How to Build a Chatbot

Chatbots are increasingly providing helpful tools for online activities. A chatbot is a software trained to communicate with humans through text or voice-based communication. Individuals or businesses of different sizes can use chatbots to enhance their activities and customers' request. Chatbots use Natural Processing Language (NPL) to process, understand and respond to queries by humans. A chatbot can help in lead generation, customer support, e-commerce, and so on.

Benefits: Three Reasons to Build a Chatbot

27/4 Availability and Interactive Brand: Chatbots make your business services available for your customers at all times, especially businesses that have gone global or operate in different time zones. Chatbots will assist your customers through all the buying processes, answer their queries, and respond properly.

Mine Customer Data: Chatbots analyze user inputs. Mined data makes chatbots smarter over time which helps them to provide efficient services. These data can be used to optimize customers’ experience by making available the products and services they mostly sought for.

Optimize Back End Operation: Chatbots optimize internal workflows by improving analytics, automating tasks, improving communication, and reducing errors. Chatbots can be programmed to take up tasks like performing data entry or processing customer requests thereby reducing the workload on human employees. Chatbots enhance accuracy by reducing human errors, which benefits businesses that prioritize accurate data for decision-making.

Types of Chatbot

Rule Based-Chatbot: Rule-based chatbots are programmed to follow a certain set of instructions and respond based on a rigid script. Rule-based chatbots can not process complex tasks. Easier to develop and maintain than other types of chatbots.

AI-Powered Chatbot: AI-powered chatbots are smart and intelligent chatbots, that use Natural Language Processing (NPL), Machine Learning (ML), in addition to other AI techniques, to process, understand and give personalized and contextualized responses. AI-powered chatbots keep track of conversations which improves their responses over time and their understanding of the user's intent.

Hybrid Chatbot: Hybrid chatbots do the work of both rule-based and AI-based chatbots. Simple tasks or queries are handled by a predefined set of rules while complex tasks are accomplished with an AI-powered algorithm. Hybrid chatbots are double-faceted, they provide a robust user experience.

Steps to Building a Chatbot with No Coding Experience

Yes, you heard me right! You can build a chatbot with no coding experience. The following step will guild you to create your chatbot:

Definitive Purpose

The question is, why are you building a chatbot? What do you plan to achieve for your customer? Answering these questions will help your type of chatbot, its functionality, and your target audience. This is the most important step in building a chatbot.

Select a Chatbot Platform

A Chatbot platform is a software tool that provides developers, businesses, or individuals with the infrastructure and tools to build, deploy and manage chatbots. The platform will enable you to create and integrate a chatbot into your websites, mobile apps, or messaging apps. You need to compare different chatbot platforms to know the one that fits into your designated chatbot design. Chatbot platforms are designed for an easy development process, facilitating chatbots' development and deployment. These platforms can be used by individuals or businesses of different sizes. Chatbot platform is of two main types:

• No-Code-Based Platforms: No-code platforms help you to create and deploy a chatbot without any prior knowledge of coding. These platforms provide various templates and sometimes drag-and-drop tools for the quick creation of chatbots. No-code platforms make it easier for individuals or small businesses with no knowledge or limited resources in coding to create and manage a chatbot.

• Code-Based Platforms: Code-based platforms help developers to create and deploy complicated and sophisticated chatbots using programming language and frameworks. Code-based platforms require software developers with coding skills and knowledge of programming languages such as Python, Javascript, and Java.

However, the following are different kinds of chatbot platforms but are not limited to them:

Chatfuel

Google Dialogflow

RASA

Microsoft Bot Framework

IBM Watson Assistant and so on.

Design the conversation flow

This step is about designing how you want your chatbot to interact with users. To design the conversation flow, you need to be well-informed about the goals and expectations of the users. Aim at providing a positive, engaging, and easy-to-talk-to chatbot that meets the user’s needs. Depending on your choice of design, you might need a developer's expertise.

Train the Chatbot

Chatbots are trained by learning from a wide range of data, to understand the pattern and respond to user input. Natural Processing Language (NPL) and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques are used to train chatbots. The following are steps on how to train a chatbot:

• Data collection: Chatbots learn from different data sets. For example, collecting data from conversations between sales personnel and customers. Chatbots learn from these pieces of information to determine the best ways to respond to customers. Chatbots get smarter over time as it keeps learning from mined data.

• Data cleaning: Data are cleaned to remove all the unnecessary irrelevant information for a chatbot to learn. For example, customers’ personal information and so on.

• Natural Language Processing: Natural Language Processing (NLP) processes the cleaned data to help the chatbot analyze and understand the intent of the customer to provide appropriate responses.

• Machine Learning: Following the cleaning and processing of data, the machine learning algorithm detects the different patterns in the data, recognize the intent of the customer, and then gives appropriate responses that are personalized.

  Training a chatbot improves its accuracy and efficiency.

Deployment

Chatbot deployment is making the chatbot available for users. You can deploy your chatbot through different channels, for example using a chatbot platform that provides a deployment service, builds a custom deployment pipeline, or uses a cloud service provider to host the chatbot. The deployment method is dependent on the chatbot project. Deploying a chatbot involves the following step:

• Hosting

• Integration

• Configuration

• Testing

• Launching

Test the Chatbot

Testing a chatbot evaluates its performance and fixes any bug that might be present. Chatbot is tested for its functionality, accuracy, scalability, and user experience. A chatbot is tested for its functionality, to make sure it understands and interprets the user's input correctly. The accuracy test makes sure it maintains consistency and accurate responses for different forms of the same question. For scalability, the chatbot should be able to deal with high volumes of user inputs. Finally, feedback from users who have accessed the chatbot is essential. Testing a chatbot is making sure it's functional, gives accurate results, and is scalable. The following are the steps to test your chatbot:

• Functional Testing

• User Interface Testing

• Performance Testing

• Integration Testing

• Security Testing

Conclusion

In summary, anyone can build a chatbot with or without coding experience. By following these simple guidelines, individuals and businesses of different sizes can build a chatbot to automate their services.