Category: Chat

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A quick summary of 7 important DO’s and DON’Ts when training an NLP model for a chatbot. They are best applied before starting a project, but can also help to build a mindset for quality training data in all chatbot project phases.

DO’s and DON’Ts

✅DO: think in problem space, not in solution space

Users typically think in problem space, not in solution space, and so should you. As a quick example, consider the case of a user who ordered a shirt in an online shop and wants to know when it is expected to arrive. Consider this question:

• when will my shirt arrive

This is a question from problem space, describing the problem the user wants to be solved, while these are from solution space:

• what is the estimated shipping time
• show me the order status

They are describing how your business will react to the problem.

Benefit: the chatbot and the users speak the same language

❌DON’T: overload your intents with too many problems

As rule-of-thumb, your intents should handle at most 3–6 user problems as described above. For each problem you should provide at least 3 user examples. Put your focus on the essence of the intent — the solution your chatbot can provide for your users.

Benefit 1: content stays maintainable and focused

Benefit 2: separation of concerns makes dialog building straight forward

✅DO: clear separation of intents vs entities

To our surprise it is still a very common pattern to intermix the concepts of intents and entities, and we strongly suggest to stop doing it. Consider a real-life example of a fashion store which has trained an NLP model with the 3 intents

• order_tshirt
• order_pants
• order_socks

In this case there is room for exactly 1 intent (order) and 3 entities (shirt, pants, socks). Data scientists training the NLP model maybe won’t notice a real difference, but your developers will be grateful when coding dialog flow and fulfillment based on the NLP model output.

Benefit: maintainable and clearly defined NLP model output

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❌DON’T: repeat sentence patterns in training data

When thinking about the question how much training data is sufficient ? you have the resist the general answer the more the better. Having training examples following the same patterns like

• order me a shirt
• order me some shirts
• order me shirts

in best case don’t help your NLP model in classification and will in worst case even have negative effect by overfitting your NLP model (but to be honest, when using a state-of-the-art pre-trained NLP model this is usually prevented out-of-the-box).

Benefit: keeps your training data small and focused

✅ DO: vary sentence structure and key terms

Instead of repeating same patterns you absolutely should vary the sentence structure for teaching the NLP model different ways of a user expressing the problem — here are some good training examples:

• order me a shirt
• need a new shirt
• dress me up with a fancy new shirt

Depending on the domain it may even make sense to use a thesaurus, but — IMPORTANT — only on entity and key term level: everything else a state-of-the-art NLP model will learn itself. A special thing to consider here are country-specific variations.

Benefit: makes classification robust for variations

❌DON’T: train the model with misspelled data (but prepare for it)

This is one is obvious — especially for entity resolution some kind of spellchecking not only in training but also on live inference is a must. But also for intent classification the NLP model will in worst case learn rubbish.

Benefit: makes classification robust for real user input

✅DO: edit and use real user input as training data

While you shouldn’t blindly copy&paste real user input to your training data, it is without any doubt the most valueable source of training data and future improvements of your chatbot’s understanding. As long as unsupervised learning for NLP tasks is still in it’s infancy, having some kind of manual interception and editing process in place is a must to establish continuous learning.

Benefit: improves the quality of your NLP model with each interaction

Action Plan

You can find information about how Botium can help in our Wiki and in our Blog:

• NLP Quality Metrics
• Test Set Insights
• Confusion Matrix and Embeddings
• Articles about NLU/NLP in our Wiki

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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4 DO’s and 3 DON’Ts for Training a Chatbot NLP Model was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In many homes today, scenes from futuristic movies are playing out: A child enters a room and asks for a weather update, to turn on the TV, or to call Mom. Like magic, it happens. But that ‘magic’ is actually made possible by voice assistant software and conversational artificial intelligence, which are at the core of virtual assistants.

In the U.S., voice assistants include Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, Samsung’s Bixby, and the Google Assistant. According to Statista, 51 percent of U.S. broadband households own smart speakers with these voice assistants.

