How is AI taking over rule-based chatbots? Is AI the future of chatbots? We will answer these questions in this article.
The rise of the chatbot industry
The chatbot industry is growing really fast year by year as many companies try to use chatbots to reduce customer service costs.
With rapid advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), more and more chatbots are made and released each day, and they serve a different purpose.
Future of rule-based chatbots with low satisfactory rate
The future of rule-based chatbots is worrisome because they are not dynamic enough to be able to tackle nuances in conversation, and their future is likely to be determined by the business value that they can provide.
Majority of the rule-based chatbots are now the legacy systems from the earlier times of technology that haven’t been able to keep up with the pace of AI and ML.
Of course, there are some great pros related to the rule-based chatbots. However, as the time have progressed, we can see that the low satisfactory rates of rule-based chatbots are trumping over these pros.
They are also too constrained in the conversations they are able to have. Rule-based chatbots often rely on some degree of handcrafted rules which can be difficult to create and maintain without a high degree of expertise.
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Which companies are relying on AI chatbots?
There are many companies that are relying on the rule-based chatbot to replace customer service.
As more and more companies try to use chatbots to reduce customer service costs, there is a rapid advancement in AI technology and Natural Language Processing (NLP), which has led to growth in the chatbot industry.
· Amtrak
Amtrak is an American railroad company that provides service to 30 states in the US. They’ve partnered with IBM Watson’s Artificial Intelligence technology to improve their customer service experience.
Amtrak has reported a cost savings of $500,000 by implementing chatbots for customer support instead.
This shows how much Amtrak benefits from using chatbots, which is why they invested heavily in AI technology.
· Sephora
Sephora is a beauty retailer from France. It offers a variety of products from cosmetics to fragrance and everything in between.
Sephora is also the parent company of other brands, including The Body Shop, Origins, and more.
Sephora partnered with a chatbot studio to create a virtual assistant that will help their customers shop while being customer service agents.
This chatbot provides answers for personalized styles while answering questions about how to use the product.
The main benefit for Sephora is the cost savings they make by using this chatbot.
Outside of this list, there are still many bots not yet on it that will make it big in the near future. Despite all these advances in technology, there have been some unexpected declines when deploying chatbots on various platforms.
Consumer conundrum: No flexibility in rule-based chatbots
Rule-based chatbots are determined by a set of predetermined rules. The AI in these types of chatbots is inert and not interactive.
Their behavior is only determined by the responses that they provide to certain keywords or phrases.
These chatbots, however, do not interact with the user, and this makes it hard to be sure if they are even capable of understanding what you’re saying to them.
Many chatbots require a database of information or conversational familiarity to work. This can be problematic for your messaging because the user may want to converse with the same bot. However, the rules may have changed, and it cannot interact with previous texts due to different contexts.
Rule-based bots are typically associated with simple tasks such as weather updates or an FAQ page on a website.
So, there’s not much flexibility there is to offer in rule-based chatbots.
Furthermore, when the developers of bots that are rule-based attempt to deploy it on various platforms, they will inevitably run into some problems.
As bot developers continue to improve their technology, they will eventually have to make the decision on whether or not it’s worth investing in more rule-based chatbots or moving onto other AI technologies.
Final words
The performance of an AI chatbot has proven its power over a rule-based chatbot.
It’s not something that should be left to chance, but rather it should be considered as part of your marketing strategy for driving sales and increasing customer engagement with your company.
Let us know your thoughts on this. We would love to hear from you.
Communicating Knowledge, Saltlux.
[1] https://www.reviewpro.com/blog/should-i-choose-a-rule-based-or-an-ai-chatbot/
[3] https://medium.com/voice-tech-podcast/why-chatbots-fail-limitations-of-chatbots-7f291c4df83f
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The Dominance of AI Chatbots Over Rule-Based Chatbots was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.