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While they don’t need an introduction, chatbots are software
programmed to respond and provide information while operating behind a chat interface. They are useful for customer support, to direct toward informative resources or even to give information before transferring to a real agent.
Many know these bots as the painfully automated answer machine whose
most common response is:
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that. Please be more specific.”These first generations of chatbots can be seen as sophisticated that often rely on If/Then logic to give you pre-determined answers. If you don’t use specific phrasing, the machines will not understand. While chatbots can be useful for a handful of situations, they often lead to more frustration than satisfaction from these interactions.More recently, you may have chatted with a smart chatbot, more commonly known as “”. These chatbots are built on top of machine learning and to provide more sophisticated answers. is used to comprehend the intent of the person and a mix of and is used to form a human-like exchange between computer and human.
These bots have the added advantage of learning on the fly; using each conversation to finesse their technique and get smarter with time.
While customers do not expect to have profound conversations with
automated customer service technologies, Conversational AIs have grown to limit the hassles and frustrations associated with traditional chatbots.
Now that we have a little understanding of what chatbots are and how they have evolved, let’s look into the various tools that can enable the
creation of one.
Aside from coding one from scratch, many companies have ventured
into providing low-code environments to customize one's own chatbot. Low-code bot builders allow an easy mean to make this emerging technology more accessible.
They rely on pre-configured libraries and drag-and-drop functionalities to ease development, fasten configuration and simplify deployment and testing.For example, is a chatbot builder that was acquired by in late 2017. When launched, this tool was widely acclaimed for its simplicity and ease of use. It was long the preferred platform to create chatbots for apps such as Facebook Messenger and Slack. Motion AI enables brands to immediately engage with their consumers in a consistent and efficient way. With Hubspot’s integration, this tool is now able to create more personalized messages thanks to the information already stored in the CRM.
More recently, Microsoft revealed (PVA), a tool that allows anyone, even the least tech-savvy ones, to easily set up complex chatbots.Similarly, to Motion AI and IBM Watson, PVA promises its users the ability to "create powerful chatbots—without the need for developers or data scientists". What is particularly innovative is PVA's ability to connect to other powerful Microsoft tools, such as Power Automate and Power BI.
This allows you to not only adapt to your changing clienteles but also forecast needs more accurately.These tools are only a few examples of a long list of platforms allowing the democratization and accessibility to this technology. Each with its own sets of strengths and limitations.
As we are heading into a new decade, I’m convinced that with the emergence of no-code bot-builder tools, this technology is here to stay and prolifer in many more creative ways.While the sophistication of AI chatbots is nowhere near the level of , I’m looking forward to seeing modern client-facing chat tools alleviate many of the burden and hassle faced by current customer-facing industries.
The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily represent EY’s position.