What Is Chatbot?

What Is Chatbot?
A Chatbot (short for Chatterbot) is a software program that simulates human conversation through text chats or voice commands or both. Chatbot is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) feature that can be embedded and used through any major messaging applications. There are a number of synonyms for chatbot, including “talkbot,” “bot,” “IM bot,” “interactive agent” or “artificial conversation entity.”

Why Are Chatbots Important? Why Do You Need A Chatbot?
Why are chatbots important? A chatbot is often described as one of the most advanced and promising expressions of interaction between humans and machines. However, from a technological point of view, a chatbot only represents the natural evolution of a Question Answering system leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP). Formulating responses to questions in natural language is one of the most typical Examples of Natural Language Processing applied in various enterprises’ end-use applications.

How Does Chatbot Work?
The progressive advance of technology has seen an increase in businesses moving from traditional to digital platforms to transact with consumers. Convenience through technology is being carried out by businesses by implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques on their digital platforms. One AI technique that is growing in its application and use is chatbots. Some examples of chatbot technology are virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant, and messaging apps, such as WeChat and Facebook messenger.

What Types of Chatbot Are Available?
There are two main types of chatbot. Button Bots and Conversational Chatbots:

What Are Button Bots?
Button Bots are based on predefined buttons and lead the user down a garden path with those button choices. You cannot talk to a button bot.

What Are Conversational Chatbots?
Conversational Chatbots understand user input – a user should be able to type in a question and get a relevant answer from the chatbot. There are sub-types of Conversational Chatbot, which are covered more extensively in “How Do Chatbots Work”. Conversational Chatbots can, and generally do, use buttons as a backup function.