#chatbot programming

[rebeccashannon-blog1]

You don’t need to be a coding guru to develop a chatbot

Thanks to chatbots, people now have the convenience of interacting with brands or websites without having to contact a live person. Chatbots are set to revolutionize the customer service industry. If you’re like thousands of other business owners who are following the advancement of chatbots and considering whether to use one for your own business, you’ll be happy to hear that developing a chatbot isn’t as hard as it seems. But first, here are some reasons to invest the time in creating one.

Chatbots speed up customer service

Nobody likes the experience of reaching out to customer service, either through a hotline or through a chat service only to be placed in a queue waiting for a live agent to be available. Businesses can try to arrange to have a sufficient number of customer service representatives at all times but there will undoubtedly be times when there is a higher-than normal call or chat volume and customers will have to wait, and by waiting, they’ll feel unimportant and unappreciated as customers. When they do get a live agent, the conversation is more likely to start out hostile and lead nowhere. This is where chatbots come in.

Unlike live agents, chatbots can assist an unlimited number of customers simultaneously. A chatbot can lessen the strain during an especially busy time period by answering simple questions and resolving easier issues. For more difficult matters that the chatbot can’t resolve, there is still a benefit. The chatbot can obtain account info, ask security questions, or pull up an order before routing them to the person who can help that customer with all of the preliminary steps out of the way.

The problem

If chatbots are so incredible, why isn’t everyone jumping at the chance to have one? Because in order to be reliable and accurate, a lot of artificial intelligence and a solid understanding of coding is required and the average person simply doesn’t know the language of computer programming required to develop a chatbot. The biggest companies with all the resources buy up all the engineering talent leaving small companies with few options. Fortunately, there are affordable alternatives.

Chatbot development platforms

A number of companies have done the artificial intelligence and coding work for you, so you don’t have to. These chatbot development platforms work in a way that’s similar to website building platforms. The platform does the heavy lifting and the user can drop and drop features and work from templates to develop their own chatbots with minimal understanding of coding. These platforms range from the more simple (and limited) and the more complex (with more features but at a higher price and a steeper learning curve). If you are interested in chatbots but fear you don’t know enough, you can get started by familiarizing yourself with the most basic aspects of chatbot programming. Then you can use that limited understanding and with the help of a chatbot development platform, create your first bot. It might not be very good but you’ll get better if you keep fine-tuning and learning about chatbot programming.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Source: thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/08/04/chatbots-without-code-5-paths-easy-business-bot-development/#.tnw_65rayMZB

[businesstexter-blog]

Ten things your customer service chatbot will need to succeed

The chatbot marketplace might not be too crowded yet but it soon will be. Companies of all sizes are beginning to recognize the value that chatbots offer and are rushing to deploy their own. If you want your chatbot to be noticed and used, it’s going to need to stand out. Here are ten things an effective chatbot will need to have. Good natural language processing Without some good natural language processing power behind your chatbot, it won’t be able to understand what people are saying to it unless they use the exact wording you teach it to recognize. Human speech is complex and there are hundreds of ways to word the simplest sentences. So there’s lots of room for your chatbot to fail if it can’t determine meaning from syntax. Proactivity Chatbots are still new technology and many customers won’t think to reach out to your chatbot. Your chatbot is going to have to be proactive and able to initiate conversations with customers. Integration Your chatbot will need to have access to relevant information and may need to be able to assist customers with completing purchases depending on what you’re using it for. That means your chatbot will need to be integrated with social media platforms and ecommerce tools. Simple, well-defined features If you try to program a chatbot to do too many things, it will fail spectacularly at all of them. Chatbot programming is very complex so you’re better off developing a chatbot that handles only a few simple and well-defined tasks. At least at first. Later on you can add more features while ensuring that it doesn’t become less effective at doing what it was programmed to do initially. Ability to deliver on promises A chatbot that can’t do what you claim it can do is going to do more harm than good. If it fails at 50% of customer service interactions, it’s going to hurt your brand and tax your human customer service agents who will just have another thing people are calling in to complain about. Logical structure Think about how customer service interactions progress naturally with a human. You want to mimic that experience with your chatbot. You don’t want to overwhelm customers by having your chatbot present a list of options right up front. Instead you want it to ask the right questions and progress logically down a certain path to accurately help the customer. A fail-safe You don’t want your chatbot to get stuck in a cycle. For instance, if your chatbot goes down the wrong path, either because of a mistake on the customer’s part or a failed attempt at natural language processing, you want it to be able to back up a step, or, if necessary, transfer the customer to a live agent that can assist over chat. Predictive capabilities A good chatbot will keep improving over time. It will learn from failed interactions and begin to pick up on patterns so it can predict what a customer is getting at more quickly and provide faster assistance. Personality One of the trickiest things about programming a chatbot is programming it with a personality. Psychologists have been studying personality for more than a hundred years are no closer to understanding what it is and how it develops not to mention that everyone has different preferences when it comes to personality. Your goal should probably be a bot that’s pleasant and helpful but overall neutral in the personality department. Frequent optimizations A chatbot is not something you set and forget. It will need constant monitoring and fine-tuning. By regularly releasing updates and optimizations for your chatbot, you’ll ensure that it gets better and better at assisting your customers. Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com Source: entrepreneur.com/article/297707

