With the rising popularity of the internet and digital marketing, it becomes necessary for businesses to ensure that they provide strong customer service on different platforms.
Chatbots can be integrated into popular applications like Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp where a majority of customers reach out to the businesses for various queries. This simple integration can drastically improve the customer relationship online.

Usually, consumers reach out to the companies regarding any queries about their products/services, discounts/sales, complaints etc. Time is of the essence and users want their queries answered almost immediately. With the help of Chatbots, businesses can reply to these queries instantly irrespective of the time and can even provide some additional information that the customer might find useful.

The biggest advantage is that the bots can be customized to suit the needs and requirements of your business so you can provide the best service to your customers. Many renowned brands like Spotify, Mastercard, Starbucks have already started using Chatbots to delight their customers! These bots can also help accumulate relevant data about your customers which might provide useful
insights for the business.

Have you incorporated a chatbot for your business yet? Let us know in the comments below!

Last week, the launch of Oracle’s new artificial intelligence marked a turning point. The company, which was rewarded last year by Forrester Research, is using AIs in the mobile phone market, which has nearly 5 billion users worldwide.

According to Amit Zavery, to continue to strengthen customer relationships, companies must move away from traditional websites and applications to new trends, such as instant messaging and the Oracle Cloud Platform.

“As consumer behavior has changed, businesses need to adapt to what their stakeholders prefer. ”

By integrating channels like Facebook Messenger, Kik, Skype, Slack, and digital voice assistance like Amazon Echo, Amazon Dot and GoogleHome, AIs enable automation of large-scale conversations.

“All the new abilities allowed by the Bots open up new horizons. It allows us to interact with our customers in a more humane way, “says Ryan Klose, General Manager of Technology and Innovation at National Pharmacies.

Businesses will be able to improve their conversational agent over time, by combining automatic cognitive learning with a wealth of knowledge – a system that learns natural language to understand end user intent.

“We are developing a benchmark artificial intelligence that will allow us to build new ones for any industry,” said Michael Menendez, Vice President, IT, BGE and Exelon Utilities.

“Not only does artificial intelligence enable us to offer fast solutions for emerging channels, but it also provides an unforgettable interaction between the customer and the company.

The Chatbot revolution is here and every day we see brands giant techs release information that makes the technology wiser and its use in business, industries, art and conversations.

Last year Microsoft launches the ‘Microsoft Bot Framework’, it was to encourage developers to create a conversational bot interface. They were designed to work on Skype and Slack and communicate with Microsoft’s assistant Cortana.

If you look at the possibility of using Chatbots, they are quite endless for the consumer market. You can book tickets, order food, clear your doubts instantaneously with a Chatbot. But the uses of it can span much larger on to industries as well as medical fields.

Recently, an article was published by MIT Technology review that talks about an American construction worker that works using an application that helps them review 3D models of architectural projects. During a review, he discovered that the steel frames that they had planned to order were too big to fit the design. Having gotten an overview with this they were able to save lots of money and time. This intelligent AI can help workers make many decisions.

Imagine a situation where a Bot can diagnose multiple people in a hospital with accuracy whereas the doctor has human disadvantages when it comes to time and being at one place at a time. With the increase in the technology the possibility of using Bots to our advantage will only increase!

If you like keeping abreast of the latest technology trends and your business is growing, the notion of ChatBot or even Bot should not be unknown to you. Since the Bots’ arrival on Facebook and their growing popularity by Microsoft users, using Bots is no longer just a game, but has become an e-commerce technique enabling consumer engagement. However, a question comes up again and again – What are the best tactics for developing a ChatBot?

Here are some tips for successful Bot development:

Define the target:

First, you have to know and identify your audience. Does my community really need my Bot?

There are several types of Bots:

The game
A Bot for commercial purposes
The News Bot
The Utility Bot
The Bot of Consumer Assistance

It’s up to you to survey your community to understand what type of Bot it needs.

Identify the most appropriate situation:

The more technology has developed, the more companies have sought a way to limit human action. Today most Bot are used to simplify this action, and make automatic what can be.
Using Bots, productivity and performance can be increased. Their ability to speak and their artificial intelligence allow them to be better than the man who has to deal with several tasks at the same time, and to retain thousands of information. Bot is able to listen and understand the needs of the consumer, and to better refer them to their requests and the questions that arise.

