What is a chatbot and how ?does it work

Surely, you have already entered websites where a window pops up in the right or left corner of the page and asks you if you need help or not. This is exactly the topic of today’s article on the artificial intelligence website of Avir. At its most basic level, a chatbot is a computer program that simulates and processes human conversation (whether written or spoken), allowing humans to interact with digital devices as if they were interacting with a real person. Chatbots can be as simple as rudimentary programs that answer a simple question with a one-line answer, or as sophisticated digital assistants that learn and evolve to increase levels of personalization by gathering and processing information. In the rest of this article, stay with us to fully review the chatbot. Stay with us.

What is a chatbot?

A chatbot is a computer program that simulates a human conversation with an end user. Although not all chatbots are equipped with artificial intelligence (AI), modern chatbots increasingly use conversational AI techniques such as natural language processing (NLP) to understand user questions and provide automated responses to them.

You’ve probably interacted with chatbots many times but didn’t know it. For example, you are researching a product on the Internet and a pop-up pops up on your screen asking if you need help. Or when taking an internet taxi, a window will open on the application and ask you if you need help. All these are chatbots or chatbots that you deal with during the day.

Why do businesses use chatbots?

Chatbots can make it easy for users to find information by instantly responding to questions and requests – via text input, voice input, or both – without the need for human intervention or manual research.

Chatbot technology is now commonplace in a variety of businesses, and can be found everywhere from smart speakers at home to examples like SMS, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and professional workplace messaging apps like Slack. The latest evolution of AI chatbots, often referred to as “intelligent virtual assistants” or “virtual agents,” can not only understand fluent conversation through the use of complex linguistic models, but even perform related tasks automatically. . Along with famous and intelligent virtual assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, virtual agents are also used significantly in the organizational context to help customers and employees.

How do chatbots work?

The first chatbots were essentially interactive FAQ programs programmed to answer a limited set of common questions with pre-written answers. Unable to interpret users’ natural language, these early chatbots generally required users to choose from keywords and simple phrases to advance the conversation. These traditional and basic chatbots are not able to process complex questions and of course answer simple questions that are not foreseen by the developers.

Over time, chatbot algorithms became capable of more sophisticated rules-based programming and even natural language processing, allowing customers to express their conversations more conversationally. This gave rise to a new type of chatbot that was contextually aware and equipped with machine learning to continuously optimize its ability to correctly process and predict queries through more and more exposure to human language.

Modern AI chatbots now use natural language understanding (NLU) to figure out the meaning of open-ended user input sentences, overcoming everything from typos to translation problems. Advanced AI tools then map this meaning to the specific “goal” the user wants the chatbot to act on, and use conversational AI to formulate the appropriate response. These AI technologies use machine learning and deep learning – different elements of AI, with some subtle differences – to build a knowledge base of questions and answers derived from user interactions. This complexity, based on recent advances in large language models (LLM), has led to increased customer satisfaction and more versatile chatbot applications.

Why were chatbots created?

The digitalization of the world has turned society into people who give priority to mobile phones and smart devices. With the increasing popularity of messaging apps, chatbots are playing a significant role in this mobility-based evolution. Intelligent conversational chatbots are often an interface to mobile apps and are changing the way businesses and customers interact.

Chatbots allow businesses to communicate with customers in a personalized way without the expense of human agents. For example, many questions or issues that customers have are common and easily answered. This is why companies create FAQs and troubleshooting guides. Chatbots provide a personal alternative to FAQs or help, and can even sort questions, including handing over to a live person if the problem becomes too complex for the chatbot. Chatbots have become popular as a great way to save time and money for businesses and provide more convenience for customers.

How did chatbots evolve?

Chatbot’s origins probably lie in Alan Turing’s vision of intelligent machines in the 1950s. Artificial intelligence, the foundation of chatbots, has since advanced to include super-intelligent supercomputers such as IBM Watson.

With today’s digital assistants, businesses can leverage artificial intelligence to make interactions between companies and customers much more convenient and effective—directly from customers’ digital devices.

The difference between chatbots and artificial intelligence chatbots and virtual assistants.

The terms chatbot, AI chatbot and virtual assistants are often used interchangeably and can cause confusion for the audience. Although the technologies these terms refer to are closely related, their subtle distinctions create important differences in their capabilities.

Chatbot is the most inclusive and comprehensive term. Any software that simulates human conversation, whether using a traditional and rigid decision tree-style navigation menu or an advanced conversational AI, is a chatbot. Chatbots can be found in almost every communication channel, from corporate voicemail to social media and specific apps and websites.

AI chatbots are chatbots that use various artificial intelligence technologies, from machine learning that optimizes responses over time to natural language processing and natural language understanding that accurately interprets user questions and matches them to specific goals. . Deep learning capabilities allow AI chatbots to become more accurate over time, which in turn allows humans to interact with AI chatbots in a more natural and fluent way without language comprehension issues.

