Author: Franz Malten Buemann

submitted by /u/Botmywork
[link] [comments]

submitted by /u/thestorytellerixvii
[link] [comments]

submitted by /u/Captainrobin41
[link] [comments]

Chatbots have been the talk of the town and this technology is becoming a part of us whether we realize it or not. In e-commerce, the chatbot is the latest trend. Chatbot promises 24×7 availability, auto-learning capabilities that have intrigued e-commerce giants to hop on the chatbot bandwagon. Everyone is talking about implementing a chatbot and the ease it provides in communicating with the customers.

Here are some jaw-dropping chatbot statistics that you need to know in 2021 according to the author of Website builder,

• A chatbot can cut customer service costs by more than 30%.
• Chatbots are expected to help reduce business costs by up to $8 billion by the year 2022.
• There was a 67% increase in the adoption of chatbots by organizations between 2018 and 2020.
• 69% of the public prefers to use a chatbot instead of a company’s official App.
• 63% of people trust chatbots with their most sensitive information.

Additionally, according to an Oracle survey,

“80% of businesses said they currently use or are planning to use chatbots by 2020.”

Well, all this just proves that there is nothing greater than prioritizing customer comfort and convenience., More importantly, creating customer engagement is crucial. Chatbots help to create a brand identity, provide customer support to existing customers, retain loyal customers, and help customers communicate with the brand through an open channel.

CHATBOTS- THE FUTURE OF ECOMMERCE

In the digital age, that we live in today, convenience is a priority, and customers seek convenience. Chatbots provide just that, influencing customer relationships by providing quick solutions to their questions. A recent study found that 53% of service organizations expect to use chatbots within 18 months — a 136% growth rate that foreshadows a big role for the technology shortly.

Over 59% of millennials and 60% of Gen Xers in the United States have interacted with chatbots.

And according to a Facebook survey, more than 50% of customers say they’re more likely to shop with a business that they can connect with via chat.

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?

WHY CUSTOMER INSIGHTS IS PARAMOUNT

Customer insights give access to a powerful tool, ‘DATA’. Data is more valuable than ever and those who learn to use this data wisely will reap benefits.

According to British Data Scientist Clive Humby; “Data is the new oil”.

A resource that is extremely valuable to the business’s data not only provides crucial information but also helps in the chatbots’ learning abilities. This means that the chatbot can self-train by learning how users express their goals and needs (intents). Artificial Intelligence feeds on data and training the chatbot on this data is crucial.

The core of self-improving chatbots is an

Intent Recognition NLU, which is trained with a variety of question variations. When no intent is matched with a confidence level above 30%, the chatbot returns a fallback answer. For all others, the NLU engine returns the corresponding confidence level along with the response.

WHAT MORE CAN CUSTOMER INSIGHTS PROVIDE THROUGH THE DASHBOARD?

Now that we know customers prefer to communicate with chatbots more than humans, information that the customers chooses to leave behind is vital. Analyzing the information through an “insights dashboard” can help benefit and reframe the customer service strategy. Here are some ways the dashboard can help businesses:

• Improve customer service strategy

The more information the chatbot receives, the more efficient and empathic the chatbot gets. This is possible only with the information the customer leaves behind. This information can be used to create and improve customer service strategies.

• Context on returning customers

The chatbot can also derive numbers of returning customers and analyze their conversation history with the chatbot. When a customer returns to converse with the chatbot. the previous conversation is cataloged and that makes it itis easier to make suggestions to the customers according to their conversation patterns. For example, some customers communicate with the chatbot to check offers and promotions. The chatbot will be able to give relevant suggestions and approach them with different strategies to target a successful conversion.

• Improving communication with customers

The way the chatbot functions and communicates can be examined using metrics i.e. the duration of the conversation or the response time of the chatbot to customers’ questions. that. Longer chat duration could mean that the chatbot is having trouble understanding the customer requests and shorter chat duration could mean disrupted communication as well. Insights can help analyze these communication gaps to improve communication with customers.

• Customer retention

Insights are a key KPI metric to analyze retention rate. Dashboards can help us understand what makes customers stay, and what makes them happy, or why the clicks are not converting. Artificial Intelligence chatbots can categorize words through neurolinguistic programming that helps in understanding the customer pain points. This, in turn, helps in customer retention and also improves the customer journey.

• Analyze engagement rates

Analyzing the average number of conversations exchanged during one chat session will allow businesses to understand the engagement rates with the chatbot. This will help businesses create a more proactive chatbot by creating well-structured scenarios initiating conversations and, creating a personalized experience for customers. Insight’s Dashboard can give valuable information to improve engagement and boost conversion rates.

