Chatbots
Chatbots are the future! The way we interact will be completely different after this revolution sets foot. As one of many digital marketing tips, chatbots can help streamline and engage customers. They have a lot of benefits, yet some avoidable drawbacks.
What are Chatbots?
A chatbot is a fantastic tool to help you solve your problems without waiting for someone to talk to you. As the name states, it is a bot that chats and is beneficial on web pages.
It is simply a computer program. It doesn’t have feelings or emotions (although sometimes it appears as it does). Its purpose is to minimize human interactions to be more efficient when doing tasks.
Chatbots are everywhere nowadays, and if you are reading this, you have probably interacted with one before. If you are using Windows or any new Apple operating system, then an example of one would be either Siri or Cortana or something like that. That is a chatbot, and I will tell you about other types.
The Current State of Chatbots
Sometimes when you look at things like Siri, Cortana, Alexa, or Google Assistant, you will be very impressed with how far technologies have come. But then, on the other hand, you will have to sometimes interact with your bank’s telephone number chatbot. Currently, I like to think that there are two main categories of chatbots: trash and good.
The current state of chatbots is up-and-coming, but it is nowhere near perfect yet. Although they are fascinating and complicated today, they are still not good enough to solve any problem you throw at them. Maybe when the time comes, chatbots will understand someone who is very frustrated with their online banking app and wants help.
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Potential of Chatbots
The good part about all this mess is the potential of chatbots. When chatbots are good enough, they will be around in all industries and be hard to avoid. You wouldn’t even try to avoid them because you won’t know chatting with a chatbot. The reason it will be like that is because of Artificial Intelligence.
Over the years, more time and resources will be put into developing chatbots to the point that they will become an unparted part of our daily lives. You will be talking and telling jokes in your car, having small talk with your phone that will appear to have emotions, and having a virtual therapist in your pocket that you can talk to at a moment’s notice. Anything you can think of can have a part of it automated by chatbots.
The people that will benefit from this are those who will develop it and will be called the pioneers of chatbots. Big companies are already starting to make exciting products, but those are nowhere close to the full potential of chatbots.
Benefits of Chatbots
Chatbots have a lot of benefits. One of the benefits is that customer service will be available 24/7. If you own a business and want to spend family time after work, you wouldn’t have to worry about talking to customers and giving them quotes; let a chatbot take care of that for you.
Another significant benefit is saving time and money that can be used better elsewhere.
When you have a chatbot, you wouldn’t have to employ someone to talk to customers all day long; just let a computer take care of it. On the other hand, we should teach people how to make and maintain these bots because first: we will need people like that, and second: the people that will lose their jobs because of this technology can have different and better careers.
In the beginning, chatbots will seem to have a lot of drawbacks, but as time passes, those drawbacks will be slowly turned into benefits if we act bright fast.
Drawbacks of Chatbots
Although there are a lot of benefits, there are also some drawbacks. The first one is that due to the nature of chatbots, how Artificial Intelligence can take a long time to be wise, and how no one is funding the development and advancement of chatbots, we now have some that have minimal answers and can’t respond to some important prompts the human species may present.
On the other side, another futuristic and might be unrealistic is that since some of them are made using Artificial Intelligence, it can take over the device if it is done wrong and not maintained correctly. It can send messages to people, it can take pictures of you, it can access your bank account, and if it is brilliant, it can hack banks and government agencies (and of course, you will be responsible for that), so it is something that needs to be executed carefully and with constant monitoring. Although there are disadvantages, with the proper funding and the right people, these disadvantages can be controlled and avoided.
Types of Chatbots
Although chatbots are part of a simple concept, they have a lot of types and technical implementations. A prevalent type is a menu-based chatbot; this bot gives the user a list of options and depending on the response, it will give the user another list of options until it thinks it understands what the user wants.
Another common type is the rule-based chatbot; this chatbot works using if/else statements and logic (if you are a programmer, you would be familiar with that). There are also other types, like voice bots usually used in phones, and the final type, and my favorite one, is the Artificial Intelligence bot. This bot is my favorite because it is the only one that can reach the potential that I previously mentioned.
Choosing a type for your chatbot depends a lot on what is the purpose of it. It will be much different from an online virtual therapy system if you need it for a phone system. Another factor will be the cost; the more complicated the AI will be; the more expensive the final product will be; you will have to hire genius individuals who will develop this excellent product for you, and of course…hiring people is not free.
Engati, https://www.engati.com/blog/types-of-chatbots-and-their-applications.
How to Make a Chatbot?
Making a chatbot can be tricky and fun at the same time. There are many ways to go about programming or developing a chatbot. Of course, I would recommend learning to code first, but I will also mention techniques to build a chatbot without programming.
They first learn to program and investigate libraries like Google’s Dialogflow, IBM Watson, or Microsoft bot. These frameworks or libraries act as a helping hand to programmers who want to write a chatbot.
Another way if you don’t want to program is using chatbot platforms like Tidio (which is entirely free). Those are the ways to make a chatbot, but before you start making that bot, you need to plan and know why you are doing this.
A World Without Chatbots
That is a lot of information you just read. After reading about the benefits and drawbacks, do you think it is worth advancing this technology? I think it is worth it.
You have already imagined a world full of those virtual assistants; now, let’s imagine one without them. For example, you buy a Christmas gift on Amazon…a day until Christmas, and nothing. You pick up your phone and dial the Amazon customer service phone number, and all you can hear is, “we are currently busy. Please call back later”.
Takeaway
Chatbots are very useful and have a lot of benefits, but they also have some drawbacks. The benefits outweigh the disadvantages if we advance and spend more money on this technology. We need to start sooner rather than later because this is not a question of whether it will happen. It is a question of when it will happen; will it be in the next year? Maybe the next five? Who knows?
This is a revolution, so let’s be the first to revolutionize and innovate. A new Elon Musk needs to form a team and pitch ideas to investors, and in no time, we will see this being a part of our daily lives. Many aspects of our lives will be made much easier, and some people will come out and say that these bots have feelings, so we must give them rights and freedom. Wars and conflicts might occur because of this ideology. It sounds unrealistic that people might think that, but we already have many people who do. Some people believe robots have rights because they are different from human beings. It is a revolution, but it will be beneficial or destructive to society is how we execute it and educate people on this topic.
Suppose you want to be the person that will make millions (if not billions) from this technology. In that case, you should be researching it more now, learning more about Artificial Intelligence and developing chatbots.