Developing the right Bot:

There are a multitude of companies of creations of Bot, each having their specialty to offer you a Bot adapted. But we must first choose the framework of this one:

Facebook bot engine
Microsoft bot framework
API.ai
Kik
chatscript
Pandorabots

To be perfectly adapted to the internal system:

An effective ChatBot must be able to ease the daily tasks of an employee. It must understand the internal logic of the company and must also be able to communicate the information of its results to the service concerned. The Bot must therefore be able to communicate in Trello and Slack language. And if it’s a commercial bot, brought to show the breadth of your product range, make sure to connect it to the updated database.

Natural Conversation:

Although the Bot does not replace a human conversation, it is necessary to make as much possible as possible that it is fluid and natural for the user. Bot must be able to understand the history of the conversation in order to provide a coherent and clear answer. It must also be able to start and conduct a conversation with the user.

Preparing for failure:

It is not possible to prepare a Bot to answer all the user’s questions. However, it is possible to prepare it for failure. The agency that will develop your Bot must be able to set up a backup plan, if your Bot is in an unknown case. It must be set up so that it can:

Return to previous step
Repeat the conversation

Request a reformulation to the user and clarification of the user’s comments allows, by keywords, for the Bot to resume the current request. If this is not the case and the reformulation fails, the dialog is saved in the Bot database in order to be one of the axes of improvements during the next Bot update. The data gathering during the dialogues (Facebook or email address) also allows to build statistics on Bot users.

ChatBots promise a faster and smarter online experience. Our new virtual assistants will always be ready, able to listen to our questions and respond intelligently.

Chatbots are now an important digital revolution and every day brands are jumping into the bandwagon to create a unique experience for its users. An important thing to note when you shift to Chatbots is the tone of voice. Interacting with a human is so much different that with a Chatbot and there are certain rules we have as a society.

As an example, let’s say a user is frustrated with a business and their delivery. The Chatbot starts off with, “Hello David, how may I help you today! :)” The customer expresses his issue with payment and registers his complaint. The tone of voice then for the Chatbot cannot be “Have a great day ahead Mr David! :)” The user may get more frustrated that he has not been shown any understanding. The Chatbot must switch to a more sensitive language. This is important not just for human responses but must be developed for Chatbots as well.

This can provide a much more genuine interaction with the user. The objective is to create a safe and trusted relationship with the Chatbot and user in order to establish effective communication. Failure to do so may result in the user becoming more angry than before and feel like the brand does not care to provide their apologies or sympathies for this negative experience. This can result in a poor impression of the brand.

Therefore, all Chatbots must improvise and change the tone of voice when necessary while interacting with users. A sentiment analysis can be done to determine the nature of the customer’s query and by default all complaints must be addressed with sensitivity and caution!

Let’s face it, like them or hate them, Chatbots are an important force in the digital marketing era. It is fascinating to see how different markets are using these to their advantage to make the customer experience much more effective and fruitful for both parties.

Imagine a scenario of a tech event. The event has multiple speakers multiple activities scheduled and different groups of people attending the event. Now imagine, the amount of queries that the front desk would get to the days leading up to the event. Chaos is probably a word that would best describe this situation. Instead, now we actually have a solution. Chatbots can be extremely effective in providing this information to users who are confused or unsure of certain details of an event.

An example of this is, South by Southwest’s bot “Abby” answered more than 56,000 questions asked by the attendees at the SXSW Go event app. This shows you what a Chatbot can do in this area of clean communication with the attendees. Multiple answers are provided instantaneously with no wait time, and the Chatbot can talk to hundreds of attendees at the same time. The investment to build this Chatbot will be extremely fruitful if you take these aspects into consideration.

This is true, not just for huge events where a Chatbot can seamlessly manage human interactions and queries, but also for daily life in meetings at the workplace. Chatbots can easily set calendars and dates with your employees even block meeting rooms and give you an insight into your colleague’s calendar instantly without having to manually check it. A simple question like, ‘Is Susan’s calendar free on 15th Sep 5 pm for 30 mins’ may prompt the Chatbot to respond with yes or no and suggest a next best time for your consideration.

Menial daily work tasks can be handled by the Chatbot which can cause productivity to increase in terms of scheduling meetings and pushing them if one or the other is unavailable. There is no arguing the Chatbots are here to stay. Only time will tell how brands adopt this in their business in the most effective manner.

Today, we spend an average of 2 hours per day on social networks and messaging services. But even if we are technically competent people, we are looking for even more human interaction. The same goes for technology.

