Recently, new tools have come onto the market that are supposed to simplify the interaction between humans and computers: chatbots or virtual assistants. In banking, chatbots and virtual assistants are among the latest tools in the industry to simplify human-computer interaction.
What is a Chatbot?
A chatbot is artificial intelligence (AI) software that can simulate a conversation (or chat) with a user in natural language through messaging applications, websites, mobile applications, or over the phone.
Why are chatbots important? A chatbot is often described as one of the most advanced and promising expressions of human-machine interaction. Language processing (NLP). Asking answers to questions in natural language is one of the most typical examples of natural language processing used in end-use applications in various organizations.
At the core of a chatbot there are two different tasks:
- Analyzing user inquiries
- Returning an answer
Analyzing user inquiries
This is the first task a chatbot performs. The user’s request to identify the user’s intent and extract the relevant entities.
How the chatbot works
How a chatbot works: Example for analyzing user inquiries.
The ability to identify the user’s intent and extract relevant data and entities contained in the user’s request is the first condition and most important step at the core of a chatbot: when it doesn’t properly understand the user’s request can he will not be able to give the correct answer.
Return response
Once the user’s intent has been identified, the chatbot must provide the most appropriate response to the user’s request. The answer can be:
- a general and predefined text;
- a text retrieved from a knowledge base containing various answers;
- contextual information based on data provided by the user;
- data stored in business systems;
- the result of an action taken by the chatbot while interacting with one or more backend applications; or
- a question that does not allow for ambiguity and that helps the chatbot to properly understand the user’s request.
Why Chatbots Are Important
Chatbot applications optimize the interaction between people and services, thereby improving the customer experience. At the same time, they offer companies new opportunities to improve the customer loyalty process and operational efficiency by lowering the typical costs of customer service.
To be successful, a chatbot solution must be able to perform both tasks effectively. Human support plays a central role: Regardless of the type of approach and the platform, human intervention is crucial in the configuration, training and optimization of the chatbot system.
Social Media Chatbots
Now that you have a better idea of how to create your own chatbots, step one of this process begs an important question: How do you choose the platforms you want to use?
Just check out the Google Trends report to see how often companies are searching for “business messengers” and you will see an increase lately.
People are also seeing the increase in the need for messaging with the advent of message-based social apps like Kik, WeChat and WhatsApp.
So in this article we answered your various question related to Chatbot like What is a Chatbot? And How the Chatbot Works?