[edwinajones2020]

What Is The Future Of Chatbots?

Investigating Chatbots In Depth To Predict Their Future:

As technology improves, so does our quality of life. Automated gadgets that do not require human intervention are sought after by consumers. We can now converse with others in an automated fashion thanks to chatbots. It has become a handy tool for most people and businesses for communication. 

Chatbot Training has grown in popularity in recent years. Automated communication bots are becoming increasingly popular. For businesses, it becomes a critical component of providing excellent customer service and accurately processing orders. Many businesses also use a chatbot for answering their customers' queries or for showing them the right product which they want. The popularity of the chatbot has already peaked. Developers of chatbots are in high demand. Here we briefly discuss the future of chatbots.

The future of chatbots will be better understood if we take a closer look at various possibilities.

1. Artificial Intelligence: A Brief History

For the time being, there is no Chatbot that can pass the Turing test in 2017. That era is long gone. There have recently been some exciting developments in the field of artificial intelligence. Elon Musk's AI defeated the best Dota2 players in the world with ease. Google DeepMind's release of a new paper on AlphaGo Zero would be the most significant development. The arrival of AlphaGo Zero has the potential to fundamentally alter the way we approach AI programming in the future. It implies that the data will become less basic as time goes on.

As a result, the AI framework could replicate rapidly to the point where it began to operate on itself. Because of the potentially lengthy conversations a chatbot can have with customers, this is an important benefit for the development of chatbots. The problem, however, is that we must figure out a way to approve the answers. In the future, chatbot developers predict that we will see more advancements in AI that can help chatbots become more powerful. In the future, the chatbot will be more intelligent, and it will be able to better understand the question and provide the best possible answer.

2. When Blockchain Technology First Appeared:

Cryptocurrencies have already undergone a period of rapid growth. Every major news outlet is featuring Bitcoin and Ethereum these days. The price of Bitcoin hit an all-time high, breaking through all previous records. As we can see, the technology landscape is rapidly being transformed by blockchain.

A handful of chatbot developers have already experimented with this new technology. Organizations and governments are attempting to build a virtual economy within their platform using their own cryptocurrency. Blockchain technology is being used by businesses in an effort to improve their operations.

In terms of privacy, security, and transparency, blockchain is unsurpassed. We can expect chatbots to begin using blockchain security in the near future as the technology continues to advance. There will soon be the ability to create chatbots for cryptocurrency trading.

3. Influence Customers:

Chatbots are already being used extensively on e-commerce platforms. You can get help from a chatbot on just about any online portal. There are many other uses for chatbots besides customer service and problem solving. In addition, the use of chatbots is critical for gathering data. Chatbots can improve all stages of the marketing channel once they get used to gathering customer insight. You'll get the most up-to-date information possible from your user. Your targeted advertising campaign can also benefit from this information. In addition, chatbot data can be used to provide personalised service.

Google's DeepMind, is working on an AI that can learn from its past successes and failures. When it comes to making continuous improvements, a marketing team is aware of the importance of data analysis. A new generation of sophisticated chatbots is beginning to automate this process. They improve themselves by learning from previous discussions and becoming more knowledgeable about the subject matter.

