Category: Chat

  • Best 6 Chatbot Maker Platform to Build Your Chatbot

    An automated response machine is not just an imagination, or things only can be seen in science fiction movies. With so much advancement in artificial intelligence, automation has seen a hike in the past decade.

    Chatbots are examples of how powerful ai has become in personal as well as professional space. More and more brands and businesses are taking advantage of using a chatbot to use its potential working for them on autopilot. To put it in numbers, there are over 30,000 on Facebook.

    Businesses learning about chatbots and their potential to benefit their business, the chatbot building market is also expanding. For a business or brand, it has provided options, but the confusion of having too many options is also frustrating. So here we bring you 6 chatbot platforms to ease up and help you in the process of choosing the best option for you.

    1. Hubspot Chatbot Builder

    One of the biggest names in the digital marketing space “HubSpot” offers chatbot services as well. After acquiring motion AI in 2017, HubSpot provides chatbot builder services that a person can use for free without skill or knowledge of coding. HubSpot chatbot feature is integrated with its marketing tools. These tools include forms, analytics, popup, and email integration of your site.

    HubSpot has a free plan for its chatbot builder, but HubSpot also provides paid options with extra features. But the problem with HubSpot is that it provides too many options in its plans that go from $45 to $4000 per month with a choice of a custom bundle if someone wants more than that.

    2. Intercom

    Intercom describes itself as a Conversational Relationship Platform that allows you to create better customer relationships. Intercom is a powerful chatbot platform whose responses are based on user behavior and artificial intelligence. Intercom’s chatbot uses visitor browsing information data and automated tasks to provide more personalized interaction with their chatbot.

    The downside of intercom is that it doesn’t allow its visitors to explore its features or anything at all about it unless they have an account or create one. Even pricing information is not available on their website upfront. You can talk with the chatbot for your queries, but it can be confusing at first, and compared to other platforms in this list, the intercom is most confusing for a new user to even navigate in their website.

    3. Drift

    Drift is a chatbot builder primarily focused on B2B companies, and they call themselves the “The Drift Revenue Acceleration Platform.” It has built its name in the B2B sector as its preferable chatbot platform. Because it provides elements like

    • Capture email
    • Get the phone number of the user
    • Lookup articles in your helpdesk
    • Automatically create tickets
    • Route conversations to live chat
    • Automatically send emails to the user (if you have their email)
    • Schedule a meeting
    • Or go to a different node in your Drift playbook

    All these elements come in handy for a person working in the B2B sector. And its most highlighted feature is “scheduled meeting,” which automatically shows available dates for an interaction between two people. Drift also has its downs, like drift users often suffer from delays in messages, and Drift is also found unable to provide a rich media conversation between two people with photos, videos, attachments, etc.

    Trending Bot Articles:

    1. Chatbot Trends Report 2021

    2. 4 DO’s and 3 DON’Ts for Training a Chatbot NLP Model

    3. Concierge Bot: Handle Multiple Chatbots from One Chat Screen

    4. An expert system: Conversational AI Vs Chatbots

    4. ManyChat

    Manychat is considered the best option for social media messenger chatbots, such as Facebook Messenger. Most of the chatbot platform allows automated responses when a user enters the query. Still, the great thing about manychat is that it also allows sending automated messages which helps growth in the audience for the business in sales and marketing.

    Manychat allows a free option that only allows a user to use on Facebook Messenger. But its paid plans go from $10 per month to custom orders.

    5. LiveChat

    Live chat is an AI-based response chatbot building platform. As it goes by its name, live chat allows its users to use chatbots with automated responses side by side with live chat. In other words, live chat allows its users to use live chat and chatbot together to provide a balanced experience of AI and human touch.

    Live chat has proved itself to be capable of providing an excellent experience for customization analysis and administration functions. Live chat is mainly preferred for websites. Live chat pricing goes from $16 per month to $50 per month. Livechat also provides a custom order option, but it doesn’t have a free plan.

    6. Tidio

    Tidio is a chatbot platform that is a well-known option to embed in a website. Even if its expertise lies in websites, it could be a great option to be considered to be used in social media platforms like Facebook Messenger. Tidio provides a step-by-step setup for its first-time user to make the experience smooth and informative. The interface provided by Tidio is clean and minimalist, and Tidio chatbot builder uses a flow-based building of the chatbot.