Coaching Institutes are a big part of the learning experience for a student. The idea is to make learning fun rather than a task, which we think can be achieved through a voice assistant.

A fun way of learning is through a game format. Voice assistants can act as a ‘Quiz show host’. It can be highly interactive and immersive.

Mock tests are a perfect way of revising what you have already learned, identifying weak points, etc. A quiz-style mock test can ask specific questions about a student’s choice of subject. This can be extended to the voice assistant informing the user how much they have scored and how well did they fare against others.

The main idea is to help the student learn about a subject matter. One way of doing this is by following up with explanations whenever they answer a question incorrectly. This can act as a brilliant alternative to traditional learning.

Competition tends to be a great incentiviser. A score based leaderboard where the student will not only try to finish at the top but also increase their chances of doing well in the examinations.

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1. How Chatbots and Email Marketing Integration Can Help Your Business

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The questions should not only be limited to what is expected to be in the exams. The voice assistant can act as a knowledge hub for students who may have questions, which may or may not relate to the subject matter.

Most competitive exams nowadays are time-based. The voice assistant can be used to train students to better manage their time and to boost the user’s answering speed.

The analysis is an important part to measure if the user is actually making progress. The voice assistant can help give a fair analysis to the user as to which areas they need to improve on and which areas are their strong points.

Another use case could be Lead generation of potential students who would be interested in joining the institutes’ courses. The institutes can provide additional information to students only after the users provide contact information.

Every user is not the same, for example, one may be inclined more towards medieval history and the other towards modern history. By using a custom algorithm the voice assistant can identify the strong and weak points of a student which could then be used to offer customized learning solutions according to their level.

The students will also have the option to stay updated about the upcoming exams, projects which may be due and check up on their scores without any hassle.

Flash briefings can help institutes to provide regular content on a subject matter without delays.

“There’s no denying that voice assistants and conversational AI are playing an increasingly important role in our personal lives and will soon find their way into other areas, including education. Educators can either sit back and watch this play out or become active in how it will impact student learning. By speaking into the space of voice technology, educators can ensure it is adapted for the educational realm. To quote a meaningful bumper sticker, educators need to ‘be a voice, not an echo.’”

If you are looking to build any kind of conversation apps that works through Voice and Chat, please feel free to drop us an email at contact@voxogenic.com

We have expertise in designing and developing Voice applications on Amazon Alexa & Google Home and Chatbots for platforms such as Website, Mobile Apps, Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Line, Skype, and many more.

To know more about us you can visit https://www.voxogenic.com

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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Voice Assistant Use Case for Education, Schools & Coaching Institutes was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In most cases, chatbots can be used to give basic lectures. The objective is that chatbots can serve as virtual advisors and that in the process they adapt to the abilities of the students. In other words, they adapt to their learning pace.

Students are no more receptive to traditional learning. They are constantly finding interactive ways to communicate & acquire knowledge.

Chatbot has constantly been delivering interactive learning to the students.

37% of students use a educational chatbot to get a quick answer!

However, newbie educators are a bit skeptical about chatbots favoring them. The reason being a lack of empathy, words of encouragement, and understanding, which are still missing in this technology.

For example, this:

• Will the chatbot reply adequately when a learner asks a long question?
• How many chats does a bot need to collect to deliver a good human response?

So, how do educators justify themselves amidst such competition? How do they satisfy the accelerating need of students for interactive learning if they are skeptical about this technology?

Let’s figure out in the article below:

Chatbots in Education Business — An Interactive Tool

The education industry is constantly evolving (especially after the COVID-19 aftermath). The conversational design with AI delivers an effective communication path for students. Chatbot designs are being reformed to fit modern learning demands.

Students prefer modern ways to learn and absorb information. Also, they want a personalized learning environment. Chatbots help students experience innovation in education. It helps the system detect whether students are adapting to learning material or not too.

