Customers are looking for more and better ways to engage with companies:

• 54% of customers say companies need to transform how they engage with them.
• 77% of customers say chatbots will transform their expectations of companies in the next five years.

To respond to this trend, more and more businesses are investing in chatbot solutions and conversational marketing.

What are the next steps for your company? Have you considered investing in the conversational experience yet?

AI Chatbot could be a good fit for your enterprise. 

Learn more about the different types of chatbot platforms and understand what the advantages of an AI Chatbot are – and why large enterprises are embracing this new technology.

What is a chatbot?

A chatbot offers an interface for a human to speak with a machine.

The interaction between a human and a machine can take different shapes, such as text or voice.

Ideally, the person can speak their own language and the chatbot will then interpret it and guide them to the correct destination, deliver the right information, or capture data if needed.

You might have already interacted with a chatbot or a conversational interface such as a virtual assistant. Chatbots can have many different names.

In the world of chatbots, there is no one size fits all. 

Behind these little icons, usually displayed at the bottom right of a website, you’ll find different things with different purposes.

Types of chatbots

The two main categories of chatbots are the rule-based chatbot and the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. 

Rule-based chatbots

Rule-based chatbots use if/then rules to build conversational flows. For instance, if the user answers A,  the bot responds B. If the user answers C, the bot replies D.

The conversations are scripted based on rules predefined by a human. This enables a basic conversation. Rule-based chatbots are simple and do not understand user intent. 

Nevertheless, they are trendy and widely used by SMBs. They are often used for lead generation (capturing contact information). Usually, after 2-3 interactions with a user, the chatbot redirects the conversation to a human.

Rule-based chatbots are for simple use cases, because they are faster to implement than AI chatbots. They offer a backend interface where different scenarios or conversation scripts can be created. 

Once more conversations are created, the system becomes hard to manage. Several scripts have to be maintained, leading to several decision trees and increased complexity

Rule-based chatbots do not scale well and do not offer a personalised experience.

This is why for advanced scenarios, it’s better to look at an AI Chabot.

AI chatbots

AI chatbots, also called Conversational User Interfaces, use Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP).

They are the smartest chatbots available, because they can understand user intention and context. 

By leveraging Natural Language Processing, they have the capabilities to read and understand human languages.

AI chatbots do not come out of the box. They don’t provide a general model, but rather a specific model needs to be trained. AI chatbots must be pre-trained with example phrases given each scenario.  

This means they require more effort to set up, but over time, deliver a better experience to the customer.

Human-to-human chats

Human-to-human chats or live chats are not chatbots, as no machine interferes with the process. It’s a classic conversation between two humans.

So why are they mentioned here? 

Because they are still widely used.

They are often connected with a rule-based chatbot making the first interaction with the customer before handing over to a real person, transitioning to a human-to-human chat.

The main issues with live chats are that they don’t scale and require more human resources. 

On top of that, they don’t always offer a better experience. 

AI chatbots for a convenient customer experience?

What do your customers want? It’s simple: fast and accurate information.

Once they land on your website and look at your products and services, they may not want to search through everything but instead ask a chatbot for information right away.

A chatbot is a perfect channel for increased engagement and to offer a better experience. 

AI chatbots outperform the other types of chatbots. How?

• Users can speak their own language
• Users can get answers anytime as chatbots don’t sleep

AI chatbots are custom solutions leveraging machine learning technology compared to the other chatbots that come prepackaged with a SaaS.

The advantage of a custom solution is that you can integrate the chatbot in your corporate design and have an outstanding visual experience. 

Another benefit of a custom solution is that it has no limit regarding the integration with your core systems. Your core systems will feed the bot with more data.

The chatbot could even deliver a personalised experience to users.

One Inside has built a chatbot for one of the largest insurers in Switzerland.

As you can see below, the chat user interface is neatly integrated into the design of the website.

If the connection between your brand and your customer is key, an AI chatbot is the solution that will enable you to unlock a better experience.

Discover our chatbot module built for Adobe Experience Manager.

The advantages of AI chatbots

AI chatbots offer many advantages compared to other chatbots and even overall as a new engagement channel with your customers.

Let’s summarise the main benefits:

Always available

Your client can ask a question in the middle of the night. A chatbot never sleeps.

Scalable

With conversations growing over time, the likelihood that your client asks you something new is high.  

AI chatbots do not have to be reviewed. You don’t need to create a new decision tree to cover additional customer requests. They learn from each interaction.

Smarter over time

Their core feature: learning.

AI chabots learn over time, based on previous conversations and the collected user data. 

This will lead to a more sophisticated solution over time, that is more efficient at dealing with customer requests.

Flexible

AI chatbots don’t come pre built or pre configured out of the box as rule-based ones. 

This could look like a disadvantage at first, but it provides freedom for your business:

• You adapt the system based on your needs.
• You leverage the underlying machine learning model and design it to the specificities of your business.

Coherent branding and user experience

Do you want your company to look like your competitors? Or do you want the experience you offer to your customers to be unique and reflect your company identity?

AI chatbots outperform rules-based chatbots by making it easy to adapt to corporate design and integrate with your website.

AI chatbots use data and context smartly making conversations and user experience more satisfying for your customers.

Data ownership and security

AI chatbot solutions offer more flexibility and options regarding the management and processing of user information. 

They make it possible to run the entire solution on premise and therefore keep customer data in the company servers as well as the AI model needed for handling customer intent.

These requirements are essential for companies in the financial sector.

Integrated

Flexibility and data ownership lead to a more integrated system. 

Does your company need to use CRM data to get more context about customers? 

During the integration of an AI chatbot, connections with third party systems can be set up. You can leverage internal sources as well as any external services if needed.

Personalised

The data collected from your core system enables the bot to get more information about the customer, like purchase history or various touchpoints with your company.

This can help enable more personalised conversations and increase client satisfaction and brand loyalty.

Conversation analytics

The interaction between your client and the chatbot produces a lot of data. 

It’s a great way to grasp the questions and topics that are important to your customers. You get insights into their needs and can even foresee new trends in their behaviors.

The analysis of conversations helps in many ways:

• You can create better content marketing, aligned with customer expectations.
• You can share needs and trends with your business partners, product managers or sales staff to help them create new and improved offerings.

Reduce costs

An AI chatbot is an investment but costs compare well to other chat solutions

Chatbots answer client requests faster than a human operator and can handle multiple conversations at the same time.

Enterprise-Grade Solution

Most SaaS companies offering chatbot solutions are targeting SMB. Their Rule-based chatbot solutions were not developed with the needs of large enterprises in mind. 

Should you invest in AI chatbots?

Well, it depends. What are your goals for the conversational experience?

Do you want something simple to cover a basic scenario? Then a rule-based chatbot may be right for you. 

If you want a seamless experience and if you’re going to make better decisions based on client conversation data, then it may be better to invest in an AI chatbot solution right away

The initial cost might be higher, but. it will be cheaper than switching from one solution to another later on. And in the long run, you will benefit from scalable communication with your customers.

Our experts can help you define the best approach for your business, followed by the design and implementation of a robust solution tailored to your needs.

Samuel Schmitt

Digital Solution Expert