    However, it also comes with its drawbacks. Tidio lacks the features of audio-video attachments and data validation. Tidio provides its plans from a free option to $18 per month for several plans that could be converted into $180 in annual plan plus two months free.

    Here is a comparison between Chatbot Platforms.

    Conclusion

    There are many options for a chatbot builder, and we hope that you know which is the best option for you. With the help of the above table, you might have a real representation of all the features that are available in all the best options available. Please let us know your thoughts on this, and best of luck with your exploration of your best option.

    Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !


    Best 6 Chatbot Maker Platform to Build Your Chatbot was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

  • How to Address Performance Gaps with Employees During Appraisals

    How to Address Performance Gaps with Employees During Appraisals

    The following will help you to address performance gaps with employees during appraisals. 

  • Best practices to build a dialog in Watson Assistant

    There are a lot of ways of doing something in Watson, so I have some questions about what is the best way of doing some things.

    • Entities with similar characteristics

    Say, for example, I have the entities @ice_cream_flavors and @popsicle_flavors. Both entities have strawberry, chocolate and grape as values (in reality, let’s say there are a lot more equal values between the two). Is it best to keep them as separate entities? Or create @flavors and keep all flavors there? If so, how would the input validation look like if someone wanted to order an ice cream with a flavor only available to popsicles?

    • Reset dialog whenever the user wants to

    If you want to have an option so the user can, at any time, stop the dialog, which in turn clear all context variables, what is the best way of doing so?

    • When to create a new node when using slots

    Say, for example, you sell colored shirts and shirts with a picture stamped at the front. Everything about the shirts is the same, except that, with the colored shirts, you ask for the color, and for the other you ask for the picture they want stamped. Is it better to create a node for each type of shirt or create conditional slots that check which type of shirt it is and ask the appropriate question?

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

  • New Crowdsourced Bot We are Launching – Need a few people to try out and give feedback

    We are looking for analytical minds that are interested in language and AI (prior knowledge not required)! We’re opening the first slots for a tool that automates customer support through completion of simple tasks and wanted to share with you all.
    Join us to grow a Conversational A.I. Specialist skill set and make cash for task work. Would also like feedback so we can improve the tool. Check out the link below if interested and want to apply.

    https://dashboard.directly.ai/apply?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=05252021_initial_recruitment

    submitted by /u/JT_Money_56
    [link] [comments]

  • How legal chatbot benefits law firms?

    Legal Chatbots — A solution to get ahead in a fast-changing legal environment

    AI-enabled chatbots are evolving rapidly and are creating unprecedented opportunities for law firms to optimize their work processes. Law firms are utilizing conversational AI tools majorly for streamlining and augmenting legal services offered to clients. However, Law firms are also deploying chatbots for simplifying monotonous internal tasks done by attorneys or partners. Deploying these AI-enabled chatbots is a smart and effective way to relieve the legal department from the tedious and time-consuming administrative tasks, allowing them to focus on billable tasks.

    Legal chatbots, being available 24/7, offer instant support to attorneys across channels and eliminates the need to call or email to support staff.

    Chatbots are enabling attorneys to ease the access to legal source materials from any device and at any moment of the day.

    Legal chatbot benefits for law firms

    Chatbots will continue to play a significant role in digitally transforming legal firms and enhancing overall business processes. These legal chatbots are helping law firms in different ways, which include the following.

    Automated processes:

    Chatbots and virtual assistants help lawyers in managing their daily routine tasks of scheduling meetings, processing titles, and other odd jobs, which were earlier done by junior attorneys. Chatbots provide law firms an opportunity to effectively use their resources and cut down the chances of errors.

    Generate and review legal documents:

    Chatbots have automated several in-house legal tasks that were earlier performed manually by lawyers. Chatbots help attorneys and partners to create the filled-out documents based on their data inputs. These chatbots are enabling lawyers to focus more on other complex issues, resulting in an enhanced pace of operations.

    Legal research:

    Chatbot provides lawyers an updated and revised laws as well as regulations to ease the research and maintain the necessary knowledge and skills. Attorneys and partners are leveraging chatbots to easily look for relevant documents while working on a particular case.

