Why Chatbots Are Smarter

Hugh O'Neal
August 8, 2022
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It’s the 21st century, and there are myths revolving around bots taking over the world. This assumption is far from reality. Machine learning has evolved to the point where people may use it to help with their work, not against them. Chatbots are part of the AI ​​and machine learning revolution and will be a catalyst for brand engagement.

By the end of 2021, it is estimated about 85% of consumer interactions will be through chatbots. 50% of businesses also invest in intelligent chatbots rather than mobile apps. It’s time to think about why chatbots are smarter than people.

Connection between chatbots and artificial intelligence

If you want a chatbot to perform its tasks, all the necessary technologies must be present in its software. At the same time, the primary function of all bots is communication with a person. It requires two artificial intelligence technologies: natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning.

On the one hand, NLP is a branch of AI that allows your chatbot to process and understand the requests it receives (language). On the other hand, machine learning allows a chatbot to learn without human intervention based on the input it writes to its knowledge base.

Therefore, the larger the sample of examples you use, the more effectively the bot understands what has been said.

Consider the example of the phrase «I’m Kate». If the system already has information, «I» is a pronoun, «is» is a verb, and «Kate» is a name. And that this phrase is an expression used to get people to introduce themselves. Then the bot will know: all people who say this phrase, even with variations (gender, name, etc.), represent themselves.

Do all chatbots use artificial intelligence?

It’s a very relevant question. Many people believe all chatbots use AI in their work. But it’s not. Just because a chatbot works alone doesn’t mean it uses AI. On the contrary, specific «rules» of work are needed for a chatbot to work alone.

However, if you don’t use the technologies mentioned earlier (NLP and machine learning), your bot will not be «smart» enough to learn.

Typically, non-AI chatbots interact with users primarily based on decision trees and keywords. And if you try to ask him a question, you will not get an answer because he does not understand it.

Advantages of chatbots over live agents

Let’s discuss why chatbots are smarter than humans in some situations.

  • Chatbots are fast. Chatbots are conversational software programmed and designed to answer user questions instantly. The robot you ask about a product in a tiny pop-up window at the bottom right of your screen when shopping online is a chatbot. Virtual assistant allows consumers to quickly and easily find what they are looking for, turning visitors into immediate leads. Gone are the days when a consumer fills out and submits a contact form and waits for a response. They react with lightning speed, eliminating lost or misplaced leads.
  • Chatbots communicate in different languages. It is rare to find a fluent person in more than three or four languages. What about other languages ​​we don’t speak or understand? It can be hard and relatively expensive to find a support agent who speaks and understands different languages. If your business is growing internationally, you should use a chatbot because it can be programmed to communicate in various languages. They may directly ask or determine what language customers speak at the beginning of a conversation and adapt accordingly.
  • Chatbots are always available. Chatbots, unlike humans, do not need to sleep, eat, socialize, etc. They are available to help at any time of the day. According to a study, 64% of Internet users believe that 24/7 service is the best feature of chatbots. Everyone expects a quick response, especially in emergencies. Similarly, an IBM study shows about 80% of requests are FAQs; they do not require human intervention. Chatbots can efficiently deal with them.
  • Financial benefit. Chatbots are capable of processing about 80% of your responses. Hence, saving money invested in hiring a chat representative. The chatbot lifetime report shows that they save an average of 30% in transaction costs by simply developing a chatbot for an ecommerce business.
  • The future lies in the automation of manual labor. The world is changing at an exponential rate. Recent studies say that chatbots have increased by 92% since 2019 and will continue to grow even more.

Chatbots are more than just conversational assistants. They can be connected to different APIs, allowing them to handle a broader range of client requests. They also automate repetitive and tedious tasks like sending emails to prospects and clients and answering frequently asked questions. When embedded on an e-commerce website, chatbots also process payments directly.

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Main problems of chatbots and their solution

You need to be aware of issues with chatbots when you plan to use virtual assistants in customer service. Solving these problems makes the bot even smarter.

