Undoubtedly, efficiency and automation are the keys to business success and scaling.
Innovation has become the essence of development and custom software development companies well realize the fact that has led many organizations to pivot the focus point on Chatbot Development.
“Chatbots are the present and the future of customer service.”
Nobody ever imagined witnessing a system that is set to mimic human conversations in an original manner, thus, providing amusement value to the user interface platforms. Chatbots with Artificial Intelligence reduces acquisition costs, improves ROI, and gives a competitive advantage to a business.
Chatbot Development took a heap due to:
#Hike in the messaging apps
#The augmenting prominence of conversational interfaces
#Propelling growth of AI
#Customer-centric progression
#The spree of Automation
Industry-Wide Scope of Automated Chatbots
Even though we are familiar with the ever-growing applications of machine bots, let’s take a glimpse of a few:
-Chatbots can be integrated into any major chat platform like Facebook Messenger, Slack, Whatsapp, etc. any mobile and web application helping customers.
-Customer engagements would take deep grounds with conversational interfaces like chatbots and virtual assistants.
-Business chatbots offer a convenient and interactive way to connect with customers through the online channel and give them an experience similar to that of chatting with a live agent at any time of the day.
-Scope and scale of chatbots are comparatively high than human teams which helps businesses to connect with more customers in a more efficient way.
-Messaging bots are known to significantly extend the reach of your brand and your customer service teams, thus, strengthening the relationships between customers and businesses.
-Available 24/7/365, chatbots help improve your online presence and allow direct customer participation through all communication channels.
Regardless of the industry, customers want to feel heard. Chatbots increase the ability of human staff to meet your expectations efficiently and profitably.
[Prefer Reading: “AI-Powered Chatbots: Enhancing Business Communication.”]
Chatbot Development Process, Step By Step
“85% of the customer interactions will be managed by a machine and chatbots will be the most effective way for businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors.”
#Define Goals
First things first, understand the reason for implementing a chatbot.
What problems do you want the chatbot to resolve?
What are the manual tasks that a chatbot can handle?
Do you want a chatbot to automate all/partial business tasks?
These are a few questions that must be involved in your SMART goals of developing a robust bot. Your goal must align well with these four major attributes:
- Ease
- Importance
- Time
- Impact
#Determine the Areas Chatbot can Revolutionize
Chatbot, undoubtedly, is a revolutionary development and to utilize it to the best one needs to analyze and pen down the current time-consuming and routine processes which could come under the prospects of automation.
Identify the categories which incline towards customer communication and engagements.
(say, customer service, technical support, sales processes, among others)
[Usually, the best areas for chatbots are client-facing processes that are manual and are recurring.]
One must remember that Customers Expect More!
-Customers expect companies to do more to help them, they don’t want to wait for you to have an agent available and they won’t wait for email responses. They will take their business elsewhere.
-Nearly, 40% of customers cannot find information about a product or service online.
-90% expect companies to provide some form of self-service.
-Billions of dollars are lost by US businesses each year due to poor customer service.
-80% of current customer service operations will not meet the needs of future businesses.
#Sort & Select Channels and Languages
Technology powered bots possess revolutionary potential and offer multidirectional ways of communication where a chatbot sets a real-time example of the same.
In order to keep pace with the latest trends of Customization and Personalization, sort out the communication channels languages you want the chatbot to automate via its complex artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.
Some other considerable factors that swing around the development of the bot include:
- The volume of customers derived from a particular channel/language
- Long term chatbot support for the channel/medium/language
- The volume of customers coming from different mediums, ascending or descending
And your evaluation must be done considering parameters of:
– Ease of automation
– Strategic importance
– Requests volume
– Impact of this process automation
#List the Integrations
Chatbot integrations call for the next step to take over.
Chatbots must serve the business purpose of the development. That is, they have to be able to help and assist human users in the task that has been entrusted to them. For this, it is necessary to ensure that the integration of the conversational agent corresponds to the final objective.
Chatbot integrations to mark:
- Cloud Storage (OneDrive, Dropbox)
- CRM (like Salesforce, HubSpot)
- Payment systems (PayPal, Google Pay)
- Maps (Google/Apple/Bing maps)
- Calendar (Google Calendar)
[Prefer Reading: “Enhanced User Experience? Think chatbots.”]
Key Considerations When Building a Chatbot
- Take advantage of a platform that uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing so that your chatbot understands your customers.
- If you plan to build a chatbot from scratch, choose a partner with the appropriate programming experience and a proven track record.
- Look for building a powerful system that enables entity detection to identify, categorize, and analyze words, keywords, and phrases while interacting with a customer.
- Pay attention and prepare robust algorithms that can handle transactions while securing their authenticity (like password resets, money transfers, etc.)
- Connect your chatbot with the entire technological stack of your business – CRM, ERP, CMS, and other critical applications for its operation.
- Save time working with a provider that has years of experience and understands your needs and those of your customers.
Factors Influencing Development of a Chatbot
Depending on the complexity and design of the application, a chatbot can contain different peculiarities which is further driven by the end goal of the conversational assistant.
Let’s jot down a few pointers that have a close impact on chatbot development:
#Backend
Developing a chatbot needs a study of the necessary backed type that would be the best fit. Choose the one that is powerful enough to bolster and handle different input and output sequences of messages.
The backend has to be able to receive messages through input channels as required and simultaneously be able to analyze texts with NLP(Natural Language Processing)
#Natural Language Processing (NLP)
One of the most significant functions of chatbots powered by AI is to achieve the development of a system with NLP. A robust system must be build that is able to connect in the most natural way possible and responds timely with useful data in response to human messages.
[Prefer Reading: “NLP: It’s all About Natural Language Understanding by Machines.”]
#Smart Conversations
This is the most time-taking stage of the entire development process and requires organized, high-end, and efficient work to be done by the developer’s end.
The person in charge of writing the interaction trees has to code the chatbot so that it offers natural responses, simulating (in the best possible way) a conversation that is fluid as if it were another human.
Chatbot a Necessity?
Creating a business chatbot means investing in improving technology, maximizing integrations with various business systems, and designing an engaging and interactive interface for your customers.
All of those things can take time and money that many organizations feel they don’t have. But an investment now means a higher return on potential investment in the medium term.
If you are looking for developing a custom enterprise software that relates a bot or any virtual assistant, land up to NetSet Software that can help you simplify your complexities in providing interactive user communication with streamlined conversions.
