Chatbots, voicebtos, conversational AI FAQ

Questions and answers

What is conversational AI?

Conversational AI is an umbrella term describing a variety of techniques and solutions designed to simulate a conversation with a person. Conversational AI has a broad range of applications and can be found everywhere from customer service and marketing to even our smartphones.

What are chatbots?

Chatbots are computer programs designed to accomplish tasks through simulated conversations. They employ a wide range of technologies such as natural language processing, voice recognition and machine learning.

What can chatbots do?

Although it might be tempting to answer “everything”, chatbots are most commonly used to automate recurring tasks in fields such as customer service and marketing. Chatbots can support customers in accomplishing everyday tasks such as checking the status of a parcel, account balance, or scheduling meetings. More sophisticated chatbots can take care of more complicated tasks.

What is the difference between a virtual assistant and a chatbot?

The term “virtual assistant” is most commonly used to describe programs such as Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa. Unlike chatbots, they are designed to be used for a staggeringly wide range of tasks throughout the day – as such they are designed with a much larger feature set. Instead of handling a small selection of tasks, they need to understand how to play music, look up information online, check the weather, send messages, and more.

What is the advantage of using online chat for customer support?

Online chat is one of the most accessible ways of communication with customers. Because it’s a text-based medium, it lends itself to automation exceptionally well. Chatbots deployed to handle online chats can take care of the most common tasks, reducing the load on your customer service department.

What is a deep learning AI?

Deep learning is a category of machine learning which mimics the neurological processes taking place inside the human brain. The main advantage of this approach is that such an AI can learn without human supervision, based on unlabeled or unstructured data. This approach requires more computational resources than other methods of machine learning.

Can Alexa call 911?

Alexa itself cannot make phone calls, but by pairing the device with third-party solutions calling 911 and other emergency services becomes possible. Virtual assistants found on smartphones, such as Google Assistant and Siri can call 911 natively. Those found in smart home appliances, such as the Amazon Echo, are bound by federal regulations in the United States and cannot call by themselves.

Is Alexa always listening?

Yes, although everything Alexa hears goes into a small internal buffer. The contents of this buffer are constantly overwritten – it can only store the last couple of seconds of audio. This buffer is searched for Alexa’s wake word; according to Amazon, Alexa devices don’t make contact with Amazon’s servers until a wake word and command are detected.

What is machine learning and what are its uses?

Machine learning is a field of computer science designed to provide AI systems with the means to constantly learn and self-improve their behaviour on their own. Different types of machine learning, such as voice or image recognition have found applications in chatbots, self-driving vehicles, business automation and many other fields.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of AI?

AI is powerful – it can perform sophisticated tasks with a high degree of accuracy. The technology is constantly making breakthroughs in order to achieve new capabilities. However, the field requires a degree of effort and technical expertise in order to fully spread its wings. AI is also only as good as the data it’s trained on – care must be taken not to imbue the AI with the biases of its human creators.

How is AI programmed?

Depending on the sophistication of the AI and its application, it can be programmed in a variety of ways. For simple chatbots, all that’s really required is a scripting language such as Python and a relatively small training dataset. More robust applications require entire systems running across a distributed network or in the cloud.

Do virtual assistants spy on you?

According to companies behind the most popular virtual assistants, the information collected by such programs is only used to improve the software. This claim is contested by privacy advocates and various government agencies. The collection and further usage of sensitive data is subject to various regulations, such as the European Union’s GDPR.

Is AI dangerous?

Although Hollywood likes to play with the trope of a runaway artificial intelligence causing the annihilation of the human race, modern AI is far from gaining sentience and turning on us. AI is a commonly used technology with various positive applications across a diverse spectrum of fields – the management of nuclear weapons or other dangerous activities not being on the list.

What are software bots?

Software bots are programs designed to perform certain tasks autonomously – that is, without customer supervision. There are a lot of different types of bots: some are used to answer questions (chatbots), while others are used to organise data and prepare reports, perform analyses of datasets, et cetera.

How does a chatbot learn?

The answer to this question can vary depending on the methodology behind a chatbot. In a general sense, however, chatbots learn by comparing new data to what it already knows. By finding the closest possible match, they are able to classify new statements and add them to their repertoire. Some oversight is required in order to ensure a lack of false positives and misclassifications.

Do chatbots increase sales?

Yes. Chatbots can be used to classify and reach out to potential leads, offer new deals based on detected customer interests, and more. When integrated within a larger customer service and marketing strategy, they can help convert interested parties into paying customers.

How can chatbots improve customer service?

Chatbots improve customer service by providing quick answers and results when dealing with the most commonly repeated questions and tasks. Because they take on the bulk of inquiries, the rest of the customer service department is freed up to devote more time and care to more complex tickets.

Are chatbots expensive?

No. Chatbots are a widely available service with healthy competition across different markets – as a result, they are easily accessible and affordable. There are off-the-shelf solutions which allow companies to create their own chatbot in-house at a minimal cost, as well as chatbot service providers which offer tailored solutions to customers.

How complicated is chatbot technology?

This depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. If you’re trying to write your own chatbot from scratch, obviously that requires some programming skill and familiarity with the inner workings of chatbot programs. If you’re a company looking to deploy a chatbot, however, you’re in luck – many service providers offer easy to use chatbot creators which allow anyone to program their own bot without the need for sophisticated technical knowledge.

What AI techniques are used in chatbots?

chatbots primarily use some form of machine learning and natural language processing. Voicebots additionally use voice recognition algorithms.

How does AI help marketing?

AI helps marketing in many ways. Social listening algorithms make use of AI and machine learning to comb through large social media datasets in order to identify new trends. Intent recognition algorithms can be used to detect and classify potential leads for your sales department to follow up on. Other AI-based algorithms can be used to gauge the effectiveness of marketing campaigns in real time, on a much more granular level than standard marketing reporting techniques.

How to choose a chatbot implementation partner?

Although more mundane aspects such as pricing play a significant role in making your final choice, there are other aspects to consider. Look to each potential partner’s history of implementations. Do they publish case studies? Do they have experience and the dataset to work within your market niche?

What are the benefits of AI-based chatbots?

AI-based chatbots are much more robust than the ones based on predetermined scenarios. The most important advantage is their capability to learn and improve – within a short time, they are able to cover a wider range of variations in user statements. They can learn to recognise different accents, regionalisms and idioms and provide accurate responses without human oversight.

What are the types of chatbots?

There are two main types of chatbots. Rule-based chatbots, also known as scenario-based chatbots only work within predetermined scenarios – they can’t learn and adapt to new situations without human intervention. AI-based chatbots, conversely, learn from interactions and improve themselves, leading to much greater accuracy.

How do voice bots work?

Voicebots work in much the same way as text-based chatbots. Instead of using textual analysis to determine the context and intent of every statement, however, they employ voice recognition in order to process new information.

How to measure chatbot effectiveness?

Chatbot effectiveness can be measured using several metrics, the most important of which are the percentage of cases solved without human intervention and the percentage of cases transferred to human agents.

What communication channels can be automated?

The communication channels that best lend themselves to automation are text and voice channels, such as online chat and phone calls. Chatbots can be deployed to both at minimal cost in order to provide around-the-clock access and faster response times.

How to ensure chatbot security, especially for sensitive data?

Much like any application handling sensitive data, chatbots are subject to regulations such as the European Union’s GDPR, which lay out guidelines and procedures for the safe handling and processing of sensitive data. Service providers are required to provide transparent information about their privacy and data protection policies.

Case studies

Use cases

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Chatbots, voicebots, and conversational AI frequently asked questions

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