In fact, learners can easily try their hands on innovative activities, which were barely available in schools.

AI-powered voice bots & chatbots keep learners engaged. It even reduces the administrative load while facilitating the teaching process.

In short, this artificially intelligent conversational tool is designed to boost student association & interaction.

Isn’t that interesting? It is. What’s more interesting is how this tool works for the education system.

Want to know how? Let’s see!

Chatbots in Education Business — The Influence

The education industry is definitely influenced by chatbots, here’s how:

1. Tutoring was Never So Easy

‘Intelligent Tutoring Systems’ is the best thing in the education industry today. It delivers the much-needed personalized learning experience today. Techniques, including analyzing responses and observing student’s progress leads to more personalized learning.

For example, educators use chatbots to break lecture sessions into chains of messages to simplify chat conversation.

Chatbots even assess the understanding level of students, also how well they progress. Teaching was never so easy, as it has become with technologies like chatbots.

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1. How Chatbots and Email Marketing Integration Can Help Your Business

2. Why Chatbots could be the next big thing for SMEs

3. My Journey into Conversation Design

4. Practical NLP for language learning

2. Effective Student Engagement

Students prefer social media channels to communicate, research topics, and find apt solutions in their assignments. Hence, learning is not limited to classrooms.

Just imagine using a messaging platform (somewhat like social media) that connects students and teachers for:

• Discussions
• Assignment sharing
• Messaging
• Sharing information

Chatbot makes all this possible.

Students can save hours to find information about lectures and assignments and other important events. They can even create alumni groups and activity clubs for sharing information with each other.

3. Prompt Assistance to Learners

Students have information at their fingertips nowadays. Chatbots enable learners to receive all information almost instantly. It demands educational institutions to be on their toes all the time. Why? Because of the growing demand of learners for effective communication.

Chatbots in the education business simplifies communication between tutors and learners. It automates time-consuming tasks. It even lets educators promptly assist learners.

4. Simple Access to Information

Education bots simplify information sharing between the learners and teachers. It helps build a stronger presence online.

Learners can visit your website, ask any query (related to your institute), and get the answer instantly. That’s how chatbots allow learners to access information instantly.

Access to the right information is important in the education business. Students must get appropriate knowledge and material for proper learning. Chatbots help them reach the right audience, the right information, at the right time. That’s even faster than people reaching out to administrators for the solutions.

Chatbots save time, automates repetitive tasks, and offer answers to queries almost instantly.

Why are Chatbots for the Education Industry Important?

The chatbots in the education business were overshadowed in the beginning. However, administrators and tutors understand its value now. Chatbot engages students and streamlines processes more efficiently.

A chatbot is a Channel for Learning

An intelligent tutoring system offers a dedicated learning environment to study. Students feel motivated in such an environment, dedicate more hours to study, and interact with like-minded people.

AI chatbots teach learners via a series of messages and consistent conversations made out of learning lecture material.

Chatbots analyze every piece of information, assess a student’s understanding level, and deliver lectures considering their personalized needs.

Custom solutions can come in form of:

• Audio content
• Interactive videos
• Document files
• Attractive Images
• Quizzes
• Test Assignments
• Text Messaging
• Video conferencing, and more

Educators can analyze, monitor, and compare the student’s performance anytime and anywhere to deliver highly customized learning solutions to students.

Spaced Interval Learning

Now, let’s suppose you designed an online learning course for a certain group of people. Learners, here are those who manage their home and work. So, in a quick attempt to pass the course, they just try to complete the course somehow, receive the credits hours, and pass it.

Spaced learning breaks lengthy courses into small modules. It helps learners remember what’s taught in the course.

Using spaced interval learning, learners memorize courses for a longer time. Hence, enhanced learning experience for learners.

Proctoring

The online education system comes with its own pros and cons. For some students, it is an interactive and engaging way of learning. But others don’t even hesitate to earn points dishonestly too. That happens especially during distance learning.

