What Is a Chatbot and How Does It Work?

Have you ever shopped online and this situation came up: you need some more information about the item but no one is there to ask, or the Facebook page’s admin does not reply to you fast enough? This happens all the time! However, chatbot technologies have come and rescued us!

So what is a chatbot and how does this thing work? Let’s read on to find out!

What Is a Chatbot?

Long story short, the word “chatbot” was a combination of “chat” and “bot”. And it literally means a bot that can chat.

And the long story… long, chatbots are computer software. They pretend to be real people and their task is to answer human users’ messages via apps or websites without the help of real people. This means that developers have to make this application run by themselves. Besides, chatbots may appear as a voice or text.

Recommended reading: ChatGPT: Everything About the Hottest AI Chatbot in Tech

How Does a Chatbot Work?

The chatbot for a website is able to gain knowledge quickly and answer hundreds of questions over time. There are two types of chat-bot and they are distinguished by their way of operation: simple chatbots and virtual assistants or digital assistants.

FURTHER READING:

1. 8 Best AI Chatbot Smartest AI Chatbot

2. 5 Best AI Chatbot Platforms to Use

3. 9 Open Source Chatbot Frameworks to Use

4. Create Chat App in Meteor in 40 Minutes

The 3 Types of Chatbot

1. Simple Chatbots AKA Scripted Chatbots

Scripted chatbots are those that cannot learn from their experience and update their database automatically. In this case, developers will formulate several predetermined rules to help the chatbot process and generate responses to users.

As a result, the level of ability of this type is not high but it’s more than enough to help your business run smoothly.

And there are 3 main chat-bot subcategories. The first one is a simple chatbot that just functions when it meets a certain keyword. Most of the time, its choices of answers are limited like yes/no or a specific number/piece of information, or even “sorry, we don’t understand your request ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”, etc.

The second type is the chatbot that can only respond to users in a fixed flow to gather information.

And sometimes, you will have a chance to chat with a bot that provides you a set of answers so that it will know how to respond to you effectively. That’s the third type and it is called a button-based chatbot.

For example, you will certainly meet these chatbots when accessing an online store, an m-health app, etc. Flo, a menstruation tracking app, integrated a button-based free chatbot to assist women with their health conditions. Or you can try Song Nhi. This is a free chatbot that works as a financial advisor developed by people from Designveloper. Or you can hide some best chat-bot companies to grow your business.

2. AI Chatbots

AI chatbots or virtual/digital assistants are what we’re talking about here. Sometimes, people may refer to them as chat-bot that can learn and acquire knowledge.

And just like humans, they will become better and smarter as time passes thanks to neutral networks.

Different from the first type, an AI chatbot can understand complex conversations without the presence of keywords. Furthermore, these smart chatbots can connect the dot and be aware of a certain context then reply to users based on that context.

For example, when you give a scripted chatbot a set of questions like:

• Where is that company located?
• How is the weather there?

It can understand the first query, however, since you did not define the location, it is not able to respond to the second one.

But when it comes to an AI chatbot, they will answer those two questions without hesitation.

Replika is a free chatbot that can learn you might want to try.

3. Machine Learning Works for Chatbots

Chatbot machine learning is the way of the future and is the impetus for the explosive growth of the AI field over the last few years. However, the main thing to remember is that if you’ve ever interacted with chatbot ideas, you’re actually something of a bot developer yourself.

Why Should Businesses Use Chatbots?

Even though most chatbots can only answer and respond to certain scenarios, if developed well they help businesses:

• Reduce waiting time as they’re always available.
• Increase payment gateway transaction success rate when chatbots are able to remind or urge customers to make payments.
• Cut down on customer service costs.
• Collect data more effectively.

But of course, they cannot replace the occupancy of human touches. This happens since there are many tasks that simple chatbots cannot solve by themselves and at the same time, AI chatbots are too expensive to invest in.

We hope that this article has given you a closer look at chatbots and how they work. And if you are planning to build the best chatbot to increase your business’s productivity and effectiveness, contact us now! People at Designveloper can make your plan come true at an affordable cost.

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