Talking Robots and The Era of Artificial Intelligence: What is a Chatbot REALLY?
Odds are that you have communicated with a robot, perhaps even without realising it was a robot! You have also probably heard the buzz surrounding “chatbots” in the media. So what, is a chatbot, REALLY?
A chatbot is an interactive service that simulates human interaction through voice commands or text chats and can be used as a customer service, sales and marketing tool. The artificial intelligence feature allows the chatbot to deliver value across many industries.
Common customer journeys that a chatbot can assist with include:
- Onboarding new customers
- Purchasing products
- Answering frequently asked questions
- Checking a customer’s existing account
- Lodging an incident or issue
- Scheduling a meeting
- Telling the news
Artificial Intelligence
What makes chatbots tick? The artificial intelligence known as natural-language processing (NLP) has the ability to understand and mimic human conversation. The chatbot is designed to analyse data, extract patterns, and convey relevant information via speech or text. The more someone uses a chatbot the more personalised the chatbot becomes, therefore, continually providing a better customer experience. This can be incredibly useful for organisations who desire to deliver a better, faster and more personal customer journey.
Present and Future
Chatbots are currently implemented within apps, messaging platforms, and across the web. That means organisations can increase their reach to customers on their own website and across social platforms. With over 1 billion users of messaging apps that’s quite an attractive proposition!
More and more businesses are beginning to experiment with bots which help benefit customer service, e-commerce, and content extraction. Through use of bots, companies can cut down costs of acquiring customers, increase their return on investment and deliver around the clock customer care.
