A chatbot, or bot, is a software application that simulates a real human conversation. Chatbots process and interpret the user’s words and instantly provide a pre-set answer to the user. Chatbots allow humans to have a conversation with computer software that will allow them to feel as if they’re having a conversation with a human.
As I’m sure you can imagine, with something that is so crucial to the business industry, there has been a great deal of time put into ensuring that chatbots work smoothly and flawlessly. Although there are always updates and improvements being made to the software, chatbots have become a crucial part of the business world.
What Are The Benefits Of Chatbots?
Chatbots have numerous benefits. In our day and age, sales and marketing teams are under pressure to always be improving the consumer experience. Nothing is ever considered ‘perfect’ and it’s always seen as a place where improvement can be made. This a huge task that is very time-consuming.
On the other hand, as humans that are buying (or thinking about buying) from a company, we expect prompt and correct answers to each question. Although humans are capable of this, it takes a great deal of time, experience, and trial and error before anything is defined.
Even then, customer satisfaction is never entirely guaranteed. This is why, in our day and age, many top brands have used chatbots to help them take care of customer support. Chatbots can help brands by increasing their website conversion rate, combat customer churn, and help to generate more qualified leads. These three benefits help a company gather the information they need to give consumers a great experience while doing less work on their end.
Different Types Of Chatbots
There are a few main types of chatbots that you’ll want to educate yourself about before you decide to buy one. Chatbots are used for many different forms of communication, ranging from customer service, gathering data, and more. We’ve listed the three main types of chatbots below.
Rule-Based Chatbots
Rule-based chatbots are the most common and simple in our day and age. These bots have users interact with them by pressing buttons and choosing pre-defined options. Users choose a few selections for the bot to give the best answer. As I’m sure you can imagine, this causes the customer journey and process to last for an extended period since it takes longer for the consumer to reach their answer.
Although these chatbots work for some, they may not work in every scenario. The bot asks the user questions and the user chooses from pre-defined answers; this system is not bad, but with scenarios including factors and conditions, it may not be the best choice.
Al Powered Chatbots
Al powered chatbots work best for solving user’s problems. Although they have free language, they also have a pre-defined flow to ensure that they’ll be capable of solving issues that users come to them with. These chatbots combine the best areas of our other two chatbots mentioned in this article to solve problems most efficiently. Al powered chatbots can jump from multiple scenarios, and have the power to communicate with users on random requests. Al powered chatbots will give users the experience as if it were two humans interacting, instead of a bot on the other end.
Intellectually Independent Chatbots
Our third type of bots, intellectually independent bots, depend on Machine Learning. Machine Learning helps the bot understand based on data gathered from the user’s requests and inputs. You could say that, over time, these bots will learn from experience. These chatbots work by being trained to understand specific keywords or phrases that will work to trigger the bot’s reply to the user. Over time, and as they interact with more users, bots will train themselves to understand other questions.
In Conclusion
Overall, chatbots have become a part of our world that businesses have grown to depend on greatly. They help to ease the workload on companies and give users an experience that is the same as two humans interacting. There are many different kinds of chatbots and, depending on which you need, each is suited to different needs in a company.
We suggest doing a thorough amount of research before you make your final decision on a specific chatbot. Chatbots can be incredibly beneficial for your company if you decide to invest in the right one.
