Exploring the world of chatbots: Chatbot-land

In a cloud on the internet, there lived a bot. It was not just any bot, it was a specialized computer program known as Chatbot. It was part of a great family of often misunderstood programs that could talk to human beings.

Among them, there was not one bot to rule them all, but a wide array of chatbots with different skills and talents. Each one designed to work together with a business to make their world a better, more profitable place.

Chatbots can have many talents

To help you understand their ways, this post will guide you through a map of chatbot-land. We drew it with the help of our team of experts and divided it into regions to make it easier to understand. Each bot can have talents that come from multiple regions and derives its unique powers from them.

We will start with one of the more relatable parts: language. Like human beings, chatbots can speak one or more languages, and they can use their skills to interact with humans or to serve as translators. Unlike humans though, they can learn new languages very quickly and hold multiple conversations, in different languages, at the same time.

Going beyond human language

Bot interactions can also transcend human languages, allowing them to talk directly to other bots and computer systems. The data they obtain can be used in a variety of ways. In the Data Integration region, we can see basic bots that can guide the users through a local knowledge database like an FAQ or through a decision tree, and more advanced bots can go out and seek the information on the company’s own systems or from public sources on the web.

This means that if you are, for example, a travel company a simple bot would be able to answer questions that match the FAQs but a more advanced one could seek out weather information online or talk to the company’s booking engine to find additional information.

Moreover, looking at the Tasks region we can see that the bot can also redirect the user to external information, provide it directly, or initiate a conversation based on the information it has received from elsewhere.

How chatbots interact with the world

The tasks Region is closely related to two of its neighbors, Engagement, and Dialogue. Engagement is a land roamed by chatbots that range from young, simple ones that can only give basic responses, to more developed ones that can personalize replies and even detect a person’s mood. In its neighbor, Dialogue, we can see how these interactions can go from explicit, one-way interactions, to situations where the bot guides the user through a task or engages in an interactive two-way conversation.

To complete our exploration we will visit one, more familiar, area: Channels. Exploring the Channels region we find basic bots that can only use one channel, others that have access to several, and some advanced omnichannel bots that can continue a conversation across different channels.

In some industries where clients tend to reach out simultaneously across different channels, having an omnichannel bot that can string together these conversations can make all the difference. In others, it may add unnecessary complexity to the system.

Each company will require a unique setup, and we hope that this post helps bring some clarity to those of you that are thinking of joining this revolution.

If you are interested in learning more, our team of experts will be glad to help you identify opportunities, clarify the requirements and make the best choices. To get in touch with them please use the contact link below.