    Trending Bot Articles:

    1. Chatbot Trends Report 2021

    2. 4 DO’s and 3 DON’Ts for Training a Chatbot NLP Model

    3. Concierge Bot: Handle Multiple Chatbots from One Chat Screen

    4. An expert system: Conversational AI Vs Chatbots

    Due diligence purposes:

    Due diligence is one of the primary processes that an attorney needs to perform on behalf of their clients. It is often a tedious and time-consuming process where an attorney thoroughly assesses a legal situation and confirms facts and figures. Here AI-enabled chatbots can automate and speed up this process by conducting a comprehensive investigation. These chatbots can review hundreds of documents and ask numerous questions to unveil key information and produce a full report for attorneys.

    Time tracking:

    A chatbot gathers all the information from attorneys to fill up timesheets and create comprehensive reports. These reports are further used by account teams for billing purposes. Chatbots eliminate the inaccuracy in billable hours and allow attorneys to calculate the effort being spent on each client for estimating the potential future efforts.

    A robust, secure, and incredibly intelligent platform for creating chatbots

    Legal chatbot KLoBot

    KLoBot — Offering partners and attorneys great value

    KLoBot is enabling law firms to create a new legal culture that is data-driven, customer-centric, process-oriented, collaborative, and transparent. Chatbots built on the KLoBot platform empower law firms to streamline the internal processes and upgrade the attorneys, partners, and associates experiences. These chatbots act as a personal assistant for attorneys to easily lookup for a client- and matter-related information.

    KLoBot-enabled legal chatbots can identify and analyze the complex issues, which need human support. With KLoBot live agent handoff capabilities, chatbots can seamlessly transfer those complex queries to live support agents. The transition from chatbot to human agent helps attorneys to get accurate and in-depth responses.

    Law Firm chatbot

    Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !


    How legal chatbot benefits law firms? was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

  • Create WhatsApp Chatbot

    Since you’re here, it means that you have understood that you need to engage your customers over the channel they are most comfortable using. Kudos to you!

    You know that your customers are rather active over WhatsApp. Now, you have two questions on your mind.

    • Can you engage customers over WhatsApp manually, or do you need a chatbot?
    • How do you create a chatbot on WhatsApp?

    Well, we’ve got all the answers you are looking for.

    We’re going to help you decide whether you need a WhatsApp chatbot, then show you exactly how to build a bot, and walk you through all the steps involved in deploying it on WhatsApp.

    Grab on to your seats. We’re getting started!

    Why create your own WhatsApp chatbot?

    If you have a very small clientele, you might be able to survive by manually responding to each message. But as your business grows, that will become harder.

    However, even if you have a limited customer base, there is still one major problem with manually answering every question — a lack of speed.

    Your customers will have to wait for you to get around to answering their questions. This means that more often than not, they won’t get an answer when they want it. That’s never a good idea.

    If you’re into eCommerce or retail, that puts you in a more challenging position. 53% of online shoppers abandon their carts for lack of instant answers.

    So, if you’re interested in having satisfied customers and protecting your carts from abandonment, you should create a WhatsApp chatbot.

    How to create a WhatsApp chatbot in 2021 (at a glance)

    • Building a chatbot
    • Requirements
    • Setup
    • Configuring WhatsApp
    • Test it

    Trending Bot Articles:

    1. Chatbot Trends Report 2021

    2. 4 DO’s and 3 DON’Ts for Training a Chatbot NLP Model

    3. Concierge Bot: Handle Multiple Chatbots from One Chat Screen

    4. An expert system: Conversational AI Vs Chatbots

    Time to create your very own WhatsApp chatbot

    1. Building a chatbot

    When it comes to creating a chatbot, you’ve got two choices.

    • Code it
    • Use a powerful, no-code chatbot platform (hint, this is the better choice)

    Building it with a no-code chatbot platform like Engati is definitely the wiser choice. After all, why would you make the effort to painstakingly code a WhatsApp chatbot when you can build it visually?

    Engati can help you get your bot up and running and start delighting your customers much faster than if you chose to code it yourself.

