Year: 2021

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A chatbot is computer software that uses artificial intelligence to replicate human conversations. They’re also referred to as “digital assistants” that are aware of human capabilities. Bots decipher the user’s purpose, process their requests, and respond quickly with appropriate information.

Bots may speak via voice and text, and they can be used on websites, apps, and messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and Whatsapp.

A chatbot can be as simple as matching patterns and responding, or it can be a complicated weave of artificial intelligence algorithms with advanced conversational state tracking and integration with current business processes.

Chatbot apps let customers have a better experience by simplifying interactions between people and services. Simultaneously, by decreasing the typical cost of customer service, they give businesses new ways to improve customer engagement and operational efficiency.

The most crucial duty of a chatbot is to analyze and detect the purpose of the user’s request in order to extract relevant elements. The user receives an appropriate response when the analysis is completed.

With pre-defined rules and AI-based chatbots, chatbots process data to provide speedy replies to all types of user queries.

Types of Chatbots

Programmed Chatbots

• Both basic and scripted

• Looks for keywords and responds with pre-defined replies.

Intent Recognizers

• Machine Learning Capabilities

• Significantly better comprehension of user intent; linkages between words are considered to derive meaning from a request

• Connects to other systems to use user data and insights • Learns and improves over time Virtual Agents are capable of understanding what a human is attempting to do and can have an end-to-end conversation.

Trending Bot Articles:

1. How Conversational AI can Automate Customer Service

2. Automated vs Live Chats: What will the Future of Customer Service Look Like?

3. Chatbots As Medical Assistants In COVID-19 Pandemic

4. Chatbot Vs. Intelligent Virtual Assistant — What’s the difference & Why Care?

An advisor who looks like a human

• General AI, sometimes known as human-level AI or strong AI, is a form of artificial intelligence that can comprehend and reason about its surroundings in the same way as humans can.

Chatbots come in a variety of intelligence levels. Because they function within a wide spectrum of complexity in both dialogue and procedures, there is no apparent distinction between Chatbots and Virtual Agents. On both ends of the spectrum, there are useful uses. Two applications of varying complexity and intelligence are shown below.

Chatbots range in intelligence from answering inquiries to having all of the capabilities of a customer care representative. Depending on the use case, the appropriate level of intelligence should be chosen.

FAQ Chatbots

FAQ Chatbots are the most basic type of Chatbot, yet they may already provide a lot of value. It is capable of comprehending inquiries and providing the best appropriate response to the user.

Virtual Assitant

The Virtual Assistant, which has a somewhat greater level of intelligence and is more integrated with corporate systems, can do basic tasks such as pulling up personal information.

Virtual Agent

Virtual Agents are the most sophisticated Chatbots, capable of entirely replacing an individual. These bots are capable of handling even the most difficult conversations, processes, and security regulations.

Chatbot Applications:

Chatbots may assist consumers with a variety of activities, including information inquiries, reservations, and tailored actions such as money transfers.

Language & Context Understanding Chatbots imitate certain aspects of the human brain.

Reinforcement Learning

Ability to accept user “corrections” over time in order to enhance answer appropriateness. Allows the Chatbot to learn and improve as a result of human interaction.

Machine Learning

Analyze human agent answers to learn how to reply to the user.

Qualitative intent recognition necessitates this.

Intent Recognition

Ability to “guess” what the user wants, even if the request is stated in an unusual way.

To enable natural communication, eliminate user irritation, and allow the virtual agent to initiate a meaningful discourse, this is required.

Natural Language Processing

The ability to “read” or understand material written in human language.

Understanding natural sentence patterns vs. simplistic keyword “triggers” is a prerequisite.

Entity Recognition

Understand that some text relates to abstract categories (entities) that provide information, such as “February 2” = Date.

For more advanced instructions and analysis, this is required.

Dialog Management

Allow your Chatbot to have deep and meaningful interactions with the user by going beyond simple Q&A.

Humanization

When a Chatbot acts more humanlike, users get more involved in the chat. Some chatbots can identify and display emotions.

Interaction Channels

How will your Chatbot’s users engage with it?

Select a platform that is simple to integrate with your webchat, app, social media platform, or voice interface.

Task Automation Capability

Is it necessary for your Chatbot to assist users with tasks?

Check that it has sufficient dialogue capabilities and can connect to your back-end systems.

Reporting & Monitoring

Are you assisting your customers?

