The connection between customers and brand interaction has transformed with the development of chatbots. They are an advanced addition for many businesses to their sales and marketing team. Chatbots are redefining how brands and people interact with each other. The change that chatbots bring to business makes them grow more digitally.
Businesses are making the right use of chatbots. They are performing as 24/7 customer service agents, assisting businesses by providing data points to predict user behavior. Technology, software design, and different types of chatbots depend on the customer base. Your business objectives define what kind of chatbots are best for continued success. An impeccable chatbot strategy always starts with knowing the types of chatbots and their limitations.
Some Major Types of Chatbots
The rise in technology has been as dynamic as the evolution of chatbots capabilities. Chatbots can be generally categorized into different types.
Scripted/ Quick Reply Bots
These chatbots are used to cooperate with the customers based on predefined knowledge and technical capabilities that can respond to fixed instructions. For this purpose, all queries need to be gathered with a specific language programmed in the chatbots.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) Chatbots
These chatbots are one of the major applications of artificial intelligence. Primarily, all chatbots use AI technology, and NLP describes a user’s input such as text or voice to an intent. In these chatbots types, messages are classified to obtain variables for an answer and language parsing is done.
Voice-Enabled Chatbots
Voice-enabled chatbots offer customized experiences for users. They accept user’s input when they talk, act upon their request, reply to their queries, and accomplish creative tasks. Through text-to-speech (TTS) and voice recognition APIs, different businesses now can make their voice-activated chatbots.
Social Messaging Chatbots
These chatbots are integrated within a social messaging platform such as Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Slack. It enables users to directly communicate with the bot as they do with their family or friends.
Service/Action Chatbots
To complete the user’s request, these chatbots collect relevant information from the user. These chatbots are mostly used in the airline industry. It has become easy for customers to check their flight booking, flight reservation prices, and statuses as well.
Context Enabled Chatbots
Contextual chatbots are an advanced form of conversational chatbots. To remember the earlier chats, these chatbots use Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence with particular users to learn and grow. Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa are some examples of context enable chatbots.
Chatbots Types for Businesses
Support Chatbots
Support chatbots are primarily designed to solve problems. They are used in industries such as human resources, retail, digital marketing, and healthcare. They request context awareness, personality, and multi-turn ability. Most of the support chatbots use deep learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to perform actions. Recognition of speech is optional for such chatbots types. They can walk a user through specific business processes and respond to multiple FAQs.
Website Chatbots
If your business website has poor conversion rates, it’s the right time to opt for a website bot. It provides users and visitors with 24/7 response times. An organization will boost lead generation, often having a virtual assistant to answer queries and reserve meetings with customers.
Companies may gather key information during the interactions, such as the name of the prospect, email address, and follow-up phone number. These chatbots help with preparing presentations, schedule meetings with salesperson, managing prospects with high-quality content, and other similar tasks.
Modern website chatbots make it easier to access the clients. When they need help most, sales and marketing departments may use them to initiate discussions with prospects. The bots understand when a visitor opens a sales email and visits a landing page.
Skills Chatbots
Single chatbots are single-turn-type and don’t need contextual awareness. They simply follow a specific order to accomplish an action. Amazon’s Alexa is one of the major examples of skills chatbots. These chatbots require powerful Natural Language Processing features to function efficiently.
Assistant Bots
Assistant bots are good at communicating and answering questions. They efficiently engage the customer queries. Siri by Apple is an example of assistant bots. It not only follows the user’s commands but replies in an entertaining way if it doesn’t understand the query.
Transactional Bots
Transactional bots can be categorized as assistant bots as they occasionally perform some specific actions upon user instructions for different transactions. These transactional bots are used in various industries. They help users to improve their productivity by interacting with external systems.
Technical Classification of Chatbots
Based on advanced technology, different types of chatbots help businesses to grow digitally.
Menu / Button based Chatbots
Menu or button-based chatbots are the most common and used chatbots in today’s marketplace. They are designed to direct a single domain like information about a business. These chatbots need to have character, multi-turn functionality, and knowledge of context. They should be capable of walking a consumer through any business processes and answering a wide range of questions of the FAQ kind.
Keyword Recognition based Chatbots
Keyword-recognition-based chatbots try to hear what users type and respond properly. To decide how to answer the user, these chatbots use customizable keywords. Such kinds of chatbots are slow when they answer similar questions. A hybrid of keyword recognition and menu/button-based chatbots are in trend nowadays. They enable users to choose whether to ask a question directly or make use of the bot’s menu buttons.
Code-based Chatbots
These chatbots have a built-in AI technology and are rendered with frameworks such as the Wi.ai NLP service Facebook Bot Engine or the luis.ai NLP service Microsoft Bot Platform. These tools are best for customer experience, but they can fall short of the over-the-top incorporation of functionalities.
When a business implements the latest automation strategies, it will get improved results, saving time, money, and effort. Different types of chatbots make it easier to connect with clients, add value, and build better customer experiences. Now people shop what and when they want. Anything can be achieved quickly and effortlessly with chatbots, and they have become an immersive way for businesses to connect.
