Automation has consistently been one of the fastest-growing fields in the past decade and also one of the most influential trends. It has been continuously expanding into increasingly complex areas of business operations such as finance and compliance. In the past few years, automation has also become a part of customer relations and management with the help of a technology called conversational AI — the latter proving its importance during the pandemic.

In 2020, with companies being short-staffed globally, automation helped bring productivity and operations closer to 2019 levels but it wasn’t just process automation on its own, conversational AI played a key role as well, both internally and externally. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at conversational AI’s impact last year and its influence going forward.

What is Conversational AI?

In order to fully understand conversational AI, there are three broad concepts that we must know as well: artificial intelligence, automation, and computer speech. Speech is arguably the easiest concept to grasp — it’s teaching computers how we speak. Computers only speak in zeros and ones, we don’t. Developers and scientists have been trying to bridge this gap by making computer speech more natural with the most progress being made recently with automation and artificial intelligence becoming a part of conversational tech.

Each of these technologies add more capabilities to conversational tech. For instance, AI enables the computer to process exponentially more data faster and significantly refine its speech. Furthermore, with machine learning, computers can “evolve” and learn by making mistakes, although it’s too complex to explain in this article.

Likewise, automation allows the conversational tech to be integrated into complex workflows and be very useful in various areas including customer service, internal messaging systems, business intelligence (BI), analytics, etc.

In essence, it’s a technology that gives computers the ability to not only comprehend natural speech but also derive commands and take appropriate action without any direct input from the user.

Conversational AI Against Global Challenges

One of the most dominant themes of this global health crisis has been limiting human contact. In an ideal world, this would mean that businesses would pivot to operating by putting employees in contact with consumers. However, in the real world, this wasn’t possible due to the heavy reliance on the human workforce.

However, some businesses used this challenge to put conversational AI to its biggest test — replacing human capital, albeit temporarily. From mobile AI assistants that allowed customers to check store inventory without visiting the store to health chatbots that enabled users to self-diagnose and take proactive health measures, a lot of chatbots were deployed last year to continue serving customers without exposing anyone to risk.

At the same time, the extended lockdowns and travel restrictions meant consumers spent over 50% more time on messaging services such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. This also became an opportunity to put conversational AI through its paces. Businesses built applications for messaging platforms and social media platforms to bring important services closer to their fingertips. From placing grocery orders on Facebook Messenger to browsing shopping catalogs on Instagram.

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4. An expert system: Conversational AI Vs Chatbots

Examples of Modern Implementations of Conversational AI during COVID-19

As you may imagine, the ability to not only parse documents and messages but to also take autonomous action has tremendous value to any business — it’s taking automation to a whole new level. On top of this, because the technology is rather open-ended and the implementation-dependent on the business itself, possibilities are virtually limitless. That said, the use of conversational tech is, for now, most concentrated in a few key business areas including customer service and engagement, business intelligence, and sales.

We’ll take a look closer look at examples of conversational AI in these areas but before, let’s answer the important question of how conversational AI is actually implemented. Since this technology is most useful when users are able to “talk” to it directly, one of the most popular implementations of conversational AI is a chatbot. A chatbot is an umbrella term covering different types of bots but the ones we’re interested in are usually referred to as AI chatbots. Chatbots aren’t new and have existed for well over a decade but with new technologies like natural-language-processing (NLP), developers are able to infuse artificial intelligence to make chatbots far more capable. At the same time, almost all major social media and messaging platforms have chatbot support.

Let’s now take a closer look at some of the most popular examples of conversational AI implementations:

Customer Engagement Bots

Today, you can find more than a handful of companies selling the same product/service at the same price. With so little product differentiation, customers have begun basing their buying decision on customer service. In fact, according to Microsoft, customer service expectations for more than half (54%) of consumers have increased globally.

Customer service/engagement bots are thus built with one purpose — to open up a two-way communication channel that offers consumers a unique and valuable shopping experience. Customer service bots are most commonly known for providing business/product-related information in a question-answer format but there have been some very creative implementations of customer bots as well.