At least for the time being, humans still have an advantage over chatbots in terms of intelligence. And while chatbots are constantly being improved based on how customers respond to their questions, this is expected to change in the near future. Soon, this situation will be different. Chatbots will soon be used in more diverse ways than they are right now. Additionally, a chatbot certification will give you a good sense of how to use the data. It's possible to use the information to generate more leads and expand your company.

Conclusion:

As can be seen, chatbots will become increasingly important in the future. Chatbot developers will be in high demand in the future. Chatbots will become an essential part of businesses in the future. As well as being useful for businesses, chatbots can also be used for educational purposes, queue management, and more. We can expect to see a rise in the use and importance of chatbots in the future. As a result, obtaining certification in chatbots is a wise career move. Any job seeker will benefit from the increased visibility.

[imbryanmartin]

This Is The Right Time To Become A Chatbot Expert

Chatbot programming that is a gift of AI. These are interactive bots that interact via chat or voice. You can also make chatbot applications by becoming a Chatbot Expert.

[botreetech]

Are Chatbots Useful For Your Business? - BoTree Technologies

There are a number of chatbots available to go for a trial run before you custom-build one. Chatbot technology could be a reliable business resource and the usage depends on the type of business one is dealing with.

[botreetech]

Chatbots or Humans? - The Debate

The use of chatbot technology is growing rapidly across industries. Organizations are trying to leverage chatbot application to improve customer experience. A study by Gartner stated that 85% of customer interactions will be handled by chatbots by 2020. According to Grand View Research, the global market for chatbot AI programming is expected to reach $1.23 billion by 2025, a...

[lorrainebrown-blog]

Six things your customer service chatbot must be able to do

Chatbots are in the midst of a huge growth phase. Chatbot programmers and AI researchers are still discovering new ways to use them as well as things they can’t do. Chatbots are already a lot more useful and practical for the average small business than they were even just a year ago. One of the most popular uses is in customer service. If you’re considering developing a chatbot for your business’s customer service needs, here are six things you’ll want your bot to be able to do.

Use natural language processing to understand what people are saying to them

Early chatbots operated very similar to automated phone answering systems--the kind you encounter when you are forced to call a customer service line and listen to a series of options before giving responses. Deviate in any way from the exact wording and the automated system will have no clue what you’re saying. You don’t want your chatbot to operate in this way. Natural language processing (NLP) is a branch of artificial intelligence research geared towards creating machines that can understand language so that it isn’t limited to responding to several predetermined questions or requests. Your bot needs NLP if you want customers to be able to speak freely with it.

Respond empathetically

One of the things people don’t like about interacting with chatbots is that they can be cold and impersonal. A live customer service agent can defuse a bad interaction by showing empathy and relating to customers on a personal and emotional level. While chatbots may not be capable of feeling emotions like humans, they can be programmed to use empathetic language which can still have the same calming effect on customers.

Offer a personalized customer service experience

Your chatbot will need to be able to remember second- and third-time users. If your chatbot has access to previous conversations it can recall a person’s preferences and personal information. It can address the customer by name without having to ask for it and can make the customer feel important and appreciated.

Stay consistent in tone and personality

Chatbots are unsettling for many people. A way to reduce the unsettled feeling customers might get is to make sure your bot is consistent in tone and personality. If it fluctuates between friendly and conversational to being very straight-the-point and robotic, people will have trouble getting into the experience of chatting with your chatbot and may prefer to get on the phone instead.

Learn

Your chatbot will make mistakes daily. Don’t worry about creating a perfect chatbot because it’s impossible. The best you can hope for though is a chatbot that grows more accurate with each mistake. Through machine learning, you can feed your chatbot hundreds or thousands of customer service interactions so it can pick up on patterns to better understand what leads to failed and successful interactions.

Ask for help

If people invest several minutes into conversing with your bot only for your bot to get stuck and not be able to help, they then have to get on the phone which is probably what they were trying to avoid in the first place. It defeats the purpose of using a message-based platform in the first place. So if you’re going to invest in a chatbot, make sure your customer service team is equipped with the tools to be able to take over a failed chat session. Make sure your chatbot is able to recognize and admit failure early enough in the process that customers don’t grow frustrated and give up before a live agent can assist them.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Source: venturebeat.   com/2017/09/16/5-small-changes-that-drastically-improve-chatbot-conversations/