Introduction
Chatbots have gained popularity in the past few years and are seen on most of the websites you visit. Owing to the ease they offer, they are used by many businesses to support their client base. It can improve customer service for several industries in the coming years. Moreover, the integration of AI is helping introduce well-functioning chatbots. Therefore, knowing the fundamentals of building a chatbot and a brief introduction to Chatbots can encourage seamless interaction with customers.
Chatbots are simulations that can understand human language, and process it. They can interact back while performing specific tasks. Read on to know the basics of building an AI chatbot in 2023.
Top Applications of Chatbots
Nowadays there are many chatbots better than their predecessors to be more naturally conversant. They are more technologically advanced and these advancements have made conversations with chatbots normal and natural. Before studying the AI chatbot, you must know the fundamentals of artificial intelligence. AI is finding a way in various applications and chatbot is one of them.
Today, almost every industry has chatbots to engage its users and serve customers. They can cater to their queries well. You can have chatbots everywhere, but this doesn’t mean that each of them will be well-functioning. The challenge here is to develop a well-functioning chatbot.
Some of the Applications of Chatbots are as below
- Providing Virtual reception assistant
- Acting as Virtual help desk assistant
- Working as a Virtual tutor in various streams
- Giving driving assistance virtually
- Sending Virtual emails, or working as a content distributor
- Offering home assistance virtually to ease our lives
- Helping as operations assistant virtually
- entertainment assistant in virtual mode
- Giving Virtual phone assistant
- Assisting the visually impaired person to find the correct path
- Helping a warehouse executive in finding the stocked product
What is The Architecture of chatbots?
Understanding the architecture of chatbots is crucial to implement it into your business. Artificial intelligence professionals know these terms and how to use them. Usually, chatbot architecture consists of the following:
- A Chat window, session, front-end application interface
- A deep learning model that includes natural Language Processing [NLP]
- Corpus or training data that trains the NLP model
- Application Database to process actions to be performed
Corpus or Training Data
Corpus refers to the data to be used to train the NLP model. It helps to understand human language as text or speech. As a result, the chatbot can reply using the same medium. The corpus is usually large data. It has many human interactions.
Types of Chatbots
The relationship between consumer and brand interaction has completely changed with the introduction of chatbots. They are able to imitate talks and provide immediate, digital connections. Technology, programming, and the kind of chatbot depend mainly on the customer base. Since each chatbot will be serving a different customer base, they differ. Below are the main types of chatbots used to simplify the way of interaction between businesses and their customers.
1. Scripted/Quick reply bots
This type of chatbot is the one that interacts with the end customer. It performs interaction via a predefined knowledge base. This chatbot has the technical ability to respond to fixed instructions only. In this way, the inquiries have to be lined up with the language that is programmed into the chatbot.
2. Natural Language Processing (NLP) Chatbots
Most users consider chatbots as one of the biggest AI applications. At its base, the chatbot makes use of AI technology. It applies Natural Language Processing or NLP for depicting the user’s input. The input can be text or voice to an intent. Messages are sorted in NLP chatbots. Further, to obtain variables for a reply language parsing is done.
3. Service/Action Chatbots
For completing the user’s request, chatbots in this category question relevant information from the user. Usually, the Airline industry makes use of this kind of chatbot. They are useful to customers for checking their flight booking, charges of seat reserving, and also to see the statuses.
4. Social Messaging Chatbots
Social messaging chatbots are incorporated within a social messaging platform. For example eats app, Messenger, Telegram, Slack, and more. It allows customers to directly communicate with the bot. It works similarly to the way you do with other human beings.
5. Context Enabled Chatbots
It is one of the most advanced forms of conversational bots. For remembering the conversations that were done earlier, these kinds of chatbots apply Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. They apply these techniques with particular users, to learn and grow with time. Contextual chatbots work by learning with experience with the user. Some examples of these chatbots are Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa.
6. Voice-Enabled Chatbots
These types of chatbots are known to make personalised experiences for users. They are Voice enabled chatbots that accept the user’s input when they speak. These chatbot act upon the user's request, respond to queries, and perform several creative tasks. They use text-to-speech (TTS) and voice recognition APIs. Hence businesses can make their own voice-activated chatbot unique to their needs.
Conclusion
As discussed above a chatbot can be described as a piece of software or a computer program mimicking human interaction. It responds through voice or text exchanges. With more reachability to new technologies, more users are using chatbot virtual assistants. It helps them to complete basic activities or get a solution addressed in various business settings. For instance, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) settings.
Chatbots usually take a few simple actions. They include understanding, acting, and answering relevantly. The chatbot examines the user’s notes in the first step. After that, it interprets what the user said, it takes action according to a set of algorithms. In the end, it chooses one of several relevant answers. To enhance your technical expertise, you can join one of the courses offered by The IoT Academy. You will gain knowledge of the latest tools and techniques to be used in your profession.