Take, Nike’s Stylebot for example. It’s an AI chatbot that helps customers find, personalize, and even create their own shoe designs. Although customers could buy shoes using the bot as well, its main purpose was to engage with the customers and it did that very well — achieving a click-through rate (CTR) 12.5 times more than Nike’s average CTR and also 4 times the conversions.

Business Intelligence Bots

Business intelligence is a field bringing together analytics, big data, and data visualization to help decision-makers gain visibility inside and outside their company. Most companies deploy dozens of BI tools ranging from relatively simple (GSuite) to custom-built platforms. However, most of these BI tools lack integration which means deriving insights from the data in different tools is still time-consuming and manual.

BI bots use conversational tech and artificial intelligence to trigger complex automated workflows and interpret commands from normal speech and text. For instance, with just a simple text-based message, BI bots can autonomously:

• track and send live updates about lockdowns, COVID-19 cases, supply chain disruptions, etc.
• scan large data sets and find specific documents
• share documents securely
• visualize raw data into tables and charts
• gain crucial insights into customer behavior and buying trends

Sales Bots

AI chatbots for sales is one of the most valuable implementations of conversational AI as it has a direct impact on a company’s bottom line. The purpose of sales bots is to make online shopping more convenient and engaging for the customer. Since an increasing number of customers spent more time on messaging and social media platforms, companies deployed chatbots to bring products where their customers now were.

One of the most popular examples of a feature-rich sales chatbot is SnapTravel. In addition to deploying AI chatbots to all major messaging platforms including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and SMS, the travel company has also developed RCS chatbots, allowing consumers to check hotel reservations and flight status, book tickets, and much more — through the default SMS apps.

Conversational AI Beyond the Pandemic

Implementing any new technology is a long-term investment which begs the question: will conversational AI still be a viable alternative once things go back to “normal”. Consumer behavior trends in 2021 indicate that conversational tech will not only survive after the pandemic but also thrive. Take a look at the following global trends:

• New Generational Behaviorisms

Millennials but especially Generation Z are growing up with smartphones — they’re absolutely used to the convenience of having the world at their fingertips and it’s going to be essential to cater to these habits.

Furthermore, these demographics actually prefer talking to AI chatbots rather than human sales representatives.

• Productivity and Efficiency

There are hundreds of ways automation improves productivity and efficiency but conversational AI takes this one step further — enabling automation in places where it normally wouldn’t be possible. For instance, L’Oréal used an AI chatbot to free up 200 hours (a whole working month) while shortlisting 80 interns from a talent pool of 12,000.

• Cost Savings

Apart from the indirect cost savings associated with time savings, conversational AI can reduce costs directly by automating a number of tasks in business intelligence (BI), marketing, CRM, and more, thereby reducing dependence on permanent staff. Additionally, conversational AI is more secure, less error-prone, and generally more reliable at handling routine tasks.

• Rise of Online Shopping

Online shopping has been on a steady rise for the past decade and will continue to grow at a fast pace. Furthermore, the pandemic forced a lot of new demographics to shop online for the first time, most of whom will continue shopping online even after the pandemic is over.

• Consumer Engagement

According to KPMG, personalization is the biggest factor in customer loyalty, and we predict that personalization will be one of the most important business trends of this decade as companies adopt more and more technologies that allow them to communicate on a one-to-one basis economically. Conversational AI is one such technology. Furthermore, maintaining a two-way is paramount to increasing brand loyalty and in turn, sales. This isn’t possible with traditional business messaging.

How can a brand benefit from Conversational AI?

The changing consumer preferences and needs are enough to prove that conversational AI is here to stay but it doesn’t just end there. Conversational AI also ties in extremely well with various dominant trends of this decade, making it a key tool in the modern marketing arsenal. It’s a scalable, reliable, and evolving technology that opens up new possibilities to aid in internal decision-making, increase brand loyalty, reduce costs, and most importantly, offer a personalized shopping experience that helps you stand out from the crowd.

Conversational AI has numerous benefits for businesses in 2021 but the most important benefit is conversational AI’s role in differentiating your product or service from the rest. It helps businesses cater to the need for instant gratification by providing solving a wide variety of customer queries instantly. It also enables the business to improve brand loyalty through a more personalized communication channel without any significant increase in CRM costs.

