect to users worldwide and to act upon their interests and meeting their requirements.
Limitations of chatbots
Chatbots vary from simple to advanced versions, where simple ones are constrained to act on multiple conversational styles but are confined to receive a specific input to produce a specific output. Although chatbots make life simpler for brands, we can also use them to answer complex queries that instigate deep analysis. Chatbots do require constant training in order to be utilised for a bigger consumer setting, just like one would train a child to understand and interact with the world around them.
Misconceptions
The belief that chatbot replaces humans entirely is a debate. While they are currently replacing manual rote based tasks, the element of EQ and sentiment is currently best handled by humans. Bots however intelligently automate a lot of customer queries faster than humans can, can work in a logical framework to analyse and action too. Humans will remain as the key interaction contributors in years to come. However the manual search-and-answer type of queries will overwhelmingly switch to bots.
This again is debatable. While bots do replace a significant portion of what a mobile app can do more elegantly and avoid the issues of app updates and uninstalls (uninstall an app if Taylor Swift releases a new album) - chatbots don't require installation or bandwidth and provide a more pin-point need based interaction framework than a mobile app that is supposed to replace a desktop experience on a mobile phone. The primary use of a chatbot however remains through messenger and chat “apps”. Apps and bots can serve different purposes. Though a lot of mobile usage will move to chatbots. We will use apps for the richer user experience and bots for pinpoint conversational types of uses.
Chatbot Predictions
Going forward, chatbots will bring about a drastic change in various domains. Companies that do not have apps would start exploring voice apps rather investing in the solutions of the past. With advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP), AI technology would get even better with continuous learning to attain consistent results. Voice chatbots will be the next dominant technology in the following years to come.
Picturing the future
Imagine you ask a voice assistant to stock up your daily necessities in the refrigerator. The bot will take inventory of missing items and automatically place orders online.
Or, how about booking a cab in a hurry? A conversational AI chatbot can take over the process and notify you when the cab arrives or is in an accident. The chatbot can intelligently assist in calling 911, insurance care, schedule for towing service, call you a cab home. Even arrange with a service provider for estimates.
Very shortly, you would also be able to talk to your bot to order. Mostly, from your favourite restaurant and ensure you receive the delivery before dinner or pre schedule your dinner menu. No more forgetting your spouse's birthdays and having a gift ready, a chatbot can easily do that with pre-scheduling.
What is the future scope of chatbot?
The world of tomorrow will be exciting having bots around. To make life even more simpler and take care of most mundane tasks to let us all be free. Indeed to pursue higher level tasks requiring less manual labor and bring more predictability and consistency. Chatbots using artificial intelligence and machine learning will be intelligent virtual assistants that never tire and never fall sick. That is consistent and can be friendly and is on 24 hours a day, allows you to provide 24/7 customer care, and thus improve your customer experience.
You can build your own Ai chatbot with Engati. However, customisations are available for a nominal charge. Moreover, you can integrate your chatbot with all your work apps. So, you will save the time and hassle of switching between apps. You can build your app in 50+ international languages with a multilingual chatbot.
And you know what's the best part? You can start building your bot without any prior programming language/experience. Cool, isn't it?
Get started with Engati today and build your free chatbot now!