Analyze chat termination points

This metric will allow a business to understand where the customers terminated their conversation with the chatbot and why. Was the chatbot not understanding the customer requests? This quantitative metric can allow businesses to improve the efficiency of the chatbot by comparing the time spent on the chatbot by each user. This, in turn, will improve the quality of the chatbot’s responses and overall comprehension levels.

Summing up,

There is no doubt that insights are what feeds a chatbot and make it more efficient. Businesses that seek to derive and evolve this valuable information will truly succeed. The Insights Dashboard can be used to analyze most of the business KPI’s. Hence there is no exaggeration in saying that chatbot analytics will enable businesses to understand customer behavior, the key drivers that influence their decision-making process and what it takes to retain them, and more.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

---

Learn How Customers Think and Evolve with Data Dashboard was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Welcome to “Lessons from our Voice Engine,” a series of blog posts by members of our Engineering and Speech Tech teams that explain, at a high level, how our voice engine works.

This first lesson comes from Nick Parslow, a Computational Linguist and member of our Speech Tech team at SoapBox Labs.

What is NLP?

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is about the interface between human language and machine language. This can mean taking a written sentence — just like this one — and extracting the key information from it, such as the semantic ideas, or the intent in the case of a command like left, right, open, close, for example. Going in the opposite direction, NLP can mean taking data and generating a human readable text from it.

In speech recognition systems like the SoapBox voice engine, NLP is used to build what are called language models — statistical models of language that can predict the next word based on the context. Language models are essential to help disambiguate similar sounding phrases. A great example of this is “white shoes” and “why choose.”

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?

Building a language model requires “normalization” of text — taking, for example, all instances of “ice-cream” and “icecream” and converting them to the same form. Without that normalization, the computer thinks of them as completely unrelated words.

Another use of NLP in speech recognition — in particular for English — is to work out the pronunciation of a word. This may be difficult for a machine to work out automatically (comparing “though” and “tough,” for example), so it may involve a mix of manual and automatic estimation.

What role does NLP play at SoapBox?

NLP plays a critical role at SoapBox because it links the spoken version of language with the written form, thereby allowing our voice engine to better understand and assess what a child is saying — their intent, their pronunciation, and much more — beyond just the words themselves.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

---

Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Speech Recognition for Kids was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A collaboration between ExxonMobil, Fiserv, Amazon Pay, and Alexa has made possible the launch of voice payments technology. Who would have imagined the possibility of paying for gas just by using a simple voice command like “Alexa, pay for gas”. Let alone having it available at thousands of Exxon and Mobil gas stations all around the US.

However, it is a feature available for more than 10 months for every Amazon Alexa user, along with all the conveniences it includes.

How does “Alexa, pay for gas” work?

Every Amazon Alexa user can use this feature with the Alexa app in their smartphone, vehicles with Alexa built-in, or the Echo Auto devices to complete the payment for fuel with just their voice.

It is available in nearly 11,500 Exxon and Mobil gas stations across the US and everyone can use it assisted from the Amazon Pay services.

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?

Once you go near a gas station, you will only need to ask Alexa with your voice “Alexa, pay for gas”. Alexa will then confirm the pump number, station location and prepare for fueling. Now you can select the fuel type and start fueling.

After completing your transaction securely through Amazon Pay services and powered by Fiserv’s payment platform, your car will be filled up and back on the road in no time. There’s no need to pay inside the station or insert your credit card at the pump.

Convenience vs Security: is it worth it?

“Say, pay, be on your way!” is a phrase that has defined the future of filling up your vehicle at the gas station. What Amazon has done with its virtual assistant recently is truly innovative. You can see how this will be popular for drivers — getting them to fill up their tank without having to stand in line at the pump. Instead, they can make the process frictionless with a single voice request asking Alexa to pay for gas.

What about security and protecting your account from unwanted payments?

You can limit access to your account information by requiring a 4-digit code before you can make a purchase. If your personal information is already protected with a Voice Code, “Alexa, pay for gas” will work as expected. You can also use the same Voice Code for voice shopping.

In order to be able to use the Voice Code, you must first have a Voice Code, if not already. You can enable the feature in your Amazon Alexa account. From the Alexa App, go to “Account Settings” and then to “Voice Purchasing.”. Here you can create a new four-digit Voice Code.