To get started with Conversational AI, consider contacting the Master of Code. If you’d like to learn more about chatbots and how they can be tailored to your exact business model, schedule a free discovery session today with one of our experts today.

CONTACT US FOR A FREE CONSULTATION

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The Impact of Conversational AI: 2021 and Forward was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We live in a world where robots are increasingly common. There are chatbots on the company websites and machines that build cars and other equipment by themselves. More and more are the tasks that these agents can perform, and OCR is one of them.

This article tells you what OCR is, its applications, and how your company’s chatbots can use it.

What is OCR?

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition.

It’s a technology widely used in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, and pattern recognition.

As the name implies, this technology allows a machine to read the text in images and convert this information into code that the system understands.

The text can be printed, handwritten, or typed, and the conversion can be done from scanning or photography.

It can also, for example, read captions superimposed on an image, as is the case with movie subtitles.

The Origins of OCR

According to Schantz (1982), the first forms of OCR were related to telegraphs and reading devices for blind people.

To make such recognition possible, the first versions of this technology had to be trained with images of every character and every existing font.

In 1914, Emanuel Goldberg developed a machine that read characters and converted them into standard telegraphy code.

A few years later, entering the 1930s, Goldberg invented and patented the “Statistical Machine.” This used OCR code to search microfilm files. A while later, IBM bought that same patent.

The Applications of OCR by Sector

Today, OCR systems are already quite effective and capable of easily recognizing any text. That said, their use covers various sectors and purposes.

Banking sector

Reading and Extracting Information of checks — recognizes account number, written amount, and signature. Moreover, it’s used on procedures containing large volumes of documentation.

Insurance Sector

Like in banking, OCR can do information extraction on documents such as accident reports, collecting the cars involved in the claim, the signatures of the responsible parties, etc.

Retail Sector

You no longer have to carry around all the promotional stubs every time you go to the supermarket. Today, most supermarkets already have virtual receipts that can be scanned using OCR to extract the serial number.

Other Applications

Traveling

These days, you hardly need to learn other languages anymore, because technologies take care of that for you. This is the case with automatic translations.

There are more and more applications where you point the camera of your smartphone at a label, for example, and you have all the information translated into your language.

These tools are also useful when traveling, and you want to read the indications on signs, such as geographical names.

Besides, you already see many automated systems at airports, where machines do the ticket verification without the need for human intervention.

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OCR Technology in Chatbots

What are chatbots?

Chatbots (conversational robots) are virtual agents with Artificial Intelligence that automate communication processes. Companies widely use these types of bots in their services, such as Customer Support.

These agents need certain technologies, such as Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, to understand and respond to us.

It may be interesting to consult the articles below to learn more about these technologies:

Furthermore, if you want your chatbot to perform other tasks, such as reading documents, you need to include OCR technology.

The Visor.ai OCR Use Cases

Visor.ai integrates, according to the customers’ needs and requirements, the OCR technology in its solutions.

Heineken Use Case

OCR can be an exciting capability for a chatbot to have, namely in marketing campaigns. Take the example of Heineken.

Heineken launched a campaign where consumers had to send a photo, via chatbot, as proof of purchase of their beers. After the receipt validation, the chatbot would award prizes to users.

You can read more about this case study here.

Email bots Use Case

Another automation solution that Visor.ai offers is email bots.

Email bots are solutions that automate processes that take place, in this case, in the emails that companies receive.

It’s an ideal solution for companies with high volumes of email contacts.

Besides reading the emails, categorizing, and forwarding them to the specialized service departments, these bots also read and check the documentation attached to the email.

That is, imagine you have an insurance company and a customer wants to report a car accident.

To do this, he/she needs to send, for example, the claim registration document and the identification document. However, the customer has only sent the claim document.

In this case, the bot reads the attachment, checks to see if the user properly filled out the documents. And, if the ID document is still missing, asks the user for it.

Only when it has all documents present and well filled out, the email bot pass the case to a human assistant.

Conclusions

OCR technology allows your chatbot or email bot to read and extract information from images/documents that have text.

With this capability, their complexity increases, and they become more efficient as they automate processes that take a lot of time away from their teams.

Whichever Visor.ai solution you’re interested in, talk to us, and we’ll be glad to look at the options that fit you best!