    Also, Engati gives you in-depth analytics about your conversations with customers, helping you measure the effectiveness of your WhatsApp messages.

    WhatsApp chatbot analytics dashboard

    Core components of a chatbot

    Every chatbot you build has a few core building components.

    • FAQs: FAQs are the set of query variations along with the appropriate response.
    • Paths: Engati lets you easily create your WhatsApp chatbot with paths using a drag and drop UI.
    • Intents and entities: You can even create FAQs with intents to handle specific system entities like dates and locations. They can even handle custom entities.
    • Synonyms and stopwords: Your Engati chatbots even have the ability to handle synonyms and allow you to configure and manage stopwords.

    Components of a chatbot‍

    Bonus: You can even automate the training of your bot with the help of our DocuSense technology. It can parse through the documents you upload and assimilate 12 pages of data every 8 seconds.

    We’ve even embedded a video at the bottom of this article, showing you how to create a chatbot and deploy it on WhatsApp. It’s going to take you step-by-step through the process.‍

    2. Requirements to deploy chatbots on WhatsApp

    After you create your bot, there are a few things you need to deploy on WhatsApp. First, you need to have access to WhatsApp Business APIs. WhatsApp grants access to these APIs themselves through their partners. You’ll also need a verified business on Facebook.

    You also need to register a phone number as your WhatsApp Business phone number. WhatsApp will call this number up to activate it, so you need to make sure that the number can receive calls from the USA.‍

    3. Setup

    In the Engati portal, navigate to the Deploy tab and select WhatsApp. Now you’d want to choose your provider from the drop-down menu.‍

    Choosing a provider to deploy your WhatsApp chatbot‍

    Now, you’re going to have to update a few fields:

    • Phone Number
    • API key
    • SID
    • Client URL‍

    WhatsApp chatbot setup fields‍

    4. Configuring WhatsApp

    You’d want to log into your WhatsApp provider account. Now, you need to navigate to the ‘channels’ tab in the menu.

    In channels, click on the WhatsApp manager and select the Configurations tab.

    Open the Configurations tabs

    Copy your registered and approved WhatsApp Business phone number and paste it into the phone number field. Make sure to add the country code without any spaces or a ‘+’ sign.‍

    Enter your WhatsApp Business phone number‍

    Engati will have provided you with a URL. Paste that in the URL section in the Configurations tab.

    Paste the URL provided by Engati

    In the Developers section, hit the Generate API Key button.

    Generate your API Key‍

    After Naming and saving the new API Key, copy it, along with the SID, and paste both of them in the Engati Portal.‍

    Paste your SID and API key in the Engati portal‍

    Now, take the SID generated from your provider account and paste it into this URL:
    https://api.kaleyra.io/v1/<sid>/messages </sid>

    That will give you your Client URL. Paste it along with your API Key and SID in the Engati portal.‍

    Paste your Client URL in the Engati portal

    ‍5. Test it

    Now that you’ve entered all your details, you’re ready to test the Engati chatbot that you created on WhatsApp.

    Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’ve learned how to create your WhatsApp bot. Now, the question in your mind is, ‘Can I integrate my WhatsApp bot into my website?’

    Don’t worry. We are going to show you how to do that too.‍

    How to add a WhatsApp button to your website

    First off, you’ll need to add a div with the button ID.

    <! — Div where the WhatsApp will be rendered →

    <div id=”WAButton”></div>

    Now, you will need to add a script block on that div.

    <script type=”text/javascript”>

    $(function () {

    $(‘#WAButton’).floatingWhatsApp({

    phone: ‘WHATSAPP-PHONE-NUMBER’, //WhatsApp Business phone number

    headerTitle: ‘Chat with us on WhatsApp!’, //Popup Title

    popupMessage: ‘Hello, how can we help you?’, //Popup Message

    showPopup: true, //Enables popup display

    buttonImage: ‘<img src=”whatsapp.svg” />’, //Button Image

    //headerColor: ‘crimson’, //Custom header color

    //backgroundColor: ‘crimson’, //Custom background button color

    position: “right” //Position: left | right

    });

    });

    </script>

    ‍Sounds easy, right? It’s even easier than it appears! Register and create your own WhatsApp bot today!

