by Chatbot Concierge | Apr 16, 2018
Chatbots: here's everything you need to know to get started. (plus a BONUS at the end) 🤖👍
A bot is a piece of software that performs an automated task. A chatbot is a type of bot that lives on a chat platform like Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram or SMS.
A chatbot is a service similar to email automation, but with a number of key differentiators. The service can be fun, entertaining or even strictly business.
The most basic idea of a chatbot is that it can have a conversation.
"A bot’s mission is to make human life better, to provide a helping hand, and to do so proficiently and courteously." ~Amir Shevat, author of Designing Bots
Let’s cover some of the basics of where you might find a chatbot and how you could use it.
What a chatbot isn’t
They’re not your equal
It’s easy to imagine having a full conversation with a bot just like you would a friend. But that’s still a science fiction fantasy that hasn’t yet come true.
I believe that it will, but for now we have to program bots to interact and behave as much like humans as possible within the boundaries of our current technology.
Chatbots aren’t able to have a completely fluid and real conversation yet.
They’re not limited to text and voice
A common misconception is that chatbots are limited to text- and voice-based interfaces. Think Facebook Messenger and Amazon’s Alexa.
Text and voice are the dominant platforms. There is a growing trend towards graphical interfaces or widgets.
Many chat platforms allow developers to create web views with custom graphical interfaces that share data and information back to a chatbot to continue the conversation.
They're not bad bots
You may be thinking that bots have gotten companies like Twitter and Facebook into a lot of trouble lately.
Chatbots aren’t data scrapers, spammers or impersonators. They’re built to have a conversation with a human and most people are savvy enough to understand that they’re not chatting with a human.
I can’t think of a chatbot I’ve come across that had bad intentions.
Where can I find a chatbot?
As I mentioned above, you can find chatbots on a lot of platforms. You could even build and host your own bot if data security and privacy are big concerns like in healthcare and banking.
Here are some of the platforms you’ll see chatbots:
Amazon Echo
Discord
Facebook Messenger
Google Assistant
iOS
Skype
Slack
SMS
Websites
Types of Chatbots
To get a better sense of what a chatbot is it’s important to understand how they can be used.
Mitch Mason, a Manager at IBM’s Watson, shares the three most common chatbots:
Support chatbots are built to master a single domain and be able to answer a wide range of questions about that domain. Support chatbots answer a broad scope of questions.
Skills chatbots have set commands that are built to help humans. Amazon’s Alexa has a lot of skills like playing a certain song or “Alexa, turn on hallway light.”
Assistant chatbots are a mix of support and skills chatbots. They are able to answer a wider range of questions and perform a broad set of tasks. Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant are good examples.
Examples of Chatbots
Most bots tend to fall somewhere between two or three of the types of bots above. Others are off in their own category, so it’s fun to explore and see what’s out there.
Here are some of our favorites. See if you can tell which type they are:
Poncho the weather bot
Make better decisions with Swelly
Buy flowers for your mom at 1800Flowers
Get business intelligence from Growthbot
Be happier with Woebot, your charming robot friend
…and of course, OUR chatbot here at chatbotconcierge.com 🤖👍
A quick note on Artificial Intelligence (AI)
“There’s a lot of chatter about AI and Machine Learning being behind many of the bots you’ll see. Truth is that we’re still a long way from Articificial General Intelligence (AGI) like you’ve probably seen in the movies. Chatbots can leverage AI and Machine Learning to have better conversations, but it’s still important to develop and build them the right way. That’s a topic for another post.”
That said…
You can do just about anything
“Everything you can imagine is real.” ~Pablo Picasso
Chatbots are being built to do anything you can dream up. I hope this has helped you understand what chatbots are and how they operate.
SAY HELLO :)
CHATBOT CONCIERGE BUILDS CHATBOTS FOR BUSINESSES.
Get in touch!
Now that you’ve read the use cases…try us. Chatbot Concierge is helping build the conversational web. We just want to keep in touch with you on facebook messenger. So click and say HI!
BONUS...INFOGRAPHIC!
Who doesn't love a good infographic? As a bonus and thank you for reading this far, the infographic below is our gift to you. Feel free to download and share on social media.
