Think of a message thread as the place where you connect and interact with your users. Build just one bot, and your experience is available on all platforms where Messenger exists, including iOS, Android, and web. It also removes the friction of your users having to download one more app, on top of all the apps they already have and may not use, given Messenger is now used by 900 million people every month.
Interface designers have come to appreciate that humans' readiness to interpret computer output as genuinely conversational—even when it is actually based on rather simple pattern-matching—can be exploited for useful purposes. Most people prefer to engage with programs that are human-like, and this gives chatbot-style techniques a potentially useful role in interactive systems that need to elicit information from users, as long as that information is relatively straightforward and falls into predictable categories. Thus, for example, online help systems can usefully employ chatbot techniques to identify the area of help that users require, potentially providing a "friendlier" interface than a more formal search or menu system. This sort of usage holds the prospect of moving chatbot technology from Weizenbaum's "shelf ... reserved for curios" to that marked "genuinely useful computational methods".
The process of building, testing and deploying chatbots can be done on cloud-based chatbot development platforms[49] offered by cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers such as Oracle Cloud Platform [50][30] and IBM Watson.[51][52][53] These cloud platforms provide Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Backend as a Service for chatbot development.
Despite the fact that ALICE relies on such an old codebase, the bot offers users a remarkably accurate conversational experience. Of course, no bot is perfect, especially one that’s old enough to legally drink in the U.S. if only it had a physical form. ALICE, like many contemporary bots, struggles with the nuances of some questions and returns a mixture of inadvertently postmodern answers and statements that suggest ALICE has greater self-awareness for which we might give the agent credit.
The process of building, testing and deploying chatbots can be done on cloud-based chatbot development platforms[49] offered by cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers such as Oracle Cloud Platform [50][30] and IBM Watson.[51][52][53] These cloud platforms provide Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Backend as a Service for chatbot development.
NBC Politics Bot allowed users to engage with the conversational agent via Facebook to identify breaking news topics that would be of interest to the network’s various audience demographics. After beginning the initial interaction, the bot provided users with customized news results (prioritizing video content, a move that undoubtedly made Facebook happy) based on their preferences.
The “stand-alone” application, where the chatbot runs on a single computer, integrates mostly some sort of system interface, allowing your chatbot to control certain aspects and functions of your computer, such as playing media files, or retrieving documents. It usually also has a graphical component built in, as well, in the form of an avatar (often female) that enhances interaction, thus improving user’s experience.
Several studies accomplished by analytics agencies such as Juniper or Gartner [36] report significant reduction of cost of customer services, leading to billions of dollars of economy in the next 10 years. Gartner predicts an integration by 2020 of chatbots in at least 85% of all client's applications to customer service. Juniper's study announces an impressive amount of $8 billion retained annually by 2022 due to the use of chatbots.
Previous generations of chatbots were present on company websites, e.g. Ask Jenn from Alaska Airlines which debuted in 2008[29] or Expedia's virtual customer service agent which launched in 2011.[29][30] The newer generation of chatbots includes IBM Watson-powered "Rocky", introduced in February 2017 by the New York City-based e-commerce company Rare Carat to provide information to prospective diamond buyers.[31][32]
Online chatbots save time and efforts by automating customer support. Gartner forecasts that by 2020, over 85% of customer interactions will be handled without a human. However, the opportunites provided by chatbot systems go far beyond giving responses to customers’ inquiries. They are also used for other business tasks, like collecting information about users, helping to organize meetings and reducing overhead costs. There is no wonder that size of the chatbot market is growing exponentially.
Certainly for Facebook, this is much more about extracting marketing dollars than it is about breaking new ground in software development. Because by studying user’s interactions with these bots, Facebook will continue to build their understanding of how consumers are interacting with brands and gain additional insight into what products they like and content they consume. That can only mean more value to marketers and thus more dollars for Facebook.
Marketer’s Take: This is a good demonstration of how you can add a gaming dimension to your bots. If you’re a marketer that likes to tell stories, then you can design a choose-your-own adventure bot that educates and sells prospective customers that are following along. There are many twists and turns that can be built into a bot like this, so creative marketers will readily take advantage.
Properly building a chatbot will help you change the way consumers interact with your brand, increasing customer satisfaction and monetizing your social media platforms at the same time. By following the tips outlined above you will be able to create a chatbot that is line with your brand and that best portrays your company as a whole and you don't have to be a chatbot expert to get started.
Messenger Bots are created using the new Messenger API that allows a bot to send and receive messages. The Messenger Bots are essentially chat bots that you can talk to from the Messenger app. The conversations will of course be different than those you have with your Facebook friends. These bots are meant to help you get information for example you can ask the CNN bot to tell you give you the current headline news and it will fetch them for you.
