ChatBots Are Such A Big Opportunity

Aparna Madhuraj | Oct. 20, 2020, 9:18 p.m.

We put the conversation back in conversational marketing. We support companies in their transition in audience engagement by moving from 1 way communication to personalised 1-on-1 conversations using the latest innovations in the field of bot technology. Keeping you connected and engaged with your audience

The Complete Beginner’s Guide To Chatbots

Why are they such a big opportunity? How do they work? How can I build one? How can I meet other people interested in chatbots?

These are the questions we’re going to answer for you right now.

Ready? Let’s do this.

What Is A Chatbot?

A chatbot is a service, powered by rules and sometimes artificial intelligence, that you interact with via a chat interface. The service could be any number of things, ranging from functional to fun, and it could live in any major chat product (Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, Text Messages, etc.).

Examples of Chatbots

Here are a couple of other examples:

Weather bot. Get the weather whenever you ask.
Grocery bot. Help me pick out and order groceries for the week.
News bot. Ask it to tell you when ever something interesting happens.
Life advice bot. I’ll tell it my problems and it helps me think of solutions.
Personal finance bot. It helps me manage my money better.
Scheduling bot. Get me a meeting with someone on the Messenger team at Facebook.
A bot that’s your friend. In China there is a bot called Xiaoice, built by Microsoft, that over 20 million people talk to.

See? With bots, the possibilities are endless. You can build anything imaginable, and I encourage you to do just that.

But why make a bot? Sure, it looks cool, it’s using some super advanced technology, but why should someone spend their time and energy on it?

Why Chatbots Are Such A Big Opportunity

You are probably wondering “Why does anyone care about chatbots? They look like simple text based services… what’s the big deal?”

Great question. I’ll tell you why people care about chatbots.

It’s because for the first time ever people are using messenger apps more than they are using social networks.

**“People are now spending more time in messaging apps than in social media and that is a huge turning point. Messaging apps are the platforms of the future and bots will be how their users access all sorts of services.”

So, logically, if you want to build a business online, you want to build where the people are. That place is now inside messenger apps.

This is why chatbots are such a big deal. It’s potentially a huge business opportunity for anyone willing to jump headfirst and build something people want.

How Chatbots Work

There are two types of chatbots, one functions based on a set of rules, and the other more advanced version uses machine learning.

What does this mean?

Chatbot that functions based on rules:

This bot is very very limited. It can only respond to very specific commands. If you say the wrong thing, it doesn’t know what you mean.
This bot is only as smart as it is programmed to be.

Chatbot that functions using machine learning:

This bot has an artificial brain AKA artificial intelligence. You don’t have to be ridiculously specific when you are talking to it. It understands language, not just commands.
This bot continuously gets smarter as it learns from conversations it has with people.

Bots are created with a purpose.

    A store will likely want to create a bot that helps you purchase something, where someone like **Botfrnd** might create a bot that can answer customer support questions.

How To Build Chatbots

Building a chatbot can sound daunting, but it’s totally doable. You’ll be creating an artificial intelligence powered chatting machine in no time (or, of course, you can always build a basic chat bot that doesn’t have a fancy AI brain and strictly follows rules).

You will need to figure out what problem you are going to solve with your bot, choose which platform your bot will live on (Facebook, Slack, etc), set up a server to run your bot from, and choose which service you will use to build your bot.