Chatbot App Development Guide: All You Need to Know

What is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is software that simulates human conversation in text or speech, using technologies such as artificial intelligence, natural language processing (NLP) and pattern recognition.

Types of Chatbots

Chatbots can be divided into two types.

Rule-Based Chatbots

Rule-based chatbots follow a set of predefined rules or flows to respond to a user’s queries. Most simple applications use rule-based chatbots, which answer questions according to these preset rules. If a query falls outside the defined rules, a rule-based chatbot cannot reply, and it does not improve through its interactions.

Artificial Intelligence Chatbots

AI chatbots are more advanced and are based on machine learning. They use natural language processing to understand the meaning behind the questions they are asked, rather than following a fixed set of rules. As they interact with users they collect data, which is later used to personalize the user experience.

Common Chatbot Problems to Plan For

To build a genuinely useful chatbot, you need to understand the problems chatbots often run into:

• They frequently misunderstand users’ requests
• They have little or no memory of earlier messages
• They often don’t understand follow-up questions
• They cannot make decisions on their own
• They become repetitive with template responses
• They can require a lot of manual coding

Should I Implement a Chatbot?

In general, conversational chatbots are simpler to set up than other types of bots, and today you can choose user-friendly, intuitive platforms that don’t need a large investment or much time.

The hardest part is teaching the bot how to talk to your customers in the tone you want. After that, you only need to keep it up to date. That is a small effort compared with what the bot can do for your company: improve customer satisfaction, increase sales, collect valuable data and reduce costs.

Functions of Chatbot Software

• Automate requests
• Build complex conversation flows
• Create bots
• Resolve customer queries quickly
• Provide 24/7 support
• Reduce manual work for your team
• Produce useful reports
• Generate leads
• Deploy on any channel and stay available around the clock

Critical Capabilities of a Chatbot Platform

• Conversation studio
• APIs
• Managed NLU engine
• Channel integrations
• Customer feedback lifecycle
• Human-in-the-loop
• Deployment options
• Regression testing
• Dedicated support team
• Collaboration tools
• Content management system

Want to add a conversational AI assistant to your website or WhatsApp? See our AI chatbot development services or talk to the AppsInAi team.