ChatBots – Everyone’s talking about them, and more and more companies are starting to use them. In fact, 80% of businesses want chatbots by 2020. Facebook Messenger has been luring brands and developers to its platform to create bots and that’s working great. But, what is a ChatBot? Are there real benefits to using them? How do they work? Who’s using them? And how do I get started?

 

What is a ChatBot and how does it work?

A ChatBot is an interactive program that talks to you and answers requests just like a real person. It uses Machine Learning through Artificial Intelligence to pick up on conversational cadences, allowing it to mimic human conversations and react to spoken or written prompts to deliver a service.

The ChatBot is a user interface which can be plugged into a number of data sources so it can deliver informations or services on demand; such as weather forecasts, breaking news or booking a hotel room.

There is 2 different types of ChatBots

–The messaging one: Its functions are based on rules, and typically it can only respond to very specific commands. It is smart…but only as it is programmed to be.

–The virtual assistant one: It uses Artificial Intelligence and understands language, not just commands. You can talk to it, order it to buy you stuff, to find you some informations etc.

The Best-Performing ChatBots can answer (almost) every question just like Apple’s Siri,  Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant and some others.

 

Why should we use a ChatBot and what are the benefits?

Last year, Business Insider reported that messaging applications had more users than social media networks beginning in about the first quarter of 2015. With nearly 3 Billion monthly active users for the top 4 messaging apps in 2016. Messenger alone, was said to have about 900 million active users a month.

So, as messaging continues to grow in popularity and capability, it is safe to assume that consumers will want to interact with brands and services via chat as it is easier and faster to use. On the other hand, businesses could easily touch more and more customers thanks to the messaging apps affluence.

 

How do ChatBots work?

Bot developers use bot frameworks and software development kits to create their bots for chatting, shopping, booking travel etc. These frameworks or tools enable them to improve their bots by getting inputs from user, processing the input with help of some AI and NLP (In some cases), and then give user the services as per the bot’s purpose of creation or they can just code the whole script and incorporate it into the framework. Once up and running, a ChatBot requires a training period, during which the system learns how to best match user’s questions to appropriate responses.

Basically bots recognize key words in the users input and then access a database to give a predefined response or do a predefined act. “Siri, what’s the weather going to be like today?” “Alexa, turn off the lights.”

 

Some examples of how ChatBots can be used

• News ChatBot: Ask it to tell you when ever something interesting happens.
• Weather ChatBot: Get the weather whenever you ask.
• Grocery ChatBot: Help me pick out and order groceries for the week.
• Life Advice ChatBot: I’ll tell it my problems and it helps me think of solutions.
• Personal Finance ChatBot: It helps me manage my money better.
• Scheduling ChatBot: Get me a meeting with someone on the Messenger team at Facebook.

 

Some Brands that use ChatBots

 

Here’s a list of some brands that daily use ChatBots to interact with their customers:

SOCIAL GOOD:

• HelloVote
• UNICEF

UTILITIES:

• Hewlett Packard
• The Weather Channel
• Staples

TRAVEL

• KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
• Hipmunk
• Expedia
• Uber
• Lyft
• Skyscanner

FINANCIAL

• Fidelity
• Capital One
• NerdWallet
• RBS

BEAUTY & FASHION

• Victoria Secret PINK
• Tommy Hilfiger
• H&M
• Sephora
• Burberry

RETAIL AND E-COMMERCE

• 1-800-Flowers
• eBay
• Macy’s
• Casper

FOOD

• Trolli
• Whole Foods
• Taco Bell
• Domino’s
• Burger King
• Wingstop
• Pizzahut

SPORTS

• theScore
• NBA
• Sports Illustrated
• Copa 90
• Toni
• NFL

HEALTH

• Baidu
• HealthTap
• Boston Children’s Hospital
• MedWhat

PUBLISHERS

• NY Times
• CNN
• Today Show
• NBC
• WSJ

MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• Fandango
• Stubhub
• Disney
• Universal Studios
• Activision
• Mattel

How can I implement a ChatBot for my business?

If you’d like to implement a ChatBot for your business, get in touch with us here: https://passkit.com/custom/