A chatbot is a computer program or an artificial intelligence which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods to the users.
These programs are designed to simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner, thereby passing the Turing test (which is a method of inquiry in artificial intelligence (AI) for determining whether a computer is capable of thinking like a human being, developed by Alan Turing in 1950, it is also a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human).
Chatbots are mostly used in dialog systems for various practical purposes including customer service or information acquisition. It is basically programmed to respond the same way each time, to respond differently to messages containing certain effective keywords and even to use machine learning to adapt their replies to fit the situation.
Chatbots influence chat mediums like SMS text, website chat windows and social messaging services across platforms like Facebook and Twitter and other sites to receive and respond to messages.
Chatbots also allow users to interact with them via graphical interfaces or graphical widgets. Many chat platforms including WeChat, Facebook Messenger and Kik allow web views on which developers can create completely customized graphical interfaces.
In businesses also one can use the chatbots for customer service. The reports of Facebook state that 2 billion messages are sent between people and businesses monthly and 56% of people would rather message than call customer service and 53% of people are more likely to shop with businesses they can message. These stats create huge buzz for chatbots in coming years in businesses. Mainly a chatbot solves problems such as demands for getting quick answers to questions, to resolve a complaint or problem, to get a more detailed answer to a query and finding a customer service people in businesses.
By automating conversations that would otherwise require an human employee to answer, comapanies save time and money that can served to other meaningful efforts in the organization. They also use direct and straightforward messages to gather relevant information necessary to provide effective support to the end users. They omit the worries for using a human to serve the customer effectively and nicely. Sometimes customers are in an odd position where they are confused how to get the information required by them or they are interested in through the site, so chatbots here play the role of a guide who serves the customer for finding his path and getting the desired results or outcomes.By asking a series of qualifying questions, the bots route users to the best place for them to find the information they want. Some chatbots also provide after hours support, when the office is closed and the employees are relieved from work. By this, your worthy customers can gain information even during the time when your business is shut off. Previously, customer asked questions were transferred to businesses via mail or the telephone, which made user experiences standard and non-customized. But chatbots offer a new, fun and interactive way to engage with brands, literally they enjoy the customers and increase the graph of satisfaction level of the customer by enhsncing the standard of experience of the customer.
The chatbots work in a simple way to look but complex during execution. The first task that a chatbot performs is it analyzes the user’s request to identify the user intent and to extract relevant entities about the keyword or the topic. If you are not able to correctly understand the user’s request, you won’t be able to provide the correct answer. Once the user’s intent has been identified, then the chatbot provide s the most appropriate response for the user’s request and completes his job simultaneously waiting for the next request. Generally, the answers are in generic and predefined texts.
Basically, there are three types of chatbots- Scripted, Intelligent and Application.
Scripted chatbots are the bots which can only follow predetermined paths assisted or as scripted by the programmer. At each step in the conversation the user will need to pick from explicit options to determine the next step in the conversation. Generally, at the end of each step, options are provided to the user to chose.
Intelligent chatbots allows to be more flexible in terms of the user input they can accept by the help of Artificial Intelligence. They can accept free form input in the form of text or voice statements (but of course they are not limited to other forms of input if that makes sense).
Application bot provides the customers with application forms right in the discord server, so its goodbye to external form sites like Google Forms and hello to Application Bot for things such as staff applications; roles, bot or feature requests, and – since application bot is fully customisable – whatever the user desires.
Market Size and Case Studies
According to Statista, Cequity Analysis, 80 percent of companies surveyed plan to launch their own chatbot by 2020 to improve customer journey. To harness the benefits of conversational chatbot organizations will have to integrate them with back end inventory management, customer support & loyalty and transactional systems of their respective businesses. “The chatbot market in India is huge and only 10% penetrated.” said Aakrit Vaish who co-founded Haptik in 2013 which is an unique mobile assistant platform and presently it has been transitioned into conversational AI and is now one of India’s foremost platforms in that space. With these the market size can be visualised and can be thought of that how big it is and there is a lot more to dip hand in AI chatbots. Globally, the chatbot market has seen an explosive growth since 2015, growing at 35 percent CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate which is a business and investing specific term for the geometric progression ratio that provides a constant rate of return over the time period).The regions considered in the scope of the report include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa. The study also emphasizes the benefits of chatbots in accordance with diverse application and future prospect of the same.
