- AGENCY DIRECTORY

Branding & Creative

Website & Interface

Marketing

Software & App

IT Services

Branding & Creative

Website & Interface

Marketing

Software & App

IT Services

DesignRush Design Awards

Award Winners by Category:

Each month we evaluate and recognize award-winning designs in these industries.

Looking for Inspiration?

Browse the best designs by category:

GET IN TOUCH

Thank you! Our representative will get in touch with you shortly.

We’ll find the best software development companies for you - for FREE!

GET IN TOUCH

I also want to receive DesignRush newsletter.

# What Is A Chatbot?

Software Development

What Is A Chatbot?

Last Updated: November 03, 2023

Chatbots have become a staple in design — from websites to apps and beyond. That's because they are extremely efficient, give users a positive experience, and lead to actions on the part of the consumer that benefit your brand.

Modern businesses can and should integrate chatbots into their business strategy. The best digital agencies understand chatbots' hidden ability to drive sales, increase conversions, and establish a robust and stable brand identity.

So, let's learn more about chatbots and all that they're capable of.

#### Table of Contents

## What Is A Chatbot?

A chatbot is a service powered by a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that you can interact with through a chat interface (Facebook Messenger is a great example of what this may look like).

The purpose of the service varies from website to website and product-to-product. It can serve a value-added function or be just for fun. Chatbots for websites are the most common form, but they can be integrated across all sorts of digital platforms.

Many chatbot designs also incorporate another layer of artificial intelligence called machine learning. This is a complex system where a computer, through analyzing various situations and collecting data, makes fact and behavior-based decisions. It is machine learning that powers a lot of human-like interactions or computer-centric personalization surrounding customers.

Agency name

5(Reviews #)

VISIT WEBSITE

Agency description goes here

Agency name

5(Reviews #)

VISIT WEBSITE

Agency description goes here

Agency name

5(Reviews #)

VISIT WEBSITE

Agency description goes here

## What Can Chatbots Do?

Chatbots recognize trigger points, questions, phrases, and user intent. The first thing you need to understand is that while they are good at this recognition, they aren’t perfect.

Chatbots have an entire mapping process that will help them understand user intent depending on phrasing and beyond. From this, they craft a response from a catalog of pre-installed responses.

If the chatbot is confident enough in its response, it will send out an automated message. If that confidence falls under a certain percentage, the chatbot will invite a customer service agent to join in and continue.

If we want to get more technical with this explanation, we would say that bots use several techniques to map the questions and responses. For example, they use entity recognition — where they look for certain categories, like product name, address, or anything similar.

They also analyze speech parts – nouns, verbs, subjects, and objects in a sentence. Furthermore, good chatbots will analyze customer’s happiness and whether the experience they are receiving is classified as a good one, or if it’s deteriorating and it would best benefit from human intervention.

A chatbot design is equally complicated and simple. They rely heavily on machine learning and artificial intelligence to engage with users and, essentially, figure things out as they go along. But they are a great tool for brands and businesses and can change consumer perceptions for the better going forward.

Chatbots are more popular than ever before, and they can have a major impact on your business.

## How Do Chatbots Work?

The real opportunity around chatbots stems from the fact that people are using messaging platforms more than they are using social networks, and they have been for some time now.

This shift towards message-based apps over social media platforms means that your company’s target audience is more present on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, and other chat services than on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

The underlying benefit of chatbots relates to the potential for designers to get creative and develop new ways that users can interact with chatbots, and for what purposes.

Receive proposals from software development agencies. It’s free.

## Benefits of Chatbots

An increasing number of businesses are using chatbots. They bring a lot to the table — these are just some of the advantages they offer:

- Chatbots can provide instant responses to customer queries, 24/7, reducing the need to wait for human assistance and enhancing the overall customer experience.
- Deploying chatbots can significantly reduce the need for human customer support agents, resulting in cost savings for businesses in the long run.
- Chatbots can handle multiple conversations simultaneously, speeding up response times and increasing the efficiency of customer interactions.
- As the number of customer queries increases, chatbots can easily handle the growing demand without additional resources.
- Advanced chatbots can gather user data and preferences to offer personalized recommendations and tailored responses, making interactions more engaging and relevant.
- Chatbots can collect valuable user data and provide insights into customer behavior, preferences, and pain points, helping businesses make data-driven decisions.
- Chatbots can be programmed to support multiple languages, enabling businesses to cater to a global audience effectively.
- Chatbots can guide users through the sales process, answer product-related questions, and even recommend products, leading to potential leads and conversions.
- Machine learning algorithms allow chatbots to learn from each interaction, improving their responses and becoming more accurate over time.
- Chatbots can handle repetitive and mundane tasks, freeing up human agents to focus on more complex and value-added activities.
- Chatbots can act as virtual assistants, helping users with tasks like setting reminders, scheduling appointments, and providing useful information.