Are they content?

Is your contact center receiving fewer calls?

Choose a Chatbot platform that provides you with feedback on how it is functioning.

Ease of Implementation

Some platforms need bespoke software development, while others allow corporate users to configure their own Chatbots.

Conversational AI is being utilized to facilitate communication between machines and people as our environment becomes increasingly digital.

Conversational AI refers to a group of technologies that enable human-like interactions between computers and humans through automated messaging and speech-enabled apps.

By detecting speech and text, interpreting intent, translating multiple languages, and replying in a fashion that resembles human conversation, conversational AI can converse like a person.

To build effective applications that combine context, personalization, and relevance within human-computer interaction, applied Conversational AI involves both science and art. Conversational design, a science-focused to creating natural-sounding processes, is a critical component in creating Conversational AI systems.

Though chatbots have risen in popularity (and a bad rep), conversational AI solutions may be delivered via text and speech modalities, and hence can be delivered through a variety of channels and devices — from SMS and online chat for text to phone calls and smart speakers for voice.

Conversational AI, at its best, produces results that are indistinguishable from those supplied by a person. Consider the last time you spoke with a company and realized that you could have accomplished the same tasks with the same effort as if you had communicated with a human. That’s the pinnacle of Conversational AI.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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Evolution of Conversational AI was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How to Write a Conversational Script for Your Chatbot — EmpathyBots

First of all, applaud yourself, because you have reached the second step in creating a chatbot.

And, it means a lot!

It means you are serious about creating a chatbot and have taken a step-by-step approach to create it.

What will you get from this guide?

In this guide, you will get the 5-step process to write a conversational script (with example) and the 6 best practices you should follow to make it effective.

In the last guide, I have shown you how to design a conversational flow for your chatbot from scratch.

If you haven’t read it yet, read it now and come here again!

Because it’s the first step in creating a chatbot and a pre-requisite for this guide.

But, what exactly is a conversational script?

Well, read the next section to know this!

What is a Conversational Script?

The conversational script is nothing but the dialogues which are the combination of words, sentences, images, GIFs, and many other things used to give direction to a conversation.

This script can include topics to start a conversation, answer questions, and end the conversation.

Ok! But how to create one?

Let’s look at how to write a conversational script for your chatbot by continuing our previous example of FAQBot, in the next section.

5 Steps to Write a Conversational Script

1. Remember Conversational Flow

The first step in writing a conversational script is to look at your previously designed conversational flow.

Like, in my case I have designed the conversational flow for my FAQBot,

The conversational flow is the foundation of our entire chatbot-building process.

I hope you have a conversation flow like this, if not, then read the above-suggested guide to learn how to design one.

Ok! What’s next?

2. Empathize with Users

The Next step is to empathize with your users and try to understand their world!

What?

Yes. If you don’t know who your users are, what problems they have, their motivations, habits, experiences, feelings, then you cannot sound relatable to them.

But, how can you do that?

Simple, just observe them! I’m not saying go and run huge surveys, take interviews, no! The best place to observe them without spending a dime is social media.

Go follow them, find out where they engaged, what type of content they like, their interests, people they follow, and many other things.

Umm…want to know the easy way?

Ok! If you don’t want to do that much work, then I will tell you a little easy way as compared to this.

Go to Facebook Audience Insights! As you know, they have all the “data”, just open it and play around with different features and I’m sure you will find out some interesting insights.

Isn’t it great? Now I will tell you the third step quickly…!

Trending Bot Articles:

1. How Conversational AI can Automate Customer Service

2. Automated vs Live Chats: What will the Future of Customer Service Look Like?

3. Chatbots As Medical Assistants In COVID-19 Pandemic

4. Chatbot Vs. Intelligent Virtual Assistant — What’s the difference & Why Care?

3. Set the Tone of Voice

How does your chatbot should sound to users?

The third step is to set the tone of voice of your conversation.

Whether it should be formal and sounds like a professional or it should be informal and sounds friendly, just decide it now!

And, be consistent with it throughout the script.

In my case, FAQBot will be informal and keep the conversation more friendly.

Done? Let’s go on to the 4th one…

4. Write a Conversational Script

Finally, it’s time to write a conversational script.

You can use a tool for it if you want. I personally used the old-school method, a notebook!

In chatbots, the conversation is divided into four different fragments.