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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OCR: Give Eyes to Your Chatbot 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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Travel App Development Can Save Your Drowning Business During COVID

Travel apps can help small businesses regain a hold on a dying market. Glean insights about travel app development & why to invest in it.

The mobile comes with handy options when it comes to planning your travel. Currently, 80% of travelers use mobile for planning their travel trips and find the best option for trips. Indeed, the coronavirus has a negative impact on this market. However, the businesses are coming back to their previous state with the initiation of vaccinating.

If you are striving to boost your travel business growth and drive in more revenue, it is the perfect time to leverage the earnestness of people to travel and their mode of search on mobile. So, investing your time & money into mobile app development can help you gather huge revenue and brand reputation.

Why a travel mobile app? Well! There are so many reasons for using a travel mobile app as a model of communication between you and your target customers. Let’s take a glint of aspects that make travel mobile app development a profitable deal in 2021.

Why Invest In Travel Mobile Apps?

• $8% mobile users feel glad to research, book, and plan their trip using a mobile device.
• 33% of French travelers plan and book their trip using mobile, while 15% in Germany, 25% in the UK, and 21% in the USA.
• 26% of searches related to travel occur through mobile devices.
• The conversion rate of travel booking is 0.7% from mobile devices.
• App conversion rates are 5X times greater than a mobile website for travel booking.

Image source

So, what do you think now? Isn’t travel mobile app development can boost your business revenue in 2021? Well! The answer to this question is positive. Now, when you know how significant is travel app development, then let’s understand the basics of travel app development and business models you can rely on to boost your revenue. Moreover, when you hire dedicated app developers, you can know about more business models you can follow.

Travel App Business Models You Must Know Before Kick-start Your Business

Do you think that how you can make money through a travel mobile app? Well! It completely relies on the type of business model you choose to create the application.

Don’t you know major travel apps, business models? Let’s glean insights into major business models for the online travel app business.

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4. An expert system: Conversational AI Vs Chatbots

#1. Merchant Model

The merchant model is a widely popular and profitable model, followed by Expedia. The company has experienced a gross booking increase of $28.3 billion in the second quarter of 2019.

In this model, the company (platform) buys hotel rooms and resells them to travelers. Expedia rents rooms in bulk, and this way enables hotels to offer the cheapest deals to its customers.

Moreover, the platform can bundle airfares, car rental, and many other services. It enables platform owners to earn a profit on each hotel, airfare, and car rental deals.

#2. Commission Fee

Small hotels don’t have the budget for advertising. You can use a traveling app to help them in advertising their business by showcasing their hotel to your app users and make travel hotel listings.

Booking.com is the application that follows this process. On each transaction, you can add up some commission rates and charge on each hotel booking similarly the way booking.com does. This commission model allows you to earn huge revenue in less time.

Image source

#3. Advertising Model

It is the most cost-effective and reliable model for revenue generation. It works great for small agents who want to build a travel application. In this model, you can show relevant ads of hotels, tour operators, and airlines on your app and can sell advertising space to companies.

TripAdvisor works on this model and earns money from hotels and flights on the basis of cost-per-click. In simple words, you redirect customers to other business websites and get paid for that. But, you need to ensure that you share great information on the platform to gather huge traffic.

So, these were three major travel application business models that you can leverage to gain huge revenue and thrive as a giant travel brand. Moreover, you can also connect with a mobile app development company to figure out more business opportunities and types of applications you can develop by the combination of modern technology. For example, AR/VR enabled travel applications to gain huge attention and acquire an incredible audience base.

Apart from these, you can also create a travel video streaming application that can attract a huge user base, and then you can integrate an advertising model to earn money. In short, there are so many travel application ideas that can allow you to gain huge revenue, but it’s you who have to decide what way you want to choose to attract people.

Features of the application are always a triggering factor that always inspires users to spend more time on the app. Let’s explore some features that a travel mobile app must have.

Features Your Travel App Must Have For Travelers

#1. Registration and Profile Management

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In every application registration and sign-up is the major feature that provides access of the application to the users. Your application must enable users to sign up the app with different sources such as social media network, Gmail account, or user name.