  • Limited responses. One of the main challenges with optimizing chatbots is fine-tuning the response parameters of bots. As soon as the customer starts to deviate from the programmed protocols, the system may repeat the same statements or give incorrect answers; this can potentially alienate customers and undermine trust in your brand. Luckily, chatbots are now more advanced than ever. You can opt-out of rule-based bots and opt for AI-driven bots driven by machine learning algorithms. Such a chatbot has learning capabilities, making it easy to adapt to any changes in the scenario.
  • Lack of emotion. Expanding your chatbot responses can go a long way. However, this does not mean they also learn to understand human emotions and feelings. Since chatbots are not persons, they have difficulty distinguishing nuances in your customers’ responses. With an AI-powered bot, you may train your bots to identify customers’ speech patterns, native languages, and tones. It allows him to become more sensitive towards customers.
  • Cyber security. Chatbots may have trouble detecting lies and suspicious activity; this makes them vulnerable to cyber-attacks if left unattended. You need to develop clear privacy policies and invest in the most secure networks and solutions to protect your customers and business before you start using bots.
  • Personalization. Another problem with chatbots is the possible lack of personalization when interacting with customers. Their answers may sound repetitive to every client. However, that doesn’t mean it’s utterly incapable of creating personalized customer experiences. One of the benefits of having a chatbot on a website is using it to take advantage of data and analytics; this can give you insight into your customers’ behaviors and preferences, which you can then integrate to interact with specific clients.

The use of chatbots in business has both advantages and disadvantages. You must study and prepare in advance before you decide to implement it.

How to get an intelligent chatbot

Chatbots with artificial intelligence do not appear independently. We must create, train and maintain them based on datasets. These datasets vary widely from business to business, such as healthcare, banking, education, traveling, etc. However, learning is unavoidable, and therefore we can create different types of chatbots to work with data differently. They will depend on the industry.

Easy learning and integration system

We may create a scripted bot, but it only offers a limited set of features or questions. It only accepts a narrow range of responses. Therefore, the process will not be very efficient. You must use machine learning to develop a bot with a growing set of knowledge and understanding. It learns on its own by studying previous chat examples.

Several cases are worth mentioning:

  • Advanced Learning. It involves sentiment analysis, where the bot learns the language used through NLP.
  • The final data set may come from customer satisfaction ratings at the end of each chat. Whether your website visitors are happy or unhappy, you will find out towards the end.
  • Your bot will get smarter over time as it gains more knowledge. The more time your clients spend with your chatbot, the more it learns. He may make mistakes, but over time he will learn from them.

Remember, building a standard bot is easy. All you have to do is connect a few APIs, write a few lines of code and copy and paste, and that’s it. Difficulties and great efforts begin when you start the learning process of the bot. Give him good feeding and learning data, and he will function flawlessly.

The features of FAQ builder

Creating a FAQ manually is tedious and a waste of time. It is much better to train a chatbot that automatically identifies common questions from the conversation history. Additionally, it recognizes the possible variations of these questions to make communication hassle-free. Thus, properly learning your chatbot means less work for your team to address individual customer requests and allow them to concentrate on solving complex issues that require hands-on assistance.

You may download the entire FAQ document, and the bot does the rest. It may identify questions and link them to related answers to make your job easier. Do not forget that bot learning is not a one-time but an ongoing process. Have a staff member conduct regular checks to make sure conversations with the support chatbot are going as expected.

What is a hybrid model?

The hybrid system offers a combination of the benefits offered by chatbots and the power of humans and conversational AI. A hybrid chatbot first uses rule-based components such as predefined keywords and processes.

Additionally, the interaction between the agent and the user is analyzed by a hybrid AI solution and used as training data. In this way, the conversational AI learns with each conversation and then automatically engages in a dialogue with the client. If the request exceeds the chatbot’s knowledge base, the customer is redirected to a suitable employee. Thanks to the collected data, the agent directly follows the previous dialogue and suggests appropriate solutions in the chat. Employees always have complete control over whether and when they want to take over the discussion.

In this model, specialists and machines work hand in hand. While the bot acts independently and automatically answers standard questions, agents focus on complex customer queries. Employee workload is significantly reduced, customer satisfaction is greatly improved, and the quality of responses remains consistently high.

Besides, thanks to artificial intelligence, the chatbot collects valuable metadata about the buyer, gives him personalized product recommendations, and prequalifies leads for sales purposes. AI analyzes, network, and filter vast amounts of data from which valuable patterns and correlations can emerge for the corporate tactic. Then you may get future scenarios.

The future of chatbots

According to Intellectyx, bots have huge potential: the market size will be $1.3 billion by 2024. Brands that have understood why chatbots are smarter than humans should actively integrate them into business processes, one of which is social customer service, where a chatbot effectively reduces query processing time by a significant percentage. It increases the share of positive votes, as 82% of consumers say that quick responses at first contact are essential to them and affect their perception of a brand. After all, a satisfied customer is all a business needs.