Virtual assistants are a more evolved type of AI chatbot software that not only use AI to conduct conversations and deep learning to improve themselves over time, but also typically pair AI technologies with robotic process automation (RPA) to Work directly on the user’s goal without further human intervention.

 To help illustrate the distinctions between these 3 concepts, imagine that the user is curious about tomorrow’s weather. To chat with a traditional chatbot, a user can use the specific phrase “Tell me the weather forecast.” The chatbot says it will rain. Using an AI chatbot, a user can ask, “How’s the weather tomorrow?” – The chatbot correctly interprets this conversational question and answers that it is going to rain tomorrow. Working with a virtual assistant, the user can ask: “What’s the weather like tomorrow?” – The virtual assistant can not only predict tomorrow’s rain, but also suggest setting an earlier alarm to account for rain delays in morning commutes.

Common uses of chatbots

Businesses are using AI chatbots for a wide variety of tasks, from interacting with mobile apps to using targeted devices like smart thermostats and smart kitchen appliances. Business uses of chatbots are also varied: marketers use AI-powered chatbots to personalize customer experiences and streamline e-commerce operations. IT and HR teams use chatbots to enable automated customer service. Contact centers rely on chatbots to streamline inbound communications and direct customers to the right departments.

Conversation interfaces can also be different. AI chatbots are commonly used in social media messaging apps, standalone messaging platforms, proprietary websites and apps, and even in phone calls (also known as integrated voice response, or IVR).

Common uses include:

• Timely and ongoing assistance with customer service or HR related issues
• Personalized e-commerce recommendations
• Definition of fields in forms and financial programs
• Scheduling admissions and appointments for doctors’ offices
• Automatic reminders for time or location based tasks

Advantages of using chatbots

The ability of AI chatbots to accurately process natural human language and automate personalized service in return creates clear benefits for businesses and customers.

1. Chatbots improve customer engagement and brand loyalty

Before the advent of chatbots, any customer question, concern or complaint – big or small – required a human response. Naturally, immediate or even urgent customer problems sometimes arise during off hours, on weekends or during holidays. But using human staff in the customer service department to respond to unpredictable and 24-hour demand is very expensive and difficult for businesses.

Today, chatbots can continuously handle customer interactions 24/7 while continuously improving the quality of responses and keeping costs down. Chatbots automate workflows and free employees from repetitive tasks. Chatbots can also eliminate long wait times for phone-based customer support or even longer wait times for answering email, chat, and web-based support because bots are instantly available to any number of users at once. The user experience will be very good thanks to chatbots, and with the increase in customer satisfaction, brand loyalty will also increase.

2. Reducing costs and increasing operational efficiency

Using human personnel for the customer support center 24/7 will cost a lot of money for businesses. Likewise, the time spent answering repetitive questions (and the training required to make those answers uniform) is also costly. Many overseas companies outsource these tasks, but doing so comes at a significant cost and reduces control over the brand’s interactions with customers.

But chatbots can answer questions 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The bot can provide full support, provide supplemental support to human agents during peak customer times, or answer boring repetitive questions so human agents can focus on more complex issues. Chatbots can help reduce the number of users who need human response, allowing businesses to staff more efficiently.

3. Creating leads and increasing customer satisfaction

Chatbots can help generate sales leads and improve conversion rates. For example, a customer browsing a website for a product or service may need to ask questions about various features, applications, or designs. A chatbot can provide these answers in real time and help the customer progress towards a purchase. For more complex purchases with a multi-step sales funnel, a chatbot can ask lead qualification questions and even connect the customer directly to a trained sales representative.

The future of chatbots

In previous articles, we talked about the future of artificial intelligence. But how far do you think the evolution of chatbots will go? Chatbots, like other AI tools, are used to further enhance human capabilities and focus humans for greater creativity and innovation, allowing humans to spend more time on strategic rather than tactical activities.

In the near future, when artificial intelligence is combined with the development of 5G technology, businesses, employees and consumers will likely enjoy more advanced chatbot features such as faster recommendations and predictions and easy access to high-quality video conferencing from within a conversation. This and other possibilities are under investigation and will evolve rapidly as Internet connectivity, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning advance. Finally, everyone can have a fully functional personal assistant right by their side, making our world a more efficient and connected place to live and work.

Ask me system, Iran’s best artificial intelligence chatbot for banks and organizations.

According to the needs of banks and various organizations to improve interaction with customers and provide immediate, accurate and reliable answers to their questions, Avir artificial intelligence company has designed and developed a chat bot that can answer questions in text and voice form. This chatbot is called “Ask Me System”.

 Ask Me Aware system is based on LLMs (large and advanced language models). Large language models are able to understand complex user queries. These LLMs, along with an advanced embedding model, enable the system to drill down into a custom database of documents, including plain text and formatted information (Q/A) questions and answers or FAQs. Users respond. Organizations and banks can respond to users in the best and fastest way by training this chatbot using its own questions and answers.

For more information about Ask Me Chatbot and its use on enterprise systems including e-banking systems, you can contact Avir now!