So, each time when users browse the application, it login through a unique identity. You can skip this process, but when it comes to booking, saving payment details, registration is necessary.

Moreover, at this point, you can infuse the app’s security features, such as a secure login with two-step authentication. Besides, you must also ensure that your app has a better and seamless user experience, and hosts should have a personal account to enlist their properties.

For authenticity and safety, registration and profile management are critical steps; moreover, take proper documentation and details of hosts before enabling them property listing.

#2. Search And Filters

The basic function of any travel application is to find a place to travel, hotel room, or airline to travel. Thus, search filters are an essential part of a travel application to enable users whatever they want to search.

But! Remember to create a simple filter, not a complex one, and enable precise information to get results. Following are the primary filters that you can use to show up information.

Location

Dates

Cost

Number of people

Additional services (parking, Wi-Fi, and so on)

Ensure that you create filters for the aspect that users want to search and include all locations of interest in your database.

#3. Feature For Booking

Booking is another essential feature of a travel application that enables you to earn money. Thus, your application must have a feature for booking tickets, hotels, tours, and other relevant services.

To implement this, you can hire full-stack developers or expert programmers with relevant experience in travel app development. One fine example of this feature is Booking.com, Skyscanner, and many are very popular.

But these platforms hardly collect money from the traveler and prefer to leave the job for hosts.

Image source

#4. Notification & Alerts

Notification and alerts are a critical part of travel applications, and many users cherish this facility. It allows them to keep them updated about updates, discounts, reminders before and after the trip. More importantly, when you are developing a travel app, you need to ensure that your application keeps your users updated about every single aspect.

Here are some functionality of push notification that users cherish :

Alerts for new offers. Price changes and discounts.

Reminders for unchecked services

Enhancing customer experience by sending information about booking changes or reminders.

List of MVP features for any travel application start.

Some sophisticated & information-oriented features you can have like:

Currency converter

In-app payments

Language translators

Weather forecasting

These features add up to your application interface and engage users.

#5. Review System

Review system can be found in each application currently trending to travel applications. It enables users to share what they think and discover. It works simply when a user checks out the apartment; the system will pop up a form asking for ratings and reviews.

Recommendation from travelers will enable people to know about the location more and how it seems.

Cost Of Travel App Development

The cost of developing a travel application can be estimated in three aspects, namely, the complexity of the application, module and dedicated platforms required for the app, and the country you choose to hire developers. Actually, including the country defines the budget of development in the ratio, for example.

US-based developers ask for $50 to $250 per hour.

Eastern European-based developers ask for $30 to $150 per hour.

Indian-based developers ask for $10 to $80 per hour.

Let’s see an estimate for the development of applications in both iOS and Android. To developing a proper app with a set of limited features, the cost of development in India can be calculated on the basis of the deactivation of the following activities.

Also, make the below definition estimates for your app (to develop a proper app with limited features and Android coding, the cost in India can be calculated based on the deactivation of the activities below).

Front and rear end development : $10,000 to $20,000

Technical Documents: $1000 to $2000

QA and Testing: $2000 to $4000

UI / UX design: $1500 to $3000

Then, if we calculate the overhead, the average cost of development of a travel application can range between $10,000 to $40,000. Moreover, if you choose to create a cross-platform app or add a few more features and technology like AR/VR and AI, then the cost may range between $60,000 to $80,000.

Wrapping Up

Creating an app for travelers can help you earn huge revenue. Travel apps are increasingly being used by travelers, and businesses are growing with the help of these tools. Moreover, it is bliss to book and find about the tours and location on simple touch on their mobile screen.

In short, investing in travel applications is a revenue-gaining deal. To create such an application, you can connect with a top mobile app development company and secure a splendid application.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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Staggering Insights Into Travel App Development For Small Businesses was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What Are Quick Links?

Quick links are easy-to-click Standard URL’s that allow customers to instantly reach and launch your skill. You can place quick links on your company’s website, in an app, or through social media. Then, customers can access your skill immediately by asking Alexa. The users can launch your skill whenever they are near the device. They can either ask Alexa to send a notification for launching the skill later.

Alexa Skills And User Acquisition

Marketing a sub-par product will not boost sales, just as promoting a low-quality skill will not be as uplifting.

