(This article was published in Entrepreneur India)
A chat bot is nothing but a mechanism in which humans can interact with a device, which understands the intent of the human and guides them to a desired response. The earliest form of a “chatbot” would have been the IVRS (Interactive Voice Response System) technology that we use on our voice calls. You dial a number, and a recorded voice gives you options, and you select one by punching a number on the phone. And you do this iteratively a few times…and hopefully you get the answer that you are looking for.
A bot is a piece of software that runs in an automated fashion. And a chat bot (also known as conversational bot), gives the human an impression of engaging in a conversation with the machine. The emergence of messengers (Whats App, Facebook Messenger, Slack etc) over the past few years, has made the Internet very conversational. As a matter of fact the user of messengers has surpassed the use of social platforms, globally. Soon, the days of structured communication, like what we were taught in school, that we use in letters and to some extent in email, will be over. And all communication will be chatty and seeking instant gratification (in the form of quick responses). And while using a messenger we can chat with friends and colleagues, using exactly the same kind of interface, we can now chat with “machines”.
What are Chatbots used for
One of the commonest application of a chat bot is in the field of customer service. Chatbots certainly help to reduce costs; remove the limitation of limited number of human agents who can take the call; and also ensure better accuracy in data capture in the conversation.
You want to order a pizza ? You don’t need to call up a help line. Nor do you need to send an email or fill in a form. Just logon to the chat bot of your favorite pizza brand (you should be able to find this on their website or on their Facebook page), and then place the order like you would place on a phone, either by typing in your responses or calling them out (depending on whether the bot is voice enabled or not). The bot will guide you through the entire ordering processing, asking you make choices (type of pizza, size, toppings, add on orders, address, phone number etc) till you have a complete order and have paid for it. What is true for Pizza is also true if you want to order a cab, or book an airline ticket etc, or get information about weather etc.
Some innovative applications of Chatbots
Here are some of the more interesting and innovative applications of chat bots
Types of chatbots
Chatbots can be classified into two categories
Building Chatbots
While there is an illusion of simplicity on the front end, there are many hurdles that need to be overcome to create a great chatbot experience. Over the years, our minds are used to thinking of communication in the form of web pages with home button, back button and information laid out in neat menu and sub-menu like structure. But bots don’t have back button or home button. And there is only so much information and so many options that a bot can give out in one single interaction. Hence organising the information properly; envisaging all possible user paths to a given piece of information; analytics to keep understanding what is working and what is not; and technology to keep pace with ever changing formats of platforms is needed to create a successful chat bot.
Here are some best practices while designing a user interface for a chat bot :