Chatbots: The Future of Web/App Development

The amalgam of chat tool & robot formed Chatbot. Though this concept came couple of years back, it has been on the rise only lately and is being widely adopted by countless number of businesses. Okay, so what’s the deal about chatbots?

Bots are basically virtual robots service that make a conversation just like a real person. They never get distressed & continue to obey your command. Since, chatbot follows AI & ML to gather conversational cadences, it allows them to copy human conversations, understand their predictions & thinking, and then react accordingly. So, the more conversation chatbot will have the more intelligent it will become. Several companies are investing in chatbots, for the convenience of users & retaining customers for a long time.

Chatbots linked up with Facebook Messenger have expanded from 30,000 in 2016 to over 1,00,000 today. In the coming years, nearly 80% of businesses will have their own chatbot.

How Chatbot functions?

“Machine learning is what can change a computer from “being stupid” to “be sensible”.

The basic contour behind chatbot is integrating learning with experience & AI algorithms that helps it take better decisions and react appropriately.  With repetitive practices, chatbot learns responses to different queries and therefore increases its functionality. The use of machine learning thus seems very natural for chatbots. The fact that human behavior is monotonous makes it possible for chatbots to rely on the concept of Machine Learning. Chatbot or chatterbox, as an exemplification is a customer service representative that never sleeps, never misses a call or queries and replies instantly.

Chatbots are trained under actual data. Developers store logs of conversations and maintain a database. Further, that database is categorized, like what users generally ask, what customers are trying to say etc. With combination of ML models, they match the queries which customer usually has and relay the best suitable response. As an illustration, if a customer asks, “Where is my parcel?” or “I have not received my parcel”? mean the same thing. Now, it depends on the developer’s strength to train the models, so that chatbot can understand both the questions to the correct intent and gives an accurate answer for both the questions as one.

For a long period of time, Starbucks has been using Chatbot to make it easy for the people to know, how much time is remaining in their order, what will be the total cost, and other queries. They have made it so convenient for users to place orders through their app. Chatbot directly communicates through the voice commands or text messaging service in the app itself.

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How will Chatbot Benefit Web/App Development?

Debut of Chatbots has changed the scenario how customer used to interact with a regular website. It works better when a website is developed with chatbots from the initial stage. For an instance, the user won’t have to filter each section of a website to find a particular type of information or product. With live conversation with AI powered chatbot, the user will get satisfied at the very same point. If you are looking for a mobile phone, you could just ask the chatbot to find the type of model, specifications you want, instead of finding them with specific keywords. Chatbots will eventually increase your convenience to find a thing in the jungle of WWW.

Generally, users download those apps which are interactive, and which don’t consume too much time to find something they want. This is what the web/app developers are required to know- to make your app top the list, it’s time to make it interesting & engage! Follow the trend and incorporate chatbot in your App/Website.

• 24X7 Assistance– Whether you are a well-known brand with huge fan following, or a startup in its infant stage, Chatbot is there to give assistance to your precious customers, which will eventually create a value of you in this competitive market. Chatbot can solve your customer’s problem in different languages and will be available 24*7, unlike humans who can’t be available for your organization every time. This new creation will help the businesses retain the existing & gaining new customers.

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• Highly Flexible- Chatbots are the creatures, that can be instantly used by any industry. Unlike other products, which need several hit & trials bots are relatively easy to switch from industry to industry. The only task is to train the chatbot under right conversation structure and flow, to switch its current field or industry.

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• Multitasking- According to several studies, humans cannot do 2-3 things at the same time. And even if one tries to do so, there will definitely be errors. Whereas, Bots can simultaneously make conversations with millions of users. No matter at what time people message, each of them will be answered immediately.

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• One Time Investment- Chatbots are considered as very cost effective medium, which help organizations to reduce expenses on human workforce. Since, bots are loaded with automated solutions, you could integrate customer support bot, which can cater simple queries of customers & only pass complex queries to customer support agents. By introducing chatbots into your business, you will not only save employee costs but also can get rid of human errors. Chatbots can be a great benefit for doing basic & repetitive tasks with unmatchable speed, easy to implement, maintain & cost effective.

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• 100% Satisfaction Rate- Humans have mood swings! They react according to others mood and emotions. For instance, if an employee is in good mood, he will most probably treat the customer in a good way. Contrary to this, customer may not get satisfied. While, chatbots are bound with certain rules, which lead them to talk to customers in the most polite way, no matter how rough the customer is. Also, chatbots can be trained to communicate in different languages, so that no customer goes back in confusion.

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• Raise Interactivity- The most important aspect of a business, is to engage your customers with your brand. According to studies, brand who engage their customers via social media are able to increase their audience by 20% to 40%. While social media platforms are performing their tasks, chatbots can further contribute to it by making it more interactive for the users. A conventional customer service provides an information more than a customer asks. Chatbots are trained in a way to give only slice of information, which is required and don’t bore the customers with irrelevant information. They contribute by making the conversation more interactive, usually with a great sense of humor.

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• Personal Assistant- People could use chatbots as fashion advisor for best choice of clothes, or as a financial bot for trading tips, or as a travel guide to help plan a vacation, or as a doctor to take care of health. Bots work according to user’s convenience, as you can literally ask anything from it and it will be ready with the answer. Besides, it will always remember your choice & preferences, so the next time you come, it will be all set to provide you the relevant choices.

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• Better Monitoring of User Data – As chatbots are the great tool of communication with customers, with the feedback they collect, companies can work on it & make improvements. Your chatbot can reach out to your customers, and with survey can collect more information. Like, why they are leaving the page without purchasing? What changes the website can do for better user experience? etc. Company can make a track through user’s responses & feedbacks, and ultimately train the bots to suggest a different or more beneficial product/services to satisfy customer with something than nothing in his hand. And, it also helps to notify the sales & marketing department for personalized services.

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Read Also: 7 Repercussions Of Emerging Technologies That We Are Ignoring

It’s a big misinterpretation to consider AI as something which will replace humans, but actually Artificial Intelligence is something which will add stars to human intelligence. With technology moving faster than ever before, it’s not a problem to say that in meantime a Chatbot revolution will take place and organizations wouldn’t mind integrating it with their business for convenience & improve their revenues and customer satisfaction. With so many benefits out there, this creation will turn out to be more intelligent, where it does not need to be told by an employee what to do & what not. And with new advancements coming every year in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning etc., there will be soon an environment where chatbot will be considered as the future of web/app development.