Usefulness of Chatbots – Innovation transforming the ‘NOW’ for businesses
Usefulness of Chatbots – Innovation transforming the ‘NOW’ for businesses
Chatbots enable interaction between humans and computers. Is that all or there is more to the powerful and innovative modern tech involved in designing chatbots? Let us answer this basic question- what exactly are chatbots and why are they gaining a lot of popularity recently? A chatbot is an AI software that is capable of simulating a conversation or a chat with users in natural tone or language through messaging, mobile apps, website or telephone. A chatbot can be described as one of the most advanced and mesmerizing innovations of interaction between humans and computers. Although chatbots simply are an evolution to answer questions that customers or website visitors may have, by the use of Natural Language Processing. (NLP)
How does a chatbot work?
There lies two essential tasks at the core of a chatbot that will help you understand its functioning:
- User request analysis: The first and the foremost task performed by a chatbot is analyzing the user’s request in order to identify user intent and extract relevant entities. For a chatbot successful operation, it is very important to know the intent first, only that will help it in providing the answer.
- Returning response: After right identification of user intent, the chatbot will provide the most appropriate response for the user’s request. The different answers could be any of the below:
- Generic or predefined response
- A text that is retrieved from a knowledge base containing different answers
- A contextual piece of information
- Data that is stored in enterprise system
- Resultant of an action performed by chatbot with one of more backend applications.
- Any disambiguating question that may help chatbot in understanding the user’s request.
Chatbot applications in business brands:
- Accessibility: Most of us are always kept on hold when the operator is trying to connect us to customer care executives. People have to spend 7 to 10 minutes in the process which becomes frustrating, therefore customer experience goes down to zero. But, we are stepping in the new era of advances and development that is giving rise to live chats and replacing the slower contacting methods like emails and phone calls. Chatbots never get tired, being machines they obey your command, almost always.
- Capacity to handle: As humans we can have only one conversation with one person at a time which is not really the case with chatbots, that’s what makes them useful. Chatbots can make thousands of conversations with people simultaneously, hence they are capacitated to handle large no. of customer requests in less time. Regardless of time, the chatbots can reply at any hour as they do not need sleep like humans do. Imagine for instance, that you own a restaurant which gained huge popularity over time and now you have a lot of customers to look after. The problem is you lack proper staff at the moment, here chatbots can fit in well in assisting you with the delivery, as they can answer to no. of customers at once.
- Flexibility in attributes: Chatbots are quite flexible as they can be of use in any industry, regardless of their type. Whereas other products require testing, development and modification in accordance with a different platform. Only the bot needs a little bit of training by getting to know the right conversation structure in switching to its current field or industry that it will work for. Custom built presets can assist in bringing conversation flow and structure to carry out the interaction with customers.
- Customer satisfaction: Humans are ruled by thoughts and emotions which is not likely the case with chatbots. Chatbots will function as they are programmed to, therefore using a rough tone is not a suitable choice for a chatbot. It will help in retaining old customers and building a good relationship with them. Moreover, the chatbots can keep a track of your order history and give you desirable suggestions for your next order, depending on your taste and preferences.
Chatbots are an effective tool in helping businesses grow and develop exponentially. They provide assistance in the regular interaction with the customers, enabling them to feel like they are talking to a real person. It is hard to tell the difference! Chatbots are in fact wonderful and capable of maintaining good communication with customers. Chatbots are a real blessing in the new era, an innovation worth the time and effort.
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