15 Jul 16 How to build chatbot

The current era is completely dependent on Internet and human are living on social networking platforms. Everybody is sharing their thoughts and life on Facebook and communicating with people around the World through Messenger. The bots can easily explore and learn anything you want using this communication medium. Bots will replace and render many jobs extinct. Continue reading to learn how to make your chatbot.

If we talk about Messenger platform, then chatbots are now able to deliver so many things that previously done by team of people. It includes some custom and automated communications such as traffic details, weather updates, shipping notifications and other subscription services as well. The messenger bots are not only able to respond to plain text but also in media contents with attached call-to-action interactions. These bots are really amazing considering the way they interact with users and save their lots of time. People will simply ask questions with your chatbot and wait to respond them rather than waiting to talk to any customer care guy.

But it is not trivial when it comes to developing it and I had a talk with my friend over lunch about the same. He asked me some very basic but intrigue questions. Below are some of them.

Q: What are the fundamentals you need to know before developing a messenger bot?

A: The fundamental requirements for developing messenger bots are as follows:

Goal or purpose of your chatbot (very important)

A complete dictionary of possible questions and all possible answers, can be asked by end user.

Make the responses clear, specific and informative and

Work on your bot to make it more like human, give it multiple answers for same questions to not sound like robot when user ask same question again.

Q: What is the process of developing a facebook bot?

A: The process becomes very simple if you know how a bot framework(Facebook Messenger API) works. One should need a Facebook page, then they will set webhooks on a Facebook app which is used to handle request response between your client and Facebook APIs. If you are really trying to create a bot that can compete in the market then it is important that you understand the APIs properly and also how messenger platform can handle the responses different types of responses like cards or multiple options.

Q: For whom the bots are developed?

A: Until now, these chatbots are generally built for those clients who want their system to be more automated. The technology can be used to replace operators by chatbots in order to save end user's time and effort. The technology is quite new and hence there are customers that still don't know about it. We are delivering these services to our customers in order to simplify their any kind of customer service process.

Q: Is there any challenge which came across making the chat bot?

A: The most difficult part of developing a bot is to concentrate on the script which is going to generate a response for end users. The responses are generated by the keywords present in user's question. You must have a huge dictionary or complex script to almost understand everything that user can ask. It will let your bot behave more like human.

Q: Why some people used to say bots are slow?

A: The bots are not slow but your script is. The bots need to understand the question, request several APIs to generate a response and then deliver the same to end user. All these operations are time-consuming and especially when these chatbots need to learn everything by themselves, using previous conversations with users. Typical script based bots are really fast as they only need to understand a handful of scenario.

Q: How to make bot more like a human?

A: Initially it is not possible to pretend all the situations and possibilities how the bot will behave. But it can be determined to maintain those cases where the bot can behave more like a human. It must not reveal that it is working completely on some predefined script. The aim of using bots is not to replace human operators with it but to save time, improve execution, and maximize user experience etc.

Q: What are things to remember while building bots?

A: The very first thing developers must understand that they are not going to build actual AI from scratch. In order to develop your bot to perform more efficiently, you need to dig deep into the activities of your customers on Facebook. You must take extra precautions when you are generating an answer for your bots and also consider the sources as well. The development doesn't end at one time. One must record analytics, track, learn and improve it on a regular basis in order to improve user experience at the end.

Q: How these Bots are going to change the IT world?

A: The current era is completely dependent on Internet and human are living on social networking platforms. Everybody is sharing their thoughts and life on Facebook and communicating with people around the World through Messenger. The bots can easily explore and learn anything you want using this communication medium. The aim is to provide services all the time and not stick with the office hours only. It can also be used to help people when they are actually looking for some kind of urgent help. Bots will replace and render many jobs extinct.

We'd love to hear your idea about bot, if you need help with your next bot project then contact us at chatbot@veloxcore.com or call us.

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