The trend of artificial intelligence is spreading more and more. This is supported by the McKinsey report which indicates that in 2016, companies invested $ 26 billion to $ 39 billion in artificial intelligence. This direction has an important effect on many branches of technology, including web design or application development, but mostly on communication between brands and their customers. This is also one of the main reasons for the increasing popularity of chatbots. Most brands do their best to create more and more customized bots.

By creating a chatbot, many focus primarily on the subject of a conversation. We think about the questions that need to be asked and the meaning of the answers. Many companies forget to adapt the scenario to a particular situation with a specific customer. Although customers are different, they have something in common: each requires a completely natural form of interaction with a brand. We are more willing to visit sites or applications where customer service is efficient and personalized.

Currently, the main problem with chatbots is that customers tend to treat them like robots and do not feel comfortable during their conversations. As a result, sometimes customer service that uses robots is not necessarily faster or more attractive than other methods.

Creating a chatbot with a specific character is easier said than done. However, this is a crucial point for modern brands. On the other hand, only chatbots with a clearly defined personality are able to prove their intelligence and convince customers to speak with them honestly.

Let’s take the example of a robot with a specific character. Once we had an experience with my colleague and I asked Siri if he was Cortana … Siri seemed to get jealous. Now, we know he does not like users to confuse him with another artificial intelligence assistant. In addition, Siri’s reaction is consistent with the Apple brand, known for its individuality. Therefore, we can certainly say that Siri has a character.

Best Practices for Creating a Chatbot with a Character

Before you start designing your chatbot, you must thoroughly analyze all the conversations that have taken place with your customers. Use all the sources you have, such as your live chat archive, contact center records and correspondence if necessary. The basic conversation scenario should be based on your customer knowledge. Otherwise, your bot will not be useful to them.

You must be fully aware of your customers’ language, questions and expectations. Choose the conversations where your customers were most satisfied with your customer service. The preparation of branches in a conversation tree must be based primarily on these positive experiences.

There are many ways to ask a chatbot to make a reservation for a movie at the cinema. But this number is unlimited and some keywords remain repeated. If the film is primarily aimed at young people, try adding a few common words for this target audience to the scenario.

Do not try to create a chatbot that completely imitates your brand image. The chatbot must be your brand ambassador but not a member of your board. By analyzing past conversations with your customers, you should know exactly what features your customers love most about their conversations with your customer service employees. Then, do your best to implement them in your chatbot scenarios. When you have designed your robot, check several dozen times how the conversation works. You must be completely sure that the scenario is correct before making it public.

By observing the progress of artificial intelligence, we can predict that in the near future, chatbots will be one of the main things to manage when creating a business brand. They even have the potential to replace the traditional “user interface”, becoming something more crucial for the interaction between brands and customers.

There is a good chance that on your next hiring you will receive your initial information about payroll, leave, expenses and other HR issues by a chatbot and not by the HR team.The underlying reason for this change is that chatbots are becoming popular in human resources and are replacing humans. Ironic, isn’t it?

Discussion bots are the future of the Internet. If you’ve ever liked R2-D2 or if you’ve had your own Star Wars C-3PO, your dreams are not too advanced. Discussion bots, however, have had a difficult start but they are extremely popular in the world of human resources. Millions of workers already interact with chatbots such as Slack or Hip Chat.

This makes internal communications between employees faster, easier and saves money. The chatbots can be of different type, they can be simple or sophisticated, they become extremely popular by performing mundane tasks, which makes a difference in terms of economy and human resources for businesses. The future of human resources is evolving towards chatbots. Let’s see how chatbots are conquering human resources.

Chatbots can help employees solve their human resource problems. If you have already used a chatbot, you know you can send him a message and get an appropriate response right away.

Today, we depend heavily on our smartphones, we do a lot of things from the smartphones, and we stay connected 24/7. Chatbots can be useful and help employees who work remotely and who can not directly access human resources. They make communication faster and easier, no doubt.

Providing quick, personalized responses

Jobseekers and employees both have limited time when they are looking for answers. The potential candidate needs instant answers to questions about the company and the chatbots can easily provide them with confidence. With recent advances in technology, chatbots can provide fast, customized answers to all your problems.

