The Digital Practitioner: chatbots
Showing posts with label chatbots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chatbots. Show all posts

Thursday, 28 December 2017

5 Ways to use Facebook Chatbots �� for Business

December 28, 2017 0
5 Ways to use Facebook Chatbots �� for Business


Chatbots should be a major focus for any small business.


Check out the various options for this exciting marketing and customer service option for your business.






Have you had any good or bad experiences with a chatbot yet?




7 Features Every Chatbot for a Human Centric Industry Must Possess

December 28, 2017 0
7 Features Every Chatbot for a Human Centric Industry Must Possess
Customers are like a breakable glass that is deemed to break when not handled with care. There are myriad of product-specific companies and heterogeneous human-centric industries, of which, the roots lie in the customers' behavior, their ideologies for your brand, the reliance factor, and how your brand satiates them through their lens. It's truly paint-by-number approach that works horizontally as well as vertically.

To saturate this highly expectant market when the goal is to provide instant help, accurate suggestions, drive conversions then chatbots supercharged with Artificial Intelligence comes to the rescue.
Let's delve into the most imperative features a chatbot must possess before entering a human-centric industry. Take a sneak peek.
1. Predictive Intelligence
A chatbot should have the ability to observe customer behavior, past conversations, build a profile of customer preferences and based on that it should be able to frame adept and brainy responses and make the business more efficient, smarter and successful.
2. Small Talk Interactions
The Chatbots must possess an aptitude for small talk conversations. It should be able to handle the everyday questions and generate a more realistic human-like response to drive meaningful business results.

3. Advanced Messaging 
Advanced Messaging, when enabled in Chatbot, gives them the knack to send and receive images, documents or links, and files. Boost them with features like clickable buttons, showing users cards and tiles about links, shortcuts, and images.
4. Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning 
This is the core of any modern chatbot. Also known as NLP it employs deep learning to analyze human input and generate a response. It happens when response analysis and generation is learned through the deep learning algorithm.
5. Topics and intra-topic Steps
When in the chat something is discussed over a subject like discussing Beverage selection on a Food Chatbot and then progressing on to the next step like the payment option is defined as smoothly switching from topics to intra-topics. This in-built intelligence should be there in a chatbot.
6. Robust Analytics 
Analytics shows the insights into how your users interact with your bot. Through Analytics, you come to know what your customers' pressing needs are, how many customers have engaged with the bot and so on. 

Analytics is an imperative piece of driving business, when done right it drives higher sales, improves target marketing and optimizes experiences.
7. Extended Support 
Chatbots should be able to supply needful information and positive experience making a pleasant intimacy with customers.
Eventually, chatbot should bring a hybrid experience of all these qualities and incorporate a structured content and images into the conversation, making the experience richer and useful.
This can be effectually achieved by infusing Machine Learning during Chatbot app development in order to gain superior Human-computer Interaction.
Anuradha Badone is a content writer and marketing strategist at Codiant software technologies Pvt ltd. She is interested in writing stuff on leading technology trends and digital marketing.





by: 
Anuradha Badone
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9820230

Wednesday, 27 December 2017

A Happily Ever After for Chatbots & Messaging Apps?

December 27, 2017 0
A Happily Ever After for Chatbots & Messaging Apps?

On the aftermath of their debut on messaging apps, chatbots have been at the epicenter of an ongoing conversation about personalisation. Why did this collaboration happen? And how far will this go? It's time to take a deep dive.
In the '60s, renowned media analyst Marshall McLuhan argued that the 'Medium is the message'. He was certain that it had a role in shaping and controlling "the scale and form of human association and action" up to an extent. According to this theory, the medium embeds itself onto anything it transmits, and it directly influences the way the actual message is perceived. It tries to be an extension of our senses, expanding our ability to perceive and interact with the world.

Today, about half a century later, the medium becomes an acceptable form of human interaction - say hello to your messaging apps. As of last year, there were 1 billion users (14% of the world's population) on WhatsApp. And combined with the users on Messenger, there are 60 billion messages - text, video, recordings that are sent and received each day. Where else would businesses find a better level of engagement?
In a recent survey conducted by Facebook, participants who could chat with retailers on these messaging platforms, be it on transactions, inquiries, or post sales services, felt more positive about the business. Commerce became a personal affair. McLuhan was right, and is still right - The impact of messaging does lie on the medium.

