What Is A Chatbot? Everything You Need To Know – Forbes
Updated: Jul 28, 2023, 9:22pm
Edited By
Edited By
In a digital world, customers have come to expect businesses to be available 24/7. And chatbots provide an easy and inexpensive way to do just that by adding an automated live chat feature to your website that visitors can interact with to get the help they need when they need it.
Not only can chatbots help take the strain off customer support, but savvy businesses are also using chatbots to expand their customer base, generate and qualify leads before passing to their sales teams and serve customers in their preferred language.
In this article, we will discuss what chatbots are, how they work and how you can use them for business growth.
At a technical level, a chatbot is a computer program that simulates human conversation to solve customer queries. When a customer or a lead reaches out via any channel, the chatbot is there to welcome them and solve their problems. They can also help the customers lodge a service request, send an email or connect to human agents if need be.
If this reminds you of a telephonic customer care number where you choose the options according to your need, you would be very correct. That phone tree is also a chatbot, though a very primitive one. Modern chatbots do the same thing by holding a conversation with customers. This conversation may be in the form of text, voice or a hybrid of both.
Chatbots are primarily used to enhance customer experience by offering 24/7 customer support, but in a cost-effective manner. Businesses have also started using chatbots to serve internal customers with knowledge sharing and routine tasks.
After all, it is much quicker to ask a chatbot for information about a product or process rather than sieving through hundreds of pages of documentation. Or, reach out to them to run virus scans rather than wait for an IT support person to turn up at your desk.
Chatbots are most commonly used on business websites. When you have spent a couple of minutes on a website, you can see a chat or voice messaging prompt pop up on the screen. Those are chatbots.
Chatbots had a humble start as computer programs that used keywords and pattern matching to respond to users’ questions based on a pre-written script. Modern chatbots use the latest technologies including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), natural language understanding (NLU), natural language processing (NLP), etc. to provide human-like responses to queries.
How chatbots work depends upon how they have been programmed or developed. Based on their conversation style, there are primarily two types of chatbots:
Artificial intelligence algorithms are used to build conversational chatbots that use text- and voice-based communication to interact with users. The chatbots, once developed, are trained using data to handle queries from the users.
Your chatbot will be as good as the AI and data that it uses. You must take care that the AI that you use is ethical and unbiased. Also, the training data must be of high quality so that the ML model trains the chatbot properly. Otherwise, the chatbot may perform poorly or unexpectedly.
We’ve already discussed that chatbots improve customer experience. But enhanced customer experience is not the only benefit of using chatbots. An organization has many advantages of using chatbots for business growth, process efficiency and cost reduction.
Businesses are using chatbots to serve both internal and external customers and leads:
As with all AI tools, chatbots will continue to evolve and support human capabilities. When they take on the routine tasks with much more efficiency, humans can be relieved to focus on more creative, innovative and strategic activities.
Wherever you are in your journey as a business owner, using chatbots can help you improve customer engagement, expand your customer base, qualify leads at the outset and expand to global markets easily. With so many advantages, it makes sense to start using chatbots for your business growth right now.
A chatbot is an automated computer program that simulates human conversation to solve customer queries. Modern chatbots use AI/ML and natural language processing to talk to customers as they would talk to a human agent. They can handle routine queries efficiently and also escalate the issue to human agents if the need arises.
No, not all bots are bad, and definitely not chatbots. When we say bots, we are reminded of automated programs such as viruses and malware designed to destroy computer systems and networks. But chatbots are programmed to help internal and external customers solve their problems.
Chatbots can help businesses automate tasks, such as customer support, sales and marketing. They can also help businesses understand how customers interact with their chatbots. Chatbots are also available 24/7, so they’re around to interact with site visitors and potential customers when actual people are not. They can guide users to the proper pages or links they need to use your site properly and answer simple questions without too much trouble. In the end, this can save you money and time.
If you are planning to use a chatbot, ensure that it:
Shweta is an author and freelance writer. She writes about technology and small businesses. Her writing has also appeared in NewsWeek and Huffington Post.
Kelly is an SMB Editor specializing in starting and marketing new ventures. Before joining the team, she was a Content Producer at Fit Small Business where she served as an editor and strategist covering small business marketing content. She is a former Google Tech Entrepreneur and she holds an MSc in International Marketing from Edinburgh Napier University. Additionally, she manages a column at Inc. Magazine.
