What Is A Chatbot And How Does It Work?
What is a chatbot and how does it work?
Programs that perform tasks automatically based on certain algorithms or instructions are called bots.
A chatbot, like a bot, is a type of computer program that can interact with people on various topics.
Customers communicate online to know about the products and services of various organizations. It can be seen that customers have some common questions in these communications. Many organizations employ specific personnel to provide specific answers to these specific questions. However, many times, automated chatbots are also providing appropriate answers to these queries of customers along with those employees.
How is that possible? In fact, chatbots are built to automatically answer frequently asked questions. As a result, customers’ problems can be solved in a much shorter time, and the pressure on customer agents is also reduced.
From education, entertainment, health, economics or news, the use of chatbots is increasing now.
Currently, many web sites or online platforms communicate with customers through chatbot technology. These chatbots are commonly called as ‘bots’ or ‘virtual assistants’.
Users interact with chatbots via text or voice just like they would with a human. The chatbot then detects certain words or keywords from the communicator’s text or speech and provides predefined responses.
Currently, 3 types of chatbots are most prevalent. They are:
1. Rule-Based Chatbots: These types of bots work in a very simple manner. The only function of these chatbots is to provide predetermined answers to users or customers against specific questions.
These bots are primarily useful in answering various queries of customers.
2. Intelligent chatbots: These intelligent bots take in and learn from users as they interact with them. They usually use machine learning techniques to learn this way. These intelligent chatbots analyze specific words and phrases and answer customer queries accordingly.
3. AI-powered chatbots: AI-powered chatbots are created by combining the above two types of chatbot technologies. Such chatbots can remember their previous interactions with users. As a result, these bots can easily understand the needs of customers or users.
These bots simultaneously use natural language processing, machine learning and AI technologies to understand customer needs. In particular, natural language processing technology plays a very helpful role in making communication between humans and computers natural.
Methods In Which Chatbots Work
All common chatbots basically work in 3 ways.
The first method is known as a pattern-matching bot. Pattern-matching bots first classify data. They then generate an answer based on the keywords they can identify from there. Basically AI Markup Language (AIML) helps the most to work in this way. But in the case of pattern-matching, chatbots can only answer pre-programmed questions.
Another way that today’s chatbots work is by using algorithms. The bot has different patterns in its database for each different type of question to give the correct answer to the customers. Through these patterns the right answer is given to the customer.
The third way chatbots work is called Artificial Neural Networks. Through this, the most relevant information is conveyed to the customer by making connections between various topics in the database.
When a human interacts with a chatbot, each sentence is broken into separate words. And each word is used as an input to the neural network. Thus the neural network continues to improve and enrich over time.
Neural networks also have different types and types. Organizations that use these technologies train their chatbots over time to make them more efficient and effective.
But it is much easier to teach a chatbot any subject than a human. For example, data from thousands of conversations can be aggregated in a short period of time to develop a chatbot.
Various Challenges In Chatbot Development
Even though chatbots are improving day by day, there is still a long way to go to perfect this technology. The technology still faces some fundamental challenges. For example:
• Security: In this age of information technology, it is very important that customers can trust the information they are giving to the chatbots they interact with. Chatbots under various organizations need to be designed in such a way that chatbots interact with customers only on relevant information. Besides, it must be ensured that the data collected from the customers is safe and secure on the Internet.
• Voice: Another important way to make chatbots work properly these days is to ensure that the voice is correct when speaking to customers. Customers want to talk to a chatbot that sounds very human-like.
• Emotions: Chatbots need to understand the emotions of today’s customers to function properly. Businesses are now implementing many methods and technologies to normalize the language of chatbots, so that customers do not face any kind of embarrassment.
In short, understanding how chatbots work and how to train them is critical to improving customer experience.