1. Starting the Conversation

It is the first message your chatbot sends to users when they start a conversation.

You can call it a Welcome or Greeting Message.

A chatbot can be programmed to send different welcome messages to the same users, every time they interact with your chatbot.

And, also two different welcome messages to the new and existing users.

For that, you have to write different versions of the same message. And, It will feel more natural because in real life also we don’t greet anyone and everyone with the same phrase every time.

That is the reason, the conversation starter is very important because it is your only chance at making that first impression and encourage them to write you back.

You can also use the buttons or quick replies to show them the options they have to interact with your chatbot.

2. Leading the Conversation

Leading the conversation means keeping the conversation going on.

Now, what does that mean?

It means, sometimes users don’t understand what to do next, then in such a situation, your chatbot should take charge and lead the conversation.

For example, in FAQBot, a user asked a question and got the answer to that question.

But now, he doesn’t know what to do next, then a bot can ask a user, “Do you have more questions?” and show the other available options to keep the conversation going.

3. Repairing the Conversation

If you have read my previous guides, then you probably know about this term.

It is nothing but to repair the conversation failure.

For example, if users ask a question to FAQBot which is out of its scope or for which it’s not programmed. Then it’s called a conversation failure because it can’t reply to that particular question.

And, a solution to this is to repair that conversation using a fallback reply or default reply.

You can send a message like, “Sorry! I’m still learning, you can ask from the following questions instead” and show the available options.

Or you can also ask them if they want to talk with a live agent.

4. And, Ending the Conversation

Yes, you got it right!

Here you have to write the end of the conversation.

But write it cleverly, they should feel like coming back to interact with a chatbot.

Don’t end the conversation forever!

Here’s how I have written the conversational script for FAQBot,

What’s the last step now?

5. Analyze & Improve

The last step is to analyze and improve the script.

You will better understand and analyze it after a chatbot goes live and users actually start interacting with it.

Because by this, you will see the real people interacting with it, how they are interacting, the words they are using, and many other things.

And, I have already told you the following lines in my previous guides that is,

Read it aloud and create different prototypes to improve your conversational script. Because you can’t build an Alexa or Siri in the first attempt.

Now, it’s time for the best practices..!

6 Best Practices for Writing a Conversational Script

1. Be Natural

The first best practice to write a great conversational script is to be natural, clear, and most importantly be Human!

Though users should know that they are talking with a bot, but they should also feel like that this bot is made by a Human!

And, be clear about your messaging, your users should understand what they can/should do with your chatbot.

2. Cut Messages into Small Chunks

Don’t send messages with long paragraphs.

Just go and look at your messaging app, have you chatted with long paragraphs?

Similarly, you should mimic the same thing while writing the conversational script.

Divide your messages into small chunks.

3. Be Contextful

Like, Content without context is not of any use.

Similarly, Conversation without context is also not of any use.

But, What does it mean?

For example, you and I meet for the first time today, so naturally, I want to know your name, where are you from, etc. and it’s fine because we are meeting for the first time.

But, suppose I meet you tomorrow morning and again ask for your name, how do you feel or react?

(*#?!23@$%^*&*)

Isn’t it?

Similarly, if you come to interact with my FAQBot for the first time then it should ask you, “Hey there! How can I help you?”

And, if you come once again, then it should remember the past conversation and reply with the message like “Hey, Pratik! How can I help you today?”

It will add more context to the conversation and give a better experience to users.

4. Make it Personalized

There is a reason why chat or conversational marketing is on the boom. And social messaging apps are growing rapidly and have a high retention rate.

And, that reason is the ability to personalize.

Here you can have one-on-one communication with people, unlike other mediums.

So, keep it the same way with your conversational script that your users should feel like you are talking directly to them.

You can achieve it by including their names in the message, sending personalized messages, personalized product recommendations, etc.

5. Write a Script to Respond to Irrelevant Messages

You may have familiar with this that people always like to mess up with chatbots, asking random and irrelevant questions.

Remember the last time you have asked Alexa the rubbish question.

So, It’s going to happen with your chatbot also.

So it’s better to have a plan and a script in place to tackle this kind of situation creatively instead of sending the same “Sorry, I didn’t get this” message repeatedly.

6. Proofread

And the last best practice is to proofread your writing.

There are people who don’t like spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, phrasing mistakes especially if you are building a formal chatbot and having a professional conversation.

So, it’s better to proofread before deploying it on a chatbot.

