Building A Conversational Facebook Messenger Chatbot With API.AI+Chatfuel
One of the biggest problems people have with chabots is that they can't actually chat.
They are more like a website, where you press buttons and get the desired response.
You can't chat with them, the way you chat with Siri.
While many chatbot platforms like Chatfuel do have an AI feature where you can set up different challenge-response rules, there's always the issue of nuances of languages that trip chatbots up.
For example, if you want to order a pizza, you can say "I want a pizza" or "Give me a pizza" "What do you have for pizza" or "What's the special tonight?" and a human would get that it's a variation of the same thing.
But a chatbot won't.
Until now!
In this video, I show you how to hook up a chatbot built on Chatfuel with Google's Natural Language Processing engine called API.AI.
Thanks to the advanced AI and ML capabilities of the api.ai platform, your chatbot will now understand linguistic nuances, reply back like a human, and deliver a better user experience.
You can check out the tutorial here.
Essentially, here's what's happening:
- The user types in a phrase. Something like, "I am bored".
- Chatfuel passes that phrase to the API.AI platform through Runkit.
- API.AI processes that challenge and sends back the appropriate response.
- The user then sees the response in a conversational form.
As the video shows, this entire process is instantaneous. The beauty of api.ai is that because it's hosted on Google, you can scale up as much as you want without compromising on the performance.
Here, you can see how api.ai lets you set up conversational prompts for most often asked queries using the Small Talk feature.
And because api.ai's payloads are compatible with Facebook Messenger, you can send a variety of responses other than text, like pictures, buy button, gifs, videos, map locations etc.
Have fun building a smarter, more aware bot.
To see how Hubspot uses a Facebook Messenger bot to book calls with sales, set up demos, and allow users to explore its content library check out this video walkthrough.
If Facebook is an integral part of your marketing you should consider chatbots to book appointments, qualify and vet leads, engage with people on your page, and a hundred other things. If you want me to build you one, book a free consult.