Ipervox did a full analysis of 30 000 latest Alexa skills published on the Amazon Alexa Store. From this analysis, we found out that only 37% of Alexa’s skills had reviews written about them. Of those reviews, less than 20% were positive.

This means that either Alexa skills published have no reviews at all, or they have bad reviews. Despite working on a quality Alexa skill, you need to move the wheels and promote it. It ain’t going to do so itself.

Amazon Alexa store is becoming more and more competitive each day and just putting your skill there is not enough to get user acquisition.

4 Ways To Promote Your Alexa Skill

In order to help you in this competitive voice world, Ipervox has created a Voice App Masterclass. One of the chapters is designed to help the user promoting the Alexa skill. Below are some successful ways we want to share with you in this article:

1. Effective skill and invocation name. We advise you to find an exact name, which is simple to remember and pronounce.

2. Use an icon that catches a user’s eye. Entering the voice world does not mean forgetting about designing. If you want to make a difference, you will need an icon that stands out from the others.

3. Write an attractive and valuable description. If a user stops on your skill when browsing the never-ending list of Amazon Alexa stores, write something cool to read about it. Invest time in a good and concentrated description that speaks only of what the skill does and its characteristics.

4. Share the skill through all possible ways– In September 2020 Amazon Alexa announced for the first time quick links. Through these easy URLs, you can share your Alexa skill via email, email signature, website, and promote it through social media channels.

The Efficiency Of Quick Links

Amazon Alexa allows two types of quick links: one that launches an Alexa skill and one that leads to a custom task within an Alexa skill. These quick links act as the equivalent of when a customer says, “Alexa, open <skill name>” to an Alexa device.

Their advantage is that they are very efficient when sharing your Alexa skills online. Rather than sharing the link to your Alexa skill detailed page on Amazon, you can now allow your users to immediately launch your skill and start their journey towards voice experience on their devices.

Additionally, they allow analyzing better the traffic coming through different channels. To track the number of launches your skill receives from individual links in different online channels, you must use custom tasks and query string parameters, both combined together in your quick link URL.

As an instance, if you are sharing your quick link through social media, including it on ADS or promoting it on your own website, you can gather data of which channel works better when it comes to the number of launched skills.

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1. Chatbot Trends Report 2021

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4. An expert system: Conversational AI Vs Chatbots

Quick Links Structure And How They Work

Before trying to understand how to generate quick links for your Alexa skill, you need to make sure that Amazon Alexa Store approves and publishes your skill. Through the Amazon Alexa account, you can then find your skill ID in the development console.

All you need to do is finding the skill ID on your developer console and replacing it at the URL below.

You can also test how quick links look by the free resources on Alexa labs for Task Buddy skill on GitHub

What Are The Benefits Of Using Quick Links?

• Driving traffic from your ADS
  By including your Alexa skill quick link in your ADS, it will allow you to promote your skill with just a single click and make your audience get in touch with you faster than ever before.
• Driving traffic from your social media
  Having the ability to open a skill directly from a link is an important leap forward in the ability to market. Instead of relying on the audience to remember what skills they see from your business on Twitter and Instagram, you can help them open your skills straight from the post. With just one click away they can launch the Alexa skill or set a notification to launch it later.
• Measuring marketing campaigns
  Through the usage of attribution tags, businesses or personal brands can measure the effectiveness of their Alexa skill marketing campaigns. The ability to launch directly the Alexa skill from the quick link is a smart solution also for skills under the utility category, which are better to be launched without using voice. An example of this can be Invoked Apps that are using quick links to launch their sleep sound skills. According to Invoked Apps founder “Quick Links for Alexa are a game-changing way for customers to launch skills and for skill builders to make better digital marketing decisions”
• Driving traffic from your website directly to your skill
  If you are a personal brand that has your own Alexa skill, you can use your website traffic to promote it. Driving traffic from the website directly to Alexa skill can be a smart marketing strategy also for podcasts, blogs, or radio skills. It helps in reusing your existing audience as a new audience for the Alexa skill.
• Simply engage online
  Despite all the benefits mentioned above, quick links can be used as a simple, effective way to engage online with the audience.