You can also read the guide 11 Chatbot Best Practices You Should Follow to Create a Powerful Chatbot to know more chatbot best practices.

So, something left?

At least not for now, let’s wrap up the article!

Wrapping Up

I know that anybody including me cannot build a perfect conversational script in one shot. Because there is no such thing as perfection.

It is an ongoing process that you have to analyze and improve as your bot gets smarter.

So, don’t waste time now and go start writing the conversational script for your chatbot.

Liked this story? Consider following me to read more stories like this.

You can also follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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How to Write a Conversational Script for Your Chatbot — EmpathyBots was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Over the last decade, the world’s travel culture has undergone a total transformation. Tourism is one of the fastest expanding sectors today. People travel for a variety of reasons, including the desire to visit new places, work, or spend a weekend away from home. The number of travel agents has grown massively, and so is the level of competition in the business. Providing the finest deals while remaining relevant is a major problem for all of these businesses. To stay competitive, you must employ the most effective marketing strategies for your travel firm.

SMS marketing is a powerful tool that can be used in almost every industry. This is especially true for firms that sell non-essential items or convenience items. SMS services must be an important part of your marketing plan if you manage a travel business. With a 98 percent open rate, texting is currently the most used communication method.

Let’s take a look into the ways how travel agencies are using SMS marketing for their business:

Mass Marketing:

Here’s how you can use Mass Marketing for your travel agency:

• Special Offers: Use text messaging to share exclusive offers with customers. You can share fantastic trip deals that are only accessible for a limited time. You can even provide your customers with a special discount code that is only valid for certain trips and bookings.

• Brand Building: Customers are serious about traveling, therefore they will choose a travel service that they believe is trustworthy and professional. Brand building is closely related to the emotional attachment you’re creating towards your company. Send them regular SMS updates about upcoming travel offers and packages.
• Ask them to opt-in to receive travel updates: Eg. To receive information on Cruise tour packages, text CRUISE To 55556. When a lead texts the term (CRUISE) to your phone number, they will receive an automatic SMS with important information.

Target Marketing:

• Rewards: Customers can also be rewarded for their loyalty. Rewards are a means for a company to express gratitude. If a consumer has booked a vacation via your agency, you should thank them. This form of personalized marketing establishes a unique link between you and your customer. Once they’ve made a reservation with you, consider giving them a special offer.
• Tips: Consider offering your customer-helpful tips and advice about the destination as their next journey approaches. You may inform customers about upcoming weather or currency exchange rates. They will be very thankful.

• Better Customer Relationship: Travel agencies wish customers on their journeys as well as on special events such as birthdays and anniversaries. These assists travel companies in gaining the trust of their customers, resulting in a long-term connection.
• Feedback: Collecting feedback is an important element of any business that wants to be successful in the long run. Text message services are perfect for collecting feedback because of their high open rates. When a survey is sent via SMS, there is a high probability that the client will see it and complete it. You must pay attention to them to determine what has to be improved in your company. Ask them about their overall flight and booking experience, tell them to rate the service provider, and ask them if they have any suggestions.

Cloud Messaging provides you with the most reliable route and ensures that each of your SMS reaches the target destination!

Trending Bot Articles:

1. How Conversational AI can Automate Customer Service

2. Automated vs Live Chats: What will the Future of Customer Service Look Like?

3. Chatbots As Medical Assistants In COVID-19 Pandemic

4. Chatbot Vs. Intelligent Virtual Assistant — What’s the difference & Why Care?

Direct Messaging:

Deliver great customer service so that the client chooses you for their next vacation. Here are a few instances of how you can communicate with your client by SMS and provide a good customer experience. While it’s critical to stay in touch via SMS, it’s also critical to send only relevant and focused messages that your customers will find beneficial.

• Confirm Bookings and keep customers informed with their trip: Travel agencies utilize SMS communication to keep customers informed and give their consumers peace of mind. Traveling usually involves a lot of complications. It takes time and effort to ensure that everything is correctly organized. As a result, travel businesses offer SMS services to help users feel less stressed. It’s quite beneficial to send a booking confirmation and keep the customer updated on their booking by SMS. The majority of booking confirmation messages are automated.