Annual Performance Review

Annual performance reviews seem to be the most important but also the most difficult part for human resources managers. This process requires a lot of time as companies spend months performing exams for each employee. All employees are required to complete questionnaires, surveys and forms at the end of the year. In addition, an organization’s productivity slows down as the labor force is busy completing questionnaires rather than focusing on tasks. However, with the help of chatbots, these problems can be solved in no time. The use of HR bots helps to accumulate accurate employee data. This saves time and increases productivity.

Human resources teams usually send a massive amount of information overwhelming. Due to the workload, employees usually forget to answer important questions that are needed in the future. Instead of remembering all at once, a human resources chatbot can answer questions in real time, resulting in faster decision-making for employees.

There are obviously questions that the robot will not be able to process instantly. However, HR bots are trained to answer common questions such as “When will we get paid? “. This feature helps the HR team work on more urgent and strategic issues.

Collect employee data to create more efficient processes

Chatbots collect real-time data to see what types of questions employees frequently ask. By collecting the frequently asked question, HR can determine what is wrong and solve the problem before things get worse. Human resources teams can use employee data to analyze feelings in order to get an idea of ​​the employee satisfaction rate, for example.

Human resources can collect data via chatbots by asking for small information in order to fill out employee forms rather than giving it to the employee. A chatbot can ask questions on a daily basis and can be completed within one month.

The verdict

We can all agree that chatbots are very useful. However, they are not as smart as we would like them to be and it is not a shame as they are still new and can always be modified with the help of Artificial Intelligence. Nevertheless, the use of chatbots is easy and economical. If they reach their potential, they can be very effective in the area of human resources as well as in other areas.

Today, we spend an average of 2 hours per day on social networks and messaging services. But even if we are technically competent people, we are looking for even more human interaction. The same goes for technology. The trend of artificial intelligence is spreading more and more. This is supported by the McKinsey report which states that in 2016, companies invested $ 26 billion to $ 39 billion in artificial intelligence.

This branch has an important effect on many branches of technology, including web design or application development, but especially on communication between brands and their customers. This is also one of the main reasons for the growing popularity of chatbots. Most brands do their best to create more and more customized bots.

By creating a chatbot, many focus primarily on the subject of a conversation. We think about the questions that need to be asked and the meaning of the answers. Many companies forget to adapt the scenario to a particular situation with a specific customer. Although customers are different, they have something in common: each requires a completely natural form of interaction with a brand. We are more likely to visit sites or applications where customer service is efficient and personalized.

Currently, the main problem with chatbots is that customers tend to treat them like robots and do not feel comfortable during their conversations. As a result, sometimes customer service that uses robots is not necessarily faster or more attractive than other methods.

Creating a chatbot with a specific character is easier said than done. However, this is a crucial point for modern brands. On the other hand, only chatbots with a clearly defined personality are able to prove their intelligence and convince customers to speak with them honestly.

Let’s take the example of a robot with a specific character. Once we had an experience with my colleague and I asked Siri if he was Cortana … Siri seemed to get jealous. Now, we know he does not like users to confuse him with another artificial intelligence assistant. In addition, Siri’s reaction is consistent with the Apple brand, known for its individuality. Therefore, we can certainly say that Siri has a character.

Best Practices for Creating a Chatbot with a Character

Before you start designing your chatbot, you must thoroughly analyze all the conversations that have taken place with your customers. Use all the sources you have, such as your live chat archive, contact center records and correspondence if necessary. The scenario of the basic conversation should be based on your customer knowledge. Otherwise, your bot will not be useful to them.

You must be fully aware of your customer’s language, questions and expectations. Choose the conversations where your customers were most satisfied with your customer service. The preparation of branches in a conversation tree must be based primarily on these positive experiences.

There are many ways to ask a chatbot to make a reservation for a movie at the cinema. But this number is unlimited and some keywords remain repeated. If the film is primarily aimed at young people, try adding a few common words for that target audience to the scenario.

Do not try to create a chatbot that completely imitates your brand image. The chatbot must be your brand ambassador but not a member of your board. By analyzing past conversations with your customers, you should know exactly what features your customers love most about their conversations with your customer service employees. Then, do your best to implement them in your chatbot scenarios. When you have designed your robot, check several dozen times how the conversation works. You must be completely sure that the scenario is correct before making it public.

By observing the progress of artificial intelligence, we can predict that in the near future, chatbots will be one of the main things to manage when creating a business brand. They even have the potential to replace the traditional “user interface”, becoming something more crucial for the interaction between brands and customers.