    ‍Examples of powerful WhatsApp chatbots

    1. Larsen & Toubro

    Larsen & Toubro (L&T) needed a solution to engage their workforce of 3,30,000 employees across sites, answer all their questions, and receive progress updates from them.

    They deployed an intelligent chatbot operating in English and Hindi over WhatsApp and Telegram.

    It facilitates communication between employees working at their various construction sites and off-site project managers. By sending questions to the workers and collecting their responses, the bot has reduced the time spent on daily reporting.

    It has even simplified the process of tracking progress across multiple projects for the project managers.‍

    2. Poppy’s

    Poppy’s is another major retailer that opted to use a WhatsApp chatbot with Engati Live Chat. This power-packed combination of automation and the human touch ensured that customers get all their questions answered instantly, irrespective of complexity!

    Their bot can pull information about all their products and share it with customers in both English and Spanish.

    Since catalogs are constantly changing, training the bot manually would not make sense. Poppy did not want to upload FAQs about every single product manually.

    That’s why they opted to use DocuSense. Our document technology uses cognitive search to parse their documents and answer customer questions based on the information in them.

    The result? Customers get answers to all their questions, while Poppy’s team does not need to spend time manually training their bot!‍

    2. Mall of the Emirates

    Mall of the Emirates uses Engati to provide customer support and run its loyalty program. They use an intelligent WhatsApp chatbot, and with Engati Live Chat, to give their patrons a fantastic experience.

    Their WhatsApp bot uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to pull details from receipts uploaded by guests. So, all they need to do is send their receipts to the bot, and their loyalty points are automatically allocated without human intervention.‍

    FAQs

    1. What are the prerequisites for building a chatbot on WhatsApp?

    To deploy a chatbot on WhatsApp, all you need is a verified business on Facebook, a registered WhatsApp business phone number, and an official WhatsApp Business API (which Engati helps you get).

    ‍2. How do I enable a WhatsApp bot?

    After building your chatbot on the Engati portal, navigate to the ‘Deploy’ section and click on WhatsApp. Now you’ll need to select a provider and update a few fields, including your phone number, API key, SID, and Client URL. You can find a comprehensive explanation in the developer docs.‍

    3. What are session and template messages in WhatsApp?

    Session messages are messages sent within 24 hours of a user-initiated conversation. If you wish to initiate a conversation with customers after that window of time has expired, you would need to send them a predefined template message. To limit spam, WhatsApp controls the approval of the templates and charges for these messages.‍

    4. How do I send broadcasts over WhatsApp chatbot?

    You can use broadcasts to send plain text messages, messages with options, and even take users through paths. We even allow you to schedule your broadcasts and target them to specific segments of your users. To broadcast messages on WhatsApp outside the 24-hour window, you will need to use a template message.‍

    5. How do I get access to WhatsApp APIs?

    WhatsApp distributes WhatsApp Business APIs through its partners. When you build a WhatsApp chatbot on our platform, Engati will help you get access to these APIs.‍

    6. Is it free to build a WhatsApp chatbot?

    Since WhatsApp does not allow advertisements to be run on their platform, they earn revenue by charging for the use of their WhatsApp APIs. So, while it is not free to deploy a chatbot on WhatsApp, through our partnerships with WhatsApp API providers, Engati can help you do that at a competitive price.

    Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !


    Create WhatsApp Chatbot was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

  • Why are AI voicebots better than IVR

    Man with glasses making a phone call
    Communication by voice is the most natural way of communication (source: unsplash.com)

    And how voicebots make calling contact centres valid again

    Gone are the days when a call to a company helpdesk provided you with direct contact with an operator or other live employee. Their places in companies’ contact and call centers are now occupied by technological solutions that save companies costs and staff capacity. With such a phone call, you will most often encounter the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system today. Or, if you are more fortunate, a quicker and friendlier AI voicebot. But what are its benefits, and why you don’t have to worry about talking to artificial intelligence?

    Is it a robot, or is it a person?

    But what exactly is a smart voicebot? It is a solution that uses artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning technologies to communicate with the customer similarly to a human operator. Voicebots are similar to their more well-known relatives — chatbots. The most significant difference is that instead of written text it communicates in the form of sound, i.e. the human voice. Large call centers and helpdesks can no longer exist without it or IVR.