Considering these details, we can conclude that “Alexa, pay for gas” is a convenient and simple way to refuel your car, yet very safe and secure since it goes through Amazon Pay services and Fiserv’s platform.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

---

How to make voice payments at Exxon and Mobil Gas Stations with “Alexa pay for gas” was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

submitted by /u/invaderzimfanone
[link] [comments]

When you visit any website, you may have noticed that a pop-up usually appears at the bottom right of the screen. It greets you and welcomes you, and offers assistance while you surf the site. This popup is a Chatbot, also known as a Conversational Marketing Chatbot.

These Chatbots are one of the best marketing strategies adopted for enhancing the user experience and business growth. Today’s Chatbots are powered by cutting-edge technologies like NLP (Natural Language Processing) and ML (Machine Learning) that enable businesses to leverage automation to conduct smooth interactions with customers in a more human way.

Many brands often use regular Chatbots. These bots are built based on decision trees, but fail to impress the consumer, resulting in poor customer experiences. In addition, people sometimes complain that Chatbots don’t understand what they’re trying to say.

For such problems, Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning prove invaluable. Chatbots based on NLP and ML can efficiently determine the appropriate context for the suitable applications. This way, it offers a user–friendly interface for consumers. Moreover, these technologies give the appearance to end-users that a human is answering on the other side.

Aside from these, NLP-ML bots can do a variety of other things, such as document analysis, machine translation, and differentiating contents. We’ll explore why NLP and ML are needed in these bots in more detail.

Chatbots and its Types

Chatbots are software programs commonly known as “bots” that interact with end-users through an automated chat interface. For example, a programmed Chatbot interacts like an online customer service executive giving you instant replies.

Chatbots are used for different purposes, but primarily, they are used in customer services.

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?

Chatbots are generally divided into two types, fully automated and semi-automated.

• A decision tree or rule-based
• ML, NLP, or AI (Artificial Intelligence) based

A decision tree or rule-based bot works based on predefined keywords or scripted actions. Simple customer service requests are handled by rule-based Chatbots in e-commerce applications. They are easy to build, simple to use, and accomplish routine tasks.

On the other hand, ML and NLP-based Chatbots use the latest techniques to converse more naturally.

Machine learning chatbots learn from the input they receive. By utilizing natural language processing, it achieves intelligent learning that considers any interaction between computers and human language.

Let us find out how ML and NLP make your Chatbot experience better-

1. The task of NLP Engines — NLP engines comprehensively employ Machine Learning for parsing user input to extract the required entities and understand user intent. Chatbots powered by Natural Language Processing can parse several user intents to reduce the failure rate.
2. Intent Recognition — User inputs from a Chatbot are segmented and compiled to user intent through little words. NLP scrutinizes complete sentences by understanding the meaning of words, placing, conjugation, form, etc. Hence, it converts a sentence or paragraph into a simpler one.
3. Handling Entity — Entities are made up of fields, data, or words depicting an object like date, time, place, location, description, etc. The chatbots identify words from users and match with the available entities or collect other entities for completing a task.
4. Capitalizing Nouns — NLP-based Chatbots remove capitalization from common nouns and identify proper nouns from speech/user input.
5. Increasing Vocabulary — NLP continuously adds new synonyms to the bots and uses Machine Learning to improve the chatbot vocabulary, also transferring vocabulary.
6. Understanding Tense of the Verbs — NLP-MI Chatbots can learn different tenses and conjugation of the verbs through the tenses.
7. Contractions — These bots expand the contractions and remove apostrophes in between the words.

The Context behind Customer Data Lacks Generalization

Each customer interaction is unique, holding its own connotations and intents. As a result, marketing teams are under pressure to understand customer requests accurately.

Many businesses use generic Chatbots that use NLP techniques. Yet these Chatbots fail to convert potential customers, acquire them, and deliver precise, intelligent responses.

It is where NLP-powered Chatbots come into play.

• These bots can identify specific contexts and understand customers with different intents.
• Powered by Machine Learning, the bots can be trained to make better predictions that align with appropriate responses.
• NLP-powered Chatbots help in recognizing the essential parts of your customer’s responses.
• They match the intent in those messages with product lists and content feeds to offer better recommendations.

Identifying Context And Intent Will Increase Conversion Rates

Generalized natural language processing is helpful in generic contexts such as finding a location or checking the weather, etc. However, it will not be able to answer any specific queries made by customers.

