7 things you won't know: What are Chatbots and Why do you need it?

What are chatbots?Chatbot or a ‘chatter robot’ self-explains its mechanism of interaction using some super advanced technology via a chat interface. Dominating the tech industry with its high-valued programming, a chatbot is a smart machine-based program that help to have a conversation with a real human being.Strongly supported by giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple, Chatbots are witnessing an age of highest demand, powered by either a predefined set of rules and responses, or artificial intelligence techniques such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), image and video processing, and audio analysis. Discover why do we need chatbots further.

 The birth and evolution of chatbots

Dated back to the 1960’s when agent Eliza mimicked human conversations with small scripted phrases, to a more advanced ‘Parry’ in the 1970’s, chatbots were upgraded from a text-based to a voice-operated interface way back in the 1980’s. The benefits of AI for a virtual assistant have been beneficial to humans since then.Shaping up over the years with Dr. Sbaitso, Alice and Smarterchild, a precursor to Apple’s Siri and Samsung’s S-Voice, the next generation of chatbots was unveiled by IBM’s Watson in 2006. Watson is a question answering computing system built by IBM that outperformed its human opponent’s and was specifically designed to answer questions on the quiz show Jeopardy.

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Transitioning from existing technologies to emerging technologies, Apple developed a more intelligent bot ‘Siri’ in 2010 that paved the way for the later Google Now, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana and Facebook’s Messenger bot. All of the latter chatbots that emerged were crafted with a better skill set of performing tasks and taking voice commands with greater accuracy and smartness in accordance with advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, making them more versatile than ever.

Why do we need Chatbots?

Increase in appetite

With improved services and technology comes a greater demand. At an explosive growth, the generation of mobile apps is greatly subsiding despite the fact the number of smartphone users is at its all time high, eventually increasing the dependency of humans on technology. Benefitting from the trend, chatbots are catering to most of the possible tasks from forecasting weather, buying groceries, shopping online, booking hotels or a flight, and even making child growth happier. It mirrors the type of experience a person is ought to have on visiting a retail store or an e-commerce website. So why not outsource chores and save all the time and effort?

Cost efficiency

As a business, the most important aspect of the model is cost efficiency. Chatbots form a part of the core team for many of the IT companies, e-commerce brands, healthcare industries as well as retail brands. The only cost involved here is what goes into the making of a chatbot. Once successfully operational, bots accomplish tasks that involve high budgets and an even higher time to process. Machine learning has enabled bots to execute roles of multiple people by one single software, replacing the additional cost that goes in the manpower.

Easy customer care

The surprising ways in which chatbots interact with humans is highly beneficial to companies on a lookout for customer acquisition and satisfaction.Humans have a defined number of working hours but that’s definitely not the case with machines, that just follow commands at any odd hour of the day. The easy development and accessibility of chatbots have discovered varied domains of customer engagement through artificial intelligence by reaching out to audiences that might spontaneously take an action!

Be newsworthy

With the advent of messaging apps as the most popular mobile apps, technological advancement of chatbots is dramatically increasing the number of active users who stick around their devices, constantly on a hunt for a product more appealing. Being the scenario currently, with an already active audience and technology, standing out in a crowd only needs a chatbot developed in ways unique. Once through, making a mark and hitting the peak of popularity is as simple as it gets. Also, since not all businesses are out and about with their personalized assistant, the time is right for the first mover's advantage for many.

Compete aggressively

Chatbots have been the talk of the tech world for quite some time now. Makers from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Apple are competing against each other's products to make theirs more visible and successful. Taking it from the experts in the industry, do it because your competitors are doing it! There’s no treasure hidden in developing a chatbot today and with the level of ease it comes with, most of the businesses are acquiring the technology to make the most from it.So why lag behind and stick to age-old methods in a world so tech-savvy?

Efficient analytics

Since chatbots are built around highly scaled technologies like artificial intelligence and ML, the pattern and behavior of the user are well fed at the back end of the software and the process of analyzing gains momentum here. The efficiency of predictive analysis is dominating business models across the globe. Gone are the times wherein people believed in the trial and error process and let fate decide the end result. Now is the time when meeting the target goals is all dependant on the resourceful use of technology. Chatbots are poised to become an efficient tool for analytics as well as growth.

Accessibility

Chatbots are globetrotters and accompany you even to the highest peaks in the world. A software that comes in handy on your smart device, travels along with you and also unburdens you of the load. Who knew back in the 40s or 50s that technology would take such a perfect shape to allow mankind be at so much comfort. Chatbots have made things unimaginable realistic, and have always been easy to access, irrespective of the demographics. 

This race of developing a smarter-than-ever chatbot is the key to the increasing demand of this technology, with an ultimate goal of making users feel they are communicating with another human, instead of an intelligent software.

Let our technical experts guide you further on the develpment of chatbots and how efficient would they be for your business.