Most of us have used chatbots at least once in our lives. When I first heard of chatbots, embarrassed of living under a rock, not knowing what exactly this technology is (though I’d use it daily), I quickly turned to my intellect savior, “The Wikipedia”.
So as I read through the page, I could hardly get a hold of all the technical implications of these alien bots. Honestly, I lost my way somewhere in between the lines and started thinking about doughnuts. That’s when I opened my food delivery app and began to look through the menus, when suddenly a suggestion popped out of nowhere, customized to my preferences. I was impressed!
After I finally ordered doughnuts from my favorite food chain, it suddenly happened that I had to cancel the order. What do I do? Where do I go? Who do I contact? Do I have to wait for 20 minutes on the phone to just get to the right person to solve my issue?
Amid my panic attack, my friend suggested using their chatbot, which would assist my problem and provide a solution instantly. Voila! God bless technology! So this is where my research about chatbots starts (Thanks to doughnuts).
Therefore, this time all curious and impressed, I turned to Wikipedia once again to learn more about chatbot building. But I found out that Wikipedia could not possibly cover the topic in depth! Hence, in this blog, we’re going to discuss “What Wikipedia Can’t Tell You About Making Chatbots”. But first, let’s start off with the basics.
What are chatbots all about?
A chatbot is a computer program that conducts conversations with human beings and executes automated tasks. Though chatbots have been there since the late '60s, they’ve achieved full potential recently. Earlier, “bots” had been in the industry for quite a while, taking up repetitive tasks and automating them, in turn speeding up the business process and helping the organization run effectively. Then came the “chatbots,” which imitated human conversations by taking hints and ‘cue’ words and helped develop the customer care services. But today, chatbots have evolved and reached such a great platform that they’re taking over all sectors of industries.
How have chatbots transformed user experience?
Also known as “digital transformation,” chatbots have played a major role in transforming the user experience in general. Imagine you want to cancel an order on a food app; what are you going to do? You automatically think of chatbots. Customers look for efficiency, ease, and authenticity while conversing with a bot. Chatbots have changed the way companies reach out to their target market. With Natural Language Processing (NLP) entering the mainstream, chatbots which are empowered by the NLP are slowly changing the way we seek information.
How to create a chatbot?
So now that we have brushed up on the basics let’s get to the technical aspects of how to create a chatbot! There are mainly two approaches to this, with different types of website chatbots in each.
First would be the typical Rule-based approach, which requires heavy coding, consuming time, resources, and money. There are three types of chatbots built when you use this manual approach.
dThe rule-based approach builds rule-based chatbots which only respond to specific commands and are basic in nature. Then comes the AI chatbots that are smarter and better, reading and responding to natural language. The third one is the hybrid chatbots which comprise both rule-based and AI formats.
While making smart chatbots, a builder has to comprise conversational dialogue training. Such dialogue training is done with the help of artificial intelligence, hence the name “AI chatbots.” The building process of AI chatbots is pretty innovatory, mainly comprising of these three protocols-
The second approach would be opting for services which render you a substructure to build your chatbots on, without the need for coding. This proved to be a salvation for those bot-building enthusiasts without programming skills. In this process, a bot builder uses one single code that can be used by all, at all the platforms available.
To create your own chatbot in 10 minutes, visit us at Engati.
What are the design elements to use?
Design elements of a chatbot depend on the type of messaging platform you choose to install the bot at. A few top design elements that can be considered while creating a bot are -
How can you improve your chatbots further and user experience?
Now that you’ve got the gist of how to build chatbots, let’s discuss about a few implications that can further improve your chatbots to deliver the best user experience.
Hope this article helped you with what you were looking for. To read more about our chatbot ecosystem, check us out!
Happy botting!