Can Ipervox Help?

Through the Ipervox Voice Platform, you can create an Alexa skill with no coding knowledge required. Our all in one platform will allow you to create your Alexa developer account, create your new Alexa skill, send it for review, and publish it on Amazon Alexa Store. Will it help you also in promoting your Alexa skill?

Ipervox will automatically generate quick links for your Alexa skill throughout the steps of skill creation. These links can easily be copied and pasted on different social media or integrated anywhere else you see as suitable for your Alexa skill.

Furthermore, you can easily track your Alexa skill progress by analyzing it. We offer you the possibility to understand and optimize the voice communication channel. Analytics is not just a process for measuring voice traffic. You can use it as a tool to improve the effectiveness of your voice strategy.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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The search is over: Use Quick Links to promote your Alexa Skill was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Rule-based chatbots are a good starting point to gain experience in designing chatbots. These decision-tree based bots are following a set of rules and use a planned, guided dialog.

Behind the apparent simplicity, there are plenty of operational-level difficulties for conversation designers in the maintenance. When a chatbot reaches a certain size, it becomes extremely difficult to handle and follow any changes in the conversation model. Logic jumps (to create different paths under conditions) and loops (to go back to a previous element of conversation) are giving you a wide range of flexibility in this closed environment, but they often make the conversation difficult to handle.

Once any change has been implemented, you have to make sure that it did not cause any confusion in other convos and that each conversation path stayed “healthy”.

Botium Crawler is here to help

Botium Crawler is the newest member of the Botium toolset. It was designed to imitate users going through all the possible combinations of the dialog structure at the same time. It automatically detects all conversation paths for navigating through the whole conversation model.

The following graphic shows the concept for an e-commerce chatbot and one of the possible paths a user might navigate (red arrows).

Botium Crawler simulates user clicks on all of the options in parallel, following all paths down until it reaches the end of the conversation or a certain criteria.

In the flow option you can see the visual representation of the conversation model of your chatbot.

This is something you can most probably see on your conversation design platform as well.

In the Crawler script view you can see each convo path separately.

As long as you have a green tick on the side, it means that the crawler successfully reached the end of the current path, without any failure. It suggests that the user will be also able to do the same in production.

Other cases with an exclamation mark are worth examining. In this case, the crawler could not reach the predefined depth in the conversation path. There could be more reasons behind this:

1. The conversation is stopped before reaching the maximum conversation steps

Before starting the crawler session there are several criteria you can add. One of them is the predefined number of conversation steps, that the crawler should reach. In case the specified criteria is not met, the crawler will not succeed.

2. Wait for prompt

You can define the maximum time a user should wait for a message from the chatbot. There are several conversation steps where the chatbot sends more than one request. In this case it is advisable to define a longer waiting time, but short enough to provide the feeling of a dynamic conversation. If the waiting time exceeds the predefined time limit, the conversation will be labelled with an exclamation mark

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Additional Crawler features

1. Exit criteria

You have the option to give a certain message as exit criteria. This means that when the crawler reaches this step, it will not go any further. This function is extremely useful, if your chatbot deals with a great amount of convos, but you’ve only done a tiny change in the conversation model and you don’t want to wait for the crawler to track through all conversation paths. If the crawler stops by meeting the exit criteria, it will be closed successfully.

2. Entry point

The conversation start message is a similar setting to the exit criteria, except that it does not specify when to stop the crawler session, but where to start. You may want to use this feature in situations where you have made changes at the end of a conversation model and it makes no sense to run the crawler from the beginning of the conversation. In case you establish an entry point, that the crawler can not find, the conversation will stop at the first step and it will fail.

Failing crawler session could also result in cases when the chatbot does not respond!

Summary

Botium Crawler will help you to identify missing paths and dead ends in the conversation flow and will help you to provide great user experience no matter what path the user takes.

The additional benefit of the crawler is that all detected conversation flows along all paths can be saved as Botium test cases and utterance lists and can be used as a base for a regression test set.

In the end Botium Crawler helps conversation designers to untie the inscrutable threads of human communications and to examine each conversation path as an individual part of the final user experience.

Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !

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Detecting dead ends in the Chatbot Conversation Flow was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.