• Domain-specific NLP is best suited for intelligent identification and learning how a customer of a particular brand enquiries.
• Every business has different customer intents and purchases records. Refined data is hard to find and analyze. There might not be a lot of examples of data for training the bot initially.
• Generic NLP solutions fall short of offering mechanized solutions that can automate point-to-point conversations with your consumers.
• Domain-specific NLP provides improved customer experience and marketing performance (good ROI).
• Advanced machine learning through the power of conversational intelligence techniques will help you in achieving a human-like approach.
• ML creates context and intent for the niche markets. These are categorized by examining each scenario and conversation.

Issues Faced By Marketers and Its Solutions

One of the primary concerns for many businesses and marketers while launching a marketing Chatbot is the absence of useful information or data. There is no data to start with, and even if there are some, it lacks variations. Therefore, it becomes difficult to develop a Chatbot that understands how the customer interacts.

Solutions — This is where Machine Learning comes to the rescue. ML helps with generating variations and offers a better solution.

• It offers a way out by classifying contexts and intents followed by creating more precise data in less time.
• ML techniques coupled with Domain-Specific NLP help in creating Intelligent Chatbots.
• A specific Machine Learning technique known as generative adversarial networks helps in achieving the objectives mentioned above.
• Automated systems based on ML are designed to train each other.
• It can take a brand’s limited data as input, predict over one million variants, and match it to the most appropriate responses.
• ML-NLP-based techniques generate useful information from a limited set of data in less time.

It means your chatbot will respond accurately with the best suggestions to your customers.

Advantages of NLP and ML Based Chatbots

• It reduces the false-positive rate due to accurate interpretation.
• Identifies failures in user input and offers a solution by resolving conflicts through statistical modeling.
• Uses comprehensive communication when dealing with user responses.
• Has the capability to learn faster and address the gaps observed while developing a solution.
• Achieve natural language capability through lesser training data inputs.
• Ability to reuse or re-purpose the input training data for learning in the future.
• It offers straightforward and straightforward corrective measures for false positives.

Not Just Limited To Retrieve Information

Chatbots built with NLP and ML are not limited to CRM (Customer Relationship Management). They also work with back-end systems of enterprises, such as application access, configuration management, service catalogs, workflow management, identity management, etc.

This leads to resolving service requests that require end-to-end integration of interconnected business workflows in a better way.

Using RPA (Robotic process automation) technology, you can troubleshoot email, unlock accounts, create strong and unique passwords, install antivirus software, use anonymous browsers, use two-factor authentication, reset passwords, manage what access your apps have, and resolve VPN connectivity issues.

Businesses are now recognizing the value of AI chatbots in automating processes. Several large companies are silently implementing such technologies globally.

Conclusion

NLP-ML-powered chatbots help improve your business processes and elevate customer experience to a higher level. When you automate the customer interaction process, you indirectly increase your chances of improving overall growth and productivity by manifold.

It provides advantages in terms of cutting-edge technologies that help survive in the competitive market; thus, saving time, effort, and costs that further guarantees customer satisfaction and better engagements in your business.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

---

Why Do You Need NLP and Machine Learning for Your Chatbot? was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Customer Experience expert, Dan Gingiss, says that you need to engage with your customers on the channels and platforms on which they are active. With 1.5 billion users across 180 countries, WhatsApp is a channel you can’t miss out on. Here’s how you need to leverage it.‍

Hint:Use a bot…a WhatsApp bot.‍

Why WhatsApp?

WhatsApp is now the Go-To messaging platform for most people. It’s come to the point where we’re sending 29 million messages every minute. That’s about 65 billion a day.

This means that people are now more comfortable using WhatsApp than any other platform. So, it makes much more sense for them to be able to interact with you over WhatsApp, rather than forcing them to download your app (let’s face it, we don’t have the storage space or the inclination to get another app).

And interacting with them on WhatsApp has another benefit. The engagement rates are through the roof. While you’d struggle to get a 15% open rate on your emails, WhatsApp messages have an engagement rate of around 70%.

WhatsApp does have certain strategic advantages in some countries. In India, for example, WhatsApp boasts a user base that’s 200 million strong.

‍

Great, but what would I use a WhatsApp chatbot for?

Glad you asked! Let’s say you launched a new product or offered a discount..basically, any major announcement. How do you plan on spreading the word to your customers?

Website announcements and social media posts can be effective, but not as much as WhatsApp.

1. WhatsApp Marketing

According to Harper Reed,
‍

If you get a WhatsApp message, you’re probably going to open it.‍

So, let’s address the question you have on your mind — “how do I use WhatsApp for marketing?”

Reminders

With WhatsApp, you can send your customers and prospects reminders about events, sales, etc.‍

Promotional offers

You can use WhatsApp to share discounts and other promotional offers with your customers. You can even personalize these offers to their preferences.‍

Broadcasts and campaign messages

You can use broadcasts to send a message to all your customers or a campaign message to target specific customer segments with WhatsApp automation.