It's been almost 20 years, and why haven't businesses been largely successful harnessing these platforms yet? Because until chatbots came along in 2016, businesses marketing themselves via messaging apps were oblivious to one philosophy/brand of personalisation - 'If not human, be humane.'
Ever since they entered the market, chatbots on messaging platforms have been hit. They are having a positive impact on businesses, as more industries are jumping aboard the 'personalisation' bandwagon. Now, what is the next step? What does the future behold for this eclectic union? Here are 3 possibilities -
  • With chatbots, messaging apps will become the new browsers. They are about to do for businesses what websites were doing for them about a decade back. Forrester Research expects investments in AI and Machine Learning to triple in 2017, to better harness user behavior, to enhance the conversational interface brought about by bots.
  • Messaging apps will become more relevant to IoT installations. For e.g. more customers will begin to receive coupons, notifications on sales etc. via messages when they happen to just pass by the store. Or alternatively, employees in a factory can stay better connected with their machinery, and make better use of the data collected.
  • The 'App culture' is sinking, as users are getting more tight-fisted about device memory and data usage. But messaging apps/platforms are still titled 'essential' because messaging is now a way of life. Since chatbot platforms can directly deploy bots onto these apps, the need for a proprietary app is canceled. And the scope of services that businesses offer on these apps can keep expanding.
With the advancement in AI and Machine Learning towards its capabilities, chatbots are about to go a long way in understanding the nitty-gritty human behavior through messaging apps. But if McLuhan's theory still holds good a decade from now, chatbots might even become a critical part of human perception overall.




by: 
Ankeet Sarngin Kanungo
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9732180

Thursday, 19 October 2017

Bots - An Important Part of Our AI-Powered Future

October 19, 2017 0
Bots - An Important Part of Our AI-Powered Future

Back in 2001, we were smitten by the cult-film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. It was an extremely futuristic movie, one that involves a young boy named David, who is a per-programmed robot. 
Despite being a robot, David seeks for mother's love and eventually falls in love with Monica, who he considers his mother. 

The robots are more humane than actual humans in this film, which leaves us questioning the difference between our programming and theirs. 
So deep and emotional is the movie that we can't help but empathize with the humanoid, David, who struggles to find a room in Monica's heart. AI was a concept which was still nascent at that stage. But, today, it is a growing phenomena.
AI is in your everyday life
An AI-powered bot can take on several human skills. As for the companies, it is an economical alternative to hiring humans. 
As a result, companies are embracing bots to resolve their customer queries. By adding new cognitive abilities, chat-bot development companies are coming up with responsive bots. Today, there is a bot to suit all your purposes. For instance, if you want help for your finance management, there is a personal finance bot to manage your money. 
If you want to know the weather forecast, there is a weather bot for that too. 
This apart, there are chat-bots for cab services, news, grocery, and many more. 
Brands are tapping on bot efficiencies and developing their own to engage customers.
Bot development is easier than you think
The first question which might strike you when you think of bot development is - 'If I want to build a bot for my company, do I need to hire an expert?' 



The answer is 'no.' You will just have to figure out why you need the bot, select your platform on which your bot will be integrated (Facebook Messenger, Slack, etc.), design a bot conversation and set up a server to run your chat-bot from. 

If you are running short of finances to hire an in-house bot development team, you can opt for chat-bot development outsourcing services, offered by third-party agencies. These agencies appoint chat-bot development experts. 

Therefore, you can be rest assured about the quality of their services. 


Your bot is your branding frontier 

It's not enough to simply launch a bot. You must know how to brand it as well. For this, you need to be particular about factors such as personality, tone and design. 
Do not build an 'all-inclusive' bot. Instead, focus on features which would fulfill your business objectives. For instance, give your bot a unique name. 
This way, your customers can simply run a quick search to connect to your brand. Make your bot conversational. This gives your customers the feeling of texting a friend. 


The more you encourage your customers to have a one-on-one intimate conversation with your bot, the more popular will be your brand. 
Since a bot design is a reflection of your brand, make sure your bot has an attractive logo and a unique user interface. 
Make your bot sound smart by using short and crisp sentences. This way your customers will come back to you for further assistance. And finally, integrate your bot with a platform, where you customers are mostly present, for example, Slack, Skype, Messenger, etc.,
When I was a young kid and watched films like A.I. Artificial Intelligence, little did I think that bots will bring such revolutionary changes in the business sector one day. Turns out, I didn't quite understand its huge potentials. Today, I am amazed to find out its endless prospects and what it can do to businesses.
People, meet AI bots!
To know more about chat-bot visit our website https://www.webspiders.com/






by: Arindam Saha
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9754320