What Are Chatbots? How do They Work?
There's a lot to be said about talking to a real person in real time. But lightning-quick responses and 24-hour necessities have almost made person to person contact obsolete. Today a lot of websites are adding that little message box in the bottom-right corner of your screen with a bot that will respond to your every inquiry. Sure, it's a little impersonal, but how personal do you need to be when browsing a catalog, or looking for information about a company on their website? Sometimes you can barely tell if you're talking with a chatbot through text chat, though it's a little easier if you hear the robotic voice akin to something like Siri or Amazon Alexa.
But what are chatbots, really? How do they work? Currently, there are two main chatbots that exist around the internet: Those that abide by rigid guidelines and only respond to certain prompts, and those with AI that understand language on some level, you don't have to be so painstakingly specific with them.
Rule-based Chatbot
This chatbot doesn't actually have a lot of depth. Fundamentally, it can only be as smart as its developers made it to be. You type in something ambiguous, or a question that doesn't have the keywords that this bot looks for, you'll be greeted with "I'm sorry, I don't understand your question". This bot works by identifying simple patterns to put out simple answers (ie. "Who is...", "Where is...", "When is..."). It has a database of information that it spits out according to your type of question.
AI Chatbot
AI chatbots have a bit more going for them. They aren't as stiff as the other type of bot, they have some understanding of language. They analyze your words, recognize what you're asking, and realize that there are many ways to say the same thing. More than that, they are constantly learning throughout their development cycle and even long after they're launched and accessible to the public. Their programming may contain algorithmic code that takes in keywords and assesses what you're trying to say by matching those words into categories and choosing the highest match.
In addition, through training the bot the developers could create an artificial neural network, different words going through different pathways with those pathways being created based on the most common meaning of those words in combination with one another. The training is done by running data through it thousands of times to create the most realistic understanding of language in general.
This is just a general overview, if you want a more in-depth look at the coding behind these bots, check it out here.
How are they useful?
The most common usage of bots is in customer service, popping up on your screen and asking you how you're doing finding what you want, answer frequently asked questions, provide basic information about the site, and help you navigate the site. But the usefulness doesn't stop there, bots are pros at doing menial or redundant tasks like managing calendars, compiling information for computation, summarizing information like consumer feedback to execute marketing decisions, or even just give you the weather or recent events in the news.
Chatbots can be a very useful piece of technology, and if you're looking for a developer to help you make a chatbot you can contact us here. We can help.