## How To Create a Chatbot for Your Website

Before you decide to build a chatbot, there are some things you need to consider:

- Which interactive element can and should your brand use?
- What will happen if they misunderstand a step, and what are the consequences of this? For example, can they “go back,” or skip steps?
- When should words be replaced with GIFs, emoji, or images — and when should the words only be used?

But remember this: chatbots should empower your customer service, not frustrate your audience.

Throughout the process, remember why you’re doing this in the first place. Why are you wanting to build a chatbot? Is it for customer service? Is it for brand identity? Is it for the user experience?

Your goal will drastically affect the way you approach how to create a chatbot and integrate it into your platform.

Here are some quick tips and tricks for using a chatbot for websites, mobile apps, and beyond:

### You don’t need to be an expert in artificial intelligence.

One concern that many businesses have when they build a chatbot is whether they need to have a bundle of knowledge about artificial intelligence to integrate an effective chatbot.

But that’s not necessarily true. The most important and trickiest part of building a chatbot is the actual user experience itself. Hence, this is where UX designers will come into their own.

Spend time considering how you’re going to integrate the ‘right’ words alongside the additional elements like chat bubbles and emojis to create the best UI and user experience possible.

### Create a personality for your chatbots.

Giving your chatbot a personality is important, and it’s worth considering the implications of the type of personality you opt for.

A great chatbot example of forming a personality around your content is Quartz's news app. It's an ongoing conversation about the news and global economy, but they’ve opted for a light-hearted touch to break up what can naturally be quite heavy or deep reading.

The Quartz app is just one example of how chatbots can be leveraged to provide a far more engaging conversation than the typical blog and comment section usually can provide.

### Create a navigation system that lets users lead the conversation — and go back if necessary.

There’s often a misconception with chatbots that navigation structure and flow go out the window purely because it’s a chat box or message app. You should be thinking about possible scenarios at every stage of the conversation.

### Which interactive element can, and should, the user use?

What will happen if they misunderstand any step, and what are the consequences of this? For example, can they ‘go back’, or skip steps?

When should words be replaced with GIFs, emojis, or images - and when should words always be used?

Users must always have the option to pose different questions and go back, always.

Designing the best chatbot for your brand can uncover faults in these navigations — and the last thing you want is a customer stuck in a “20-questions” scenario without the possibility of backing out, thanks to a misinterpretation in the beginning.

### Use pointers from an existing customer service team.

These are the people who work tirelessly to service a lot of customers, and chances are, they already have well-formulated responses to the questions they habitually receive.

Your customer service team should be your guide through the chatbot mapping process, pointing out trigger points, obvious answers, and possible conversation topics.

### Create a chatbot with a clear purpose.

Don’t try to incorporate everything into one chatbot. Be clear about your goals and create chatbots for your brand accordingly.

You can have a bot that will upsell or offer sales pitches, deals, and promotions, just like you can have a chatbot that offers customer service help, answers simple questions, and more.

### Have a human backup to your chatbot in place as a failsafe.

We can’t stress this enough. You can’t rely on chatbots to handle ALL your customer service needs. You can’t expect them to perform better than humans – yet.

When you create chatbots, it’s important to consider the points where a user may need or be better off with a human to discuss something with. For example, when booking.com released their ‘Booking Assistant’ they opted to include a human backup as part of their customer service team to ensure that should any user get stuck or need additional help there would always be someone readily available.

In their case, a smaller team of customer service employees was able to categorize and address any queries that couldn’t be resolved automatically via the chatbots.

When people are outraged by something, they want to talk about it. And they will likely want to talk to a real person about their issues.

A good, experienced customer service rep can diffuse the situation, offer some perks, and even strengthen the brand loyalty of that customer in ways a bot can’t.

### Let people know — or don’t.

Determine whether you want people to know immediately if they’re chatting with a bot or keep it a secret. It’s entirely up to you and both have their pros and cons.

If people know they’re talking to a chatbot, they won’t be surprised by some answers and mistakes in the conversational process. They’ll be aware and ready for them.

If people don’t know they’re talking to a chatbot, and they expect a human, realizing the contrary might give them some doubts about your intentions. They might be outraged both by the fact that you tried to hide it and by the fact that their complaint hasn’t been heard by a human being.