    Voicebots are on duty 24 hours a day and can independently deal with various tasks, gradually increasing the capacity of contact centers. Thanks to their capabilities, which are constantly improved, voicebots have received a lot of attention lately and are used in various companies globally. Both global corporations and startups — such as the Czech company Born Digital — are involved in its development.

    Green toy robot on the couch with other toys
    Sometimes you may not even recognize who you are talking to (source: unsplash.com)

    Older and slower sibling named IVR

    The biggest competitor, as well as a solution that is often mistaken with voicebots, are IVR machines. But they are slower and commonly less interactive and user-friendly. Communication with such an automaton takes place by voice too, but rather than a conversation, it is a voice-controlled passage through a prepared network of options.

    “It is the unattractiveness of IVR, that turned the focus towards text and chatbots. But with the advent of intelligent assistants like Alexa or Siri, people have regained their desire to communicate by voice. And just at that moment came the time of AI voicebots,” says Born Digital PR manager Marek Hadrbolec.

    The following lines show how these solutions are more capable than IVR and how they improve communication not only for companies but especially for people.

    Old and new airplane flying next to each other
    The speed of AI chatbot and IVR is very different (source: unsplash.com)

    The differences are obvious

    Imagine, for example, that your internet does not work at home. If you call technical support and your provider uses IVR, the conversation will look like this. First, you get to choose from several reasons why you’re calling, none of which are likely to be appropriate for your problem. Once you select one of the options, a slow, robotic voice will give you a couple of other options to refine your request. To choose one again you have to, for example, press a number key.

    Trending Bot Articles:

    1. Chatbot Trends Report 2021

    2. 4 DO’s and 3 DON’Ts for Training a Chatbot NLP Model

    3. Concierge Bot: Handle Multiple Chatbots from One Chat Screen

    4. An expert system: Conversational AI Vs Chatbots

    Then the IVR will transfer you to the operator. After the annoying melody is over and the operator picks up the phone, you describe in your own words what trouble you have, after which the operator apologizes with the words that he will connect you to the right person. Another wait accompanied by an irritating melody, and only then the opportunity to finally solve your problem. At that moment, however, you do not have much patience left.

    Yellow toy robot watching sunses in nature
    The result may seem really far away while talking to an IVR (source: unsplash.com)

    If your ISP has invested in an AI voicebot, the whole call will be completely different. First, the system introduces itself to you in a pleasant, almost human voice and asks about your problem.

    “You do not choose from the preset options, but you describe what technical difficulties you face in your own words. A properly developed voicebot will understand your speech and transform it into meaningful information about your situation,” explains Born Digital director Tomáš Malovec.

    The next step will probably be for the voicebot to suggest one of the solutions that it evaluates as accurate and give you instructions on how to apply it. If his suggestion doesn’t help, the voicebot can provide another. If the fundamental solutions are not working, and the technology gets into trouble, it does not force you to repeat the tasks or prolong the call. Instead, it redirects you to an experienced operator who will be competent to solve your problem. So you don’t have to worry about further switching.

    Three man on roller skates racing
    The results of this competition are obvious (source: unsplash.com)

    The winner takes it all

    Now it is clear why AI voicebots revive customers lost confidence in voice communication. The main reason is that the voicebot, just like a skilled human operator, adapts to your language, while the IVR cannot adapt this way. Voicebots are not alive, but they still deliver natural conversation, which is interactive and straightforward. Thanks to this, it is much easier to reach the core of the problem. Compared to IVR, voicebots are also much more independent and able to solve problems on their own or even learning to solve new ones.

    “The bots often collect anonymized data about the conversation flow. With these rich sources of information, it is easy to improve their conversation system to be even more productive,” adds Hadrbolec.

    Voicebots defeat IVR even in difficult situations. Thanks to understanding your problem in more detail, it will much more likely connect you to the right operator. So if your call is answered by a voicebot, don’t worry. The worst thing that can happen is that after a short period of uncertainty, you end up in the hands of an experienced human operator who will solve your problems.

    Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !


    Why are AI voicebots better than IVR was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.