WhatsApp would send your customers a notification whenever you broadcast an announcement to them. That’s much more effective than posting a simple announcement on social media or even your website. It’s a more powerful way to drive action.‍

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?

Conducting market research

WhatsApp empowers you to collect feedback from customers and understand their preferences. It’s much more effective than a survey form because it involves less effort.

Customers can just send their thoughts directly over WhatsApp without needing to fill a form over even navigate to another application.‍

Permission marketing

WhatsApp Marketing could very well be the gold standard for permission marketing.

Your bot cannot send messages to anyone who hasn’t opted into them. Additionally, WhatsApp bots can only send messages to users who have chatted with your bot recently. There are time limits in place here.

This means that every WhatsApp message you send is going to a user who has recently demonstrated interest in your business and offerings. You won’t just be spraying and praying.

It’s also more effective than emails because customers are more comfortable with WhatsApp. People might put off reading an email, but we humans are pretty much conditioned to read WhatsApp messages as soon as we get them.

It’s practically Pavlovian Conditioning for us to open a WhatsApp message as soon as we get the notification.‍

Analyzing campaign effectiveness

You can measure the effectiveness of your WhatsApp messages, with rich analytics, right on the Engati portal. Our dashboards give you all the insights you need to step up your WhatsApp Marketing efforts.

‍

‍Now, you can do some of these things over email as well. So you might be wondering why WhatsApp marketing is essential.

Firstly, it’s because 2 billion people use the app globally. And they love it. People use WhatsApp much more than they use email.

Your customers have associated email with work and stress. They look at WhatsApp as a quicker way of communicating.

Instead of replying with a well-crafted email, they just need to shoot a quick text written in short-hand. Essentially, WhatsApp feels more convenient.

This means results in people checking WhatsApp multiple times throughout the day and only looking at their emails once in a while.

But let’s go back to something we already discussed. WhatsApp Marketing is important because of the way we are conditioned towards WhatsApp notifications.

While we might simply swipe an email notification away from our phones, we are far more likely to open a WhatsApp notification and read the message.‍

2. Customer Support over WhatsApp

Here’s another reason why you need it. When your customers need help, they don’t want to waste time calling someone up or navigating through your website to find a ‘Contact Us’ section. They want to have their issues resolved in the simplest way possible. If they’re on WhatsApp, you need to be there too.‍

‍3. Driving sales via WhatsApp bots

Simplifying sales processes has always been linked to higher amounts of sales generated.

Your customers want you to make it easier for them to buy your offerings. They want to buy your offerings; you’re just making it to hard for them to do it.

And how better to simplify the sales process than to empower your customers to make purchases over WhatsApp?

All you need to do is display your catalog over the bot and integrate your chatbot with Stripe or another payment gateway. Then as soon as they select the product, they’ll be taken to the payment page.

Customers are rapidly shifting towards conversational commerce. That leaves you a choice — adopt it now or get left behind.‍

4. Order tracking on WhatsApp

As soon as a customer places an order over an e-commerce portal, there’s one thought that constantly plagues their mind — “Will it be delivered on time?”.

Sure, they could track their orders by visiting your website or downloading your mobile app. But that involves too much effort. Besides, who has space for yet another app on their phones?

They’re already using WhatsApp…why don’t you just send them shipping updates right there?

It eases their anxiety with minimum effort on their behalf and creates a better experience for them. But that’s not all.

The transparency that you provide by doing this will even increase their trust in your business.‍

So, do you need to build a WhatsApp chatbot?

Even if you think you’re a smaller business and could handle your clients without a whatsapp chatbot, you do need to realize that customers today, are spoilt. We want what we want when we want it. We don’t wait for anybody.

So, if you’re unable to interact with customers at odd hours, you could lose out on their business. Besides, your time would be better spent doing something more productive than answering questions mechanically.

With Engati Live Chat, your bot can handle all the routine, monotonous queries and send only the complicated queries to the human agent. Essentially, your employees get to spend their time on more productive tasks that require an advanced, human intellect.‍

Making it even better

Engati even helps you create your WhatsApp chatbot at an unbelievable price! We’re providing amazing capabilities, detailed analytics, and smooth customer experiences at the lowest price.

Reach your customers on a platform they love and take your business to the next level, with the help of your very own WhatsApp bot.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

---

4 powerful ways your business can benefit from WhatsApp marketing was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.