## Examples Of Chatbots

Let’s see some chatbot examples from brands who use them successfully. This can help you better understand if AI chatbot technology is right for you, or if you should walk away.

### 1. Lyft

Lyft lets you request a ride right from their Facebook messenger app, or you can even use your Amazon Echo to order a ride. They will even let you know of current ETA times, driver’s plate numbers and car model. This AI technology is exceptionally and creates a seamless user experience.

### 2. Starbucks

Order your caffeinated beverage or a snack in advance through text messages or voice commands. You can use the Starbucks chatbot in the Starbucks app — which also increases app engagement and helps them stay relevant.

App abandonment is a real issue, and this chatbot provides Starbucks with continuous use of their app. Not only that, but it also helps customers order in advance, get info about their bill and lets them know when they can pick up the goods.

### 3. Spotify

Spotify uses a Facebook Messenger bot to let people listen to music, search for songs and even share them. If you input some answers, you can get playlist personalization services and recommendations that are based on the genre you’re interested in, your current mood or whether you need something to take your mind off of things to aid you in specific situations like studying.

### 4. Pizza Hut

A simple chatbot in the Facebook Messenger can help you order a pizza in advance, both for delivery and carryout. Also, this chatbot lets you know about current deals and promotions, thus upselling and increasing the total bill and encouraging higher sales.

### 5. Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal cleverly uses Facebook Messenger to deliver stock quotes at customized alert times. You can compare companies, get live stock quotes, research company information and more. This builds the brand up and gives it an authority that is unmatched in the industry.

Chatbots aren't going away anytime soon -- but you can learn how to leverage them throughout your website, apps and mobile sites for meaningful business success.

## Chatbot Technology: Key Takeaways on The Future of Chatbot Design

As mentioned, when you create chatbots, you build emphasize a conversational flow that not only makes sense, but that is engaging, compelling, and results in a user learning something new, buying an item, and having their concerns or queries addressed effectively.

It's an increasingly popular tool that brands should be leveraging to boost customer service, drive conversions, and keep their audience happy. Chatbots are the features of the future — with more businesses working to create chatbots for websites, apps, messaging platforms, and more.

They work to alleviate consumers' stresses, transform client opinions, and lead users on their journey. With the number of people already willing and happy to accept a chatbot design, your business needs to jump on the bandwagon or get left behind.

## Chatbot Technology: FAQs

### What are the different types of chatbots?

While there are tens of different types of chatbots, the most common ones are rule-based chatbots, AI-powered chatbots, and hybrid chatbots.Rule-based chatbots follow pre-defined decision trees and can handle simple queries. AI-powered chatbots use natural language processing and machine learning to understand and respond to complex interactions. Hybrid chatbots combine both rule-based and AI-powered approaches for more effective and versatile conversations.

### What are chatbots used for?

Chatbots are used for a wide range of applications, including customer support, lead generation, sales assistance, appointment scheduling, FAQ handling, personalized recommendations, language translation, virtual assistants, data collection, and analysis, and automating routine tasks.

They improve customer service, save time and costs, enhance user engagement, and enable businesses to scale their operations efficiently.

We’ll find qualified software development agencies for your project, for free.

Tags:

Sumana Ganguly

Former Content Specialist

Sumana Ganguly has over a decade of experience in writing for the tech industry. She started her career at Indus Net Technologies, Embee Software, and Global Info and Solutions System, where she won the Best Content Writer award. As a former writer at DesignRush, she covered insightful tech topics and trends that help companies future-proof their businesses.

Subscribe to Spotlight Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest industry news

Subscribe

### Latest Updates Related to Software Development

By Frosina Stojchevska  |  1 month ago  |  11 min read

By Szabolcs Szecsei  |  1 month ago  |  14 min read

By Szabolcs Szecsei  |  2 months ago  |  13 min read

By Szabolcs Szecsei  |  2 months ago  |  9 min read

### Most Popular Software Development Topics

By Sumana Ganguly  |  1 month ago  |  18 min read

By Sumana Ganguly  |  2 years ago  |  14 min read

By Sumana Ganguly  |  2 years ago  |  14 min read

By Sumana Ganguly  |  1 month ago  |  12 min read

#### For Businesses

#### For Agencies

#### About DesignRush

#### Get in Touch

3479 NE 163rd St #1016

North Miami Beach

FL 33160, United States

© DesignRush 2024, All Rights Reserved
What is a Chatbot Technology? Create the Best ... - DesignRush