Are mobile apps as appealing as a chatbot? Well, voice-based communication is far used than mobile apps. Here are some of the statistics to make you believe that chatbot technology is booming.
More than 50% of the businesses will focus on chatbot development as compared to mobile apps.
Chatbots will be the source of the $112 billion e-commerce industry by the year 2023. Social distancing played a major role in the growth of Chatbots.
It is now being predicted that by the year 2026, global the chatbot industry will reach $10.08 billion.
What is a chatbot? A chatbot is a collaboration of messaging services with an interactive AI-trained robot, a digitized conversation platform between a human being and a trained bot. This makes it Chatbot.
Chatbots work as virtual agents between the business and a potential future customer. Nowadays, Chatbots are everywhere and on all platforms (web or mobile).
They can be found practically on any platform, including web and mobile, but messengers are the place where they operate.
One of the most astonishing facts about Chatbots is that, more than 300,000 active bots on Facebook Messenger in 2018. Now that’s huge.
300k active bots mean that there are around 300k businesses that are continuously interacting with customers. Wahoo, that’s massive. And assuming that this count was from back in 2018, imagine the increase in this number.
Here is a survey result from 2020. A survey conducted in December 2020surveyed the use of Chatbots in the travel and hospitality industry. According to the study, 25% of respondents confirmed that their organizations were using Chatbots.
However, 46%of the developers claimed that their companies started working on introducing chatbot services in the future.
Why should we use Chatbots?
Here is a list of the top 4 reasons I have collected for you to use and start making a chatbot for your business.
- It is a machine learning tool that helps you collect customer data.
- To have a virtual assistant conduct a preliminary conversation with your customer.
- To make your business or product available for a discussion round the clock.
- Collect data and train your Bot with this real-life data.
How to design and develop a Chatbot?
In order to understand the chatbots and their technology, it is important to get answer to the some of the questions. Lets get started
What type of Chatbot do you want?
Before starting to design and develop your Chatbot, you should answer two simple questions.
- What is your reason behind building a chatbot?
- And what help do you think your customers will get from your Bot?
The answers to these two questions will help you understand and decide your first step. Then, the answers will guide you through finalizing your decision about your Bot.
There are two categories in which bots can be divided, a rule-based chatbot or an advanced AI-enabled bot.
Rule-based bots are restricted with predefined scripted conversations, whereas AI-enabled bots are built on learning and improve the model.
An example of a rule-based chatbot is an FAQ bot that can answer queries from a potential customer.
However, AI-based Chatbots will help in data gathering, possible consultation to a customer related to a sale, and handing over the customer to a human salesperson (handoff).
Where do you need your Chatbot
You need to decide either you need your Bot deployed in your mobile app or website. Next, you need to figure out where this Bot will help your customers most.
This needs to be decided by you after analyzing your mobile app and website performance.
You can also decide to have this Bot deployed everywhere on all platforms.
This will help you entertain your customers on all platforms across multiple virtual world platforms and social media platforms.
Select the technology stack to use
When you answer what services this Bot provides to your customers, you limit your options to finalize the technology needed to build the Bot.
You can select a framework and hire a developer to work on it. Or you can do it yourself, but that’s not recommended.
Keeping the future growth of voice-based interactions, you should also think of the following expansion options.
- Where to find a developer who is skilled enough to build the Chatbot and also give a futuristic approach to the Bot.
- Will you be able to use the selected framework to use voice-driven chatting?
- Is the framework with voice-driven chatting options proprietary or open-source?
Design the conversation
With the selection of tech stack to build your Bot on, you can now work on your chatbot conversation flow.
If you are looking to do it on your own, there is an inbuilt program wizard that helps you step of the way and gives you simple drag and drops conversation options.
However, if you have decided to build on an AI-Based, I would request you to hire a professional developer to help you develop and integrate an AI-based chatbot.
Train the bot
Okay, so this step is only for AI-based bots. If you are not making an AI Bot, then please skip to the next step.
But if you are building an AI-Based Bot, then you need to understand how does AI works? Artificial intelligence collects and stores the actions and reactions of every customer who used the Chatbot.
With an AI-based chatbot, you want your Bot to understand the customer with which it is communicating. This can only be done by training your Bot with data, which in your case will you a huge set of customer communications.
Test the chatbot
Once your Bot is built, test it. Test it again and again. Test it with multiple scenarios. See how it responds to queries and interact when asked questions.
As for your AI-Based Bot, continuously train your Bot with updated sample conversations. Only then will you be able to achieve maximum performance of your Bot.
Deploy and maintain the bot
And now, with the completion of the Bot’s development, the final step of deployment is at hand. Deploying doesn’t take much of your time. Connect your Bot with a CRM tool to analyze its performance, and that’s all about it.
The skill level and Examples of Chatbots
While developing your Bot, you have tested a couple of Chatbots, some on the web platforms, some on the social media platforms, and some which are voice-based.
There as three types of bots currently we are using in our daily life. One of them is an inbuilt voice-based chatbot on our mobiles.
Let’s see what types of bots we have and what purpose do they serve:
INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence is the first skill element a chatbot is dependent on. We have just discussed the rule-based and AI-based Chatbots.
Both of these chatbot types are ranked differently on intelligence level.
Rule-based chatbots are usually marked as stagnant and dumb. Whereas AI-based Chatbots are constantly evolving.
AREA OF APPLICATION
Chatbots can be used in multiple businesses. Nowadays, we see Chatbots serving customers and helping them with window shopping. Chatbots are a unique way of having Virtual sales representatives for your customers.
Chatbots can be your customer support representatives. They can also act as personal assistants. Examples of virtual and personal assistant chatbots, consider the following chatbots.
Apple’s Siri or Google’s Meena, and many more.
You will see people always arguing about these Chatbots and saying that they are not, but think of it like this. They let you interact with the world and help you manage your day-to-day actions.
PLATFORM
Finally, you can have your Chatbots deployed on any one of the following, or all of the following:
- Web
- Mobile apps
- Messengers
Some of these Chatbotsare deployed only in the form of standalone mobile apps functioning to collect customer or user information.
But why limit your options to only collect options?
Why not use these Chatbots for your websites and social media messengers? Because that’s where your customer is.
In the end, I am interested in sharing a fact with you. To have a better customer experience, you need to have your bots deployed everywhere (website, messenger, and mobile app).
The following picture contains an example of a conversation between an AI-based chatbot and a human being.
Bottom Line
At the start of this article, I shared statistics related to Chatbots and their contribution to our daily lives. The numbers are growing. Chatbots are evolving, and even rule-based bots are being optimized for more natural and effective communication.
I used those statistics to convince you to develop and design your Chatbot. The Chatbot is an opportunity for progressive individuals like you and organizations to have conversational interactions with customers.
You can build your Bot yourself, or you can hire a professional. But if you are doing it yourself, then you will be working on your Bot a few hours every day. Or maybe a day in and day out.
This article contains all the basics you need to build your Chatbot. Share your idea with me if you are thinking otherwise to design your Chatbot?
