What is an AI Chatbot? Top 5 Must-Have Artificial Intelligence Features
No question, AI-powered chatbot software, after a bit of a bumpy start when they emerged in the market as scripted rule-based bots, has evolved to revolutionize customer service, user support, and knowledge management. Once the technology grew in sophistication and became informed by Natural Language Processing and Natural Language Understanding (NLP/NLU), the emergence of a true virtual assistant was a certainty. Today’s AI chatbot software is revolutionizing the entire concept of communication and we’re summarizing the top features you’ll need to have the best chatbot software for your business.
What is an AI Chatbot?
AI chatbots are computer programs that use artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to understand and answer customer questions automatically by simulating voice or text chat responses in a human-like conversation. It can be integrated into customer service, mobile apps, and websites to provide real-time automation and instant support to customers.
Features of the Best AI Chatbots
Nearly every business wants to incorporate chatbot software or Artificial Intelligence chatbots onto their website. Leading-edge AI capabilities streamline interaction, scale support for remote working, enable self-service and autonomy in resolving requests, and boost productivity dramatically while saving costs. Additionally, chatbots deliver unparalleled insights into customer data for informed sales leads, upselling and cross-selling, and timely responses to emerging trends. The right chatbot can save millions of dollars, boost customer satisfaction scores, and handle increasingly complex use cases. Everybody wins.
With the vitality of the chatbot phenomenon comes a span of choices for organizations. There are many chatbot software on the market now, and selecting the optimal one can have a major impact on the benefits and value you realize from your investment. Nobody wants an “also-ran” chatbot that lacks essential features! But at the same time, you want to invest in chatbot capabilities that serve your markets, use cases, and target audiences without adding options you don’t need. If you’ve decided to enrich your website with AI-powered chatbot software, let’s look into the five “must-have” features that comprise the Best AI Chatbot.
Best AI Chatbot Software Feature #1 - Unsupervised AI Learning (NLP/NLU)
Unsupervised AI learning is at the foundation of the Best AI Chatbot. Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa are examples of consumer-oriented, data-driven, predictive chatbots. They are advanced, intuitive, capable, personalized, and sophisticated. To achieve this level of usefulness and popularity, an AI chatbot must be contextually aware —and the only route to that is through NLP/NLU.
Machine learning (