The buzz about chatbots and their innovative customer service has become fundamental for the business. The chatbot technology is text-based computer applications and programming with a conversational interface.
Chatbot technology enables to hold conversations automatically with human users through textual (and audio) means. In most cases, this application can install on websites, forums, massaging platforms, online social networks, and even on mobile applications.
Chatbots are designed to give specific answers to basic questions about customer services. Chatbots can appear as an icon on the user’s desktop. In mobile applications, it can appear as a menu and widget form.
Chatbots answer in the form of a chat interface or as a voice messages communication. This article will highlight seven informative questions and answers that you should know about chatbots if you are looking to have one.
1. What is Chatbots Definition?
The ChatBots software allows its users to interact with real people through video chats, voice conversations, and other recorded or live responses. It is done by using specially designed programs.
In addition, it interfaces with the systems such as Skype, Yahoo Messenger, AOL Messenger, Twitter, MySpace, and other web chat applications.
By using bots, businesses can use their customer service staff as online representatives. In more, their live agents can engage customers through a variety of web-based applications. ChatBots have brought a new meaning to customer service interaction.
2. Types of Chatbots Available in the Market
There are two types of chatbot technology present in the market. The first one is simple chatbots, in which data is already present in the database and gives answers according to that data.
However, if you ask something outside of the data, it will generally accept their limitation and inform that on the screen. It is also known as rule-based chatbots because they are running on pre-defined rules only.
The second type is the Smart chatbots, this type of bots uses Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Learning processes. They are providing more advanced information by using artificial intelligence techniques. Smart chatbots can understand questions very deeply and try to give answers like a human. Furthermore, these types of chatbots use neural network algorithms to process natural language.
3. Chatbots are More Human Friendly than a Human
Generally, at customer support, you can see a person who gives repetitive answers to customers. This task becomes more tedious when you interact with some annoying people.
Sometimes, miscommunication with the customers on the phone calls or at the desk may lead to conflict. I was also working at Gas-station during my graduation and had to face this kind of situation.
Chatbot eliminates many of the repetitive and boring tasks that a person usually performs, such as product review, availability of stock, and other services. It reduces the need to have customer support personnel or live operators present in front of the customer during transactions.
It has pre-defined data which directly answers the customer as required and pre-defined. Hence, eventually, a decrease in human interaction and friendly response make customer support far better.
4. How a Chatbots Changing the Game of Marketing?
Chatbots can enhance both customer service and social media marketing. Chatbots enable easy customer support and allow users to chat freely with others on a particular topic and get relevant replies.
Moreover, a wide range of ChatBot applications is available for a wide range of businesses. It is ranging from small businesses to large companies. They can integrate social media websites, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Bots are also used in marketing efforts and help in answering customer queries or offering suggestions. They can work as a live agent, where the owner of the computer is asked to enter a message, and then the bot will respond to the request by speaking the selected response.
Chatbot technology has created an opening for new businesses to offer more interactive services to their clients and increase their sales volume.
Because of extensive integration with online tools and social media, chatbots make marketing easier for any firm. Nowadays, generating leads for the business is becoming accessible, but customer support is the other thing that companies face pretty tricky.
Chatbots are making this thing easier for all types of business, such as Online Shopping, Healthcare, Public transportation, Banking, and Online education.
5. How Many Chatbots are Currently Active Worldwide?
It is expected that currently, more than 300,000 chatbots are active worldwide in different forms. Five years ago, fakebook launched the messenger app and featured chatbot along with messenger.
The Facebook chatbot become popular, and afterward, other companies started using it, such as Android, IOS, E-mail, Skype, Twitter, and many more applications.
In addition, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon have created virtual assistance. It is also a kind of chatbot, and you can talk with it, and you will get help about any topic. The difference is that these giant companies have massive data collected in many languages and different regions.
Highly trained chatbots can go deep and understand properly what a person is asking about the product. Some of these chat Bots provide advanced features, such as Google Maps integration, which makes it possible for customers to use ChatBots to find directions, store location data, see photos, watch videos.
6. What are the Limitations of Chatbot Technology?
Since chatbots are providing members of benefits and applications to users, it also has some limitations. Chatbot technology is working with pre-defined data or online databases. Hence information is limited to the provided data.
In addition, it is also working with the internet, so technical issues can create severe issues while with transactions. Sometimes users find it a headache when looking for natural solutions but get the same irrelevant answer every time.
7. What is the Future of Chatbots?
The future of chatbots is looking great, as more and more businesses are trying to approach bots for customer service. Moreover, they don’t have emotions and perform tedious tasks continuously at high speed. Many benefits and few limitations make chatbots the priority for customer services to any scale of business.
Google virtual assistance is advanced in terms of chatbot smartness. It can quickly deal with the synonyms and related terms of the data. So it becomes super easy for the person to find the correct answer even if they don’t know how to use it smartly.
For instance, you should try this kind of virtual assistance, and you will realize how far the limit of artificial intelligence is. You can learn more about chatbots from different online platforms like YouTube, Udemy, Coursera, and Lynda.
Conclusion About Chatbots
In conclusion, I must say about chatbots; there are certain advantages of using chatbots, which makes them very useful for both the customers and businesses. Several companies build a platform that provides chatbot technology to businesses for marketing and selling purposes.
In addition, artificial intelligence help chatbots to reach a large audience and gather them in one place. They are becoming more advanced and collecting valuable data with machine learning, which will be more useful in the future.