• The most important details regarding the trip must be included in an SMS notice about the planned booking. People nowadays, for example, enjoy making reservations months and weeks in advance. As a result, SMS services serve as reminders. When a consumer makes reservation months in advance, there’s a good possibility he or she may make a mistake with the specific date. As a result, sending them a message to remind them of an approaching trip might be incredibly helpful. This will enhance your brand’s overall experience and encourage clients to utilize your services again.

• QR code or mobile-friendly travel tickets: Another approach to give your consumers peace of mind is to send them a trackable and secure ticket by text message. The goal is to make the customer’s booking experience more convenient and stress-free. This strategy is used by Alaska Airlines. fact, Alaska Airlines is successfully using SMS service and has shown great results. The company has the happiest customers in the US, so the SMS strategy can be a great customer support tool if used properly.

You can also send a QR Code through Cloud Messaging to send boarding tickets to your customers so that they do not have to wait in line.

• While traveling: Once your customer has left for his trip, your role as a travel agent is to make sure he has a great time. You can reach out to him in advance with information that may be useful to him. For eg. Nearest car rentals, stay addresses, itinerary, etc.

We’re here to help you out with a few more travel agency marketing ideas and techniques that can help you build your business and attract customers from all over the world!

• Flight notification (cancellation, delay, or changes in flight)
• Weather forecasts
• Viewing of hotel locations via the map
• Destination information/city guides
• Room /hotel reservation status

Don’t be scared by the number of cases we’ve covered. You don’t have to get everything set up right away. To get started, send out a single broadcast SMS and see how your customers react.

You can use SMS tools such as Cloud Messaging to help you with this. I recommend Cloud Messaging too! It also provides you with a variety of SMS solutions (ranging from opt-ins to peer-to-peer) that you may employ whenever your marketing department is ready.

This is a time for you to send out a mass SMS and see the impact? It’s completely free and will only take you 15 minutes of your time! Try it now at icloudy.cloudladderconsulting.com

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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How Travel agencies can use Cloud Messaging was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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We recently talked about flipped classrooms, which refers to changing the classroom setting from an instruction-based learning environment to one that’s discussion-based.

Today, we’ll be exploring flipped learning. Although the two sound similar, there are some key differences that you should know.

This year’s Chatbot Conference will be the begging of something new!

We have very exciting news!

It’s that time of year, where we start to actively plan our next Chatbot & AI Conference and we’re planning on hosting it in the Metaverse!

Metaverse will allow us to connect online in a more embodied experience. You will be able to virtually walk around, meet people, talk to the speakers and even have a happy hour!

So, we are very excited!

To make matters even more interesting, we will explore the topic of how Converstional AI Avatars are coming into the Metaverse!

As you may know, Ilya Gelfenbeyn, the previous co-founder of Dialoglfow (originally Api.ai) has founded a new startup, Inworld AI, that focuses on this.

Inworld AI provides a developer platform for creating AI-powered virtual characters to populate immersive realities including the metaverse, VR/AR, games, and virtual worlds.

What we are seeing is the beginning stages of technological convergence as AI, AR/VR, Crypto are begging to merge into the Metaverse.

So this year’s event looks to be very unique and quite special and this is just the beginning of what we are planning.

Here is how we are planning on using NFTs at the conference…

An NFT for your Identity

In our everyday lives, when we meet someone for the first time, we can instantly get a read on what type of person we are talking with. By the way they dress, move, speak they communicate their identity and who they are shows. However, we can’t really do this online.

The Personality NFT changes all that.

What is the Personality NFT?

We created the Personality NFT to help people instantly share their personality with others and find people like minded people online and in our community.

The Personality NFT is based on the most complete Psychometrics Test which includes your Big 5 personality traits, value systems, and identity. After you take the test, you will get your cards and be able to share it with others.

These cards are very powerful. They can be used to learn about yourself, to learn about others, to find friends, to find business partners, and to achieve your goals in life.

They also ​have multiple use cases for businesses, and can be used at events, like our conference!

How to use Personality NFT at our Conference

The Personality NFT cards will help you discover the best ways to work with others by leveraging the strengths of your personality and theirs. You can think of it as a MAP that can show you how to connect with others on a deeper level.

We are very exciting about this project and our upcoming conference and hope to see your there!

You can learn more about PersonalityNFT here.

RSVP for the Chatbot Conference

You can now RSVP for the Spring of 2022 event. We are looking at dates in early April of 2022. This is the prefect time to RSVP and save.

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A Conference in the Metaverse & an NFT for your Personality was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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