AI online proctoring space controls such frauds during the exams. Students can no longer attempt any fraud when giving exams. They have to earn points the right way. Thanks to Chatbots proctoring.

Test Scoring

Chatbots help tutors automate tests and answer-checking. It instantly converts results into points. Also, teachers no longer need to worry about plagiarism and grammar. The chatbot does that as well. It fixes grammatical errors, typos, images reuse, and lack of adequate referencing.

The Final Words

AI Chatbots in cooperation with the education business gives us a more customized, easy, and interactive learning experience.

Today, chatbots are available for different groups:

• Chatbot for Tutors
• Chatbot for Students
• Chatbots for Schools
• Chatbot for Higher education

Modern chatbots are designed to conduct highly complicated chores. However, all that needs is good coding. Bots are built to answer specific answers. Hence, it depends on users’ search what outcomes they will acquire.

When choosing bots for your institution, pick one that connects to several communication channels at once. For instance, it must allow login from social media channels (because students are mostly there).

Chatbots are the future of the education industry. Let’s make the most of it now to reap benefits in the future.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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Why is Education Industry Opting for AI Chatbots? 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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Voice Assistants Use Case — Automobile Dealership

Alexa!

Hey Siri!

Hey Google!

If those audible prompts aren’t something you regularly use to search, shop, and interact online, you are about to be in the minority. By 2021, it has been forecasted that 60% of all online searches will be performed via voice search.

That may be a daunting stat if you don’t already have an SEO strategy for your automotive dealership that takes voice search into consideration. Luckily, you have some time — only around 30–40% of searches are currently conducted by voice. Consumers are regularly searching for local businesses via voice search. In fact, 58% of consumers have used voice search to find a local business within the last year. And 46% of voice search users look for local businesses on a daily basis.

Customers will be able to ask for information related to any car model and they will be given the answer in a quick and efficient manner. Using Alexa and Google Home users will be able to book a test drive at their nearest showroom with just a few commands. Users can get post-sales support like booking a service appointment or make an inquiry regarding the availability of spare parts.

Customers can ask the assistant to book a test drive of the car of their choice at the desired showroom location and time.

Customers can book a service appointment at the service station of their choice in just a few steps.

Trending Bot Articles:

1. How Chatbots and Email Marketing Integration Can Help Your Business

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3. My Journey into Conversation Design

4. Practical NLP for language learning

Customers can locate the nearest dealer from their house and get details via SMS or email.

Customers can check for space parts, accessory prices, and availability at their nearest dealership.

Customers can ask for vital information like insurance expiry, next service date, etc., and can also get reminders for the same where Alexa will prompt the user about it few days before the expiry date.

A smart assistant can help customers choose a car by asking them a series of questions and then recommend a car based on their preference.

“Hey Google — What Color Does the 2019 Honda Accord Come In?”

As a quick example, the search ‘What color does the 2019 Honda Accord come in?’ has a featured snippet for Howdy Honda on Google. If you asked the Google Assistant, it would read off what that result says under the snippet itself by starting ‘According to Howdy Honda…’ The same can be said for Bing results with the Alexa, and so on.

The brand equity and search relevance for Honda-related terms skyrockets for a given dealership from this kind of result. That kind of ‘Google-approved’ spoken advertising proves that Google trusted the content on that page at that dealership enough to reward it as the answer of choice.

Catch up to the customer trend to stay live in your business. If you are still confused or willing to have more knowledge on the use cases/applicability of voice assistants in the Automobile Dealership space, talk to us on Voxogenic.com for a free consultation.

If you are looking to build any kind of conversation apps that works through Voice and Chat, please feel free to drop us an email at contact@voxogenic.com

We have expertise in designing and developing Voice applications on Amazon Alexa & Google Home and Chatbots for platforms such as Website, Mobile Apps, Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Line, Skype, and many more.

To know more about us you can visit https://www.voxogenic.com

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Voice Assistants Use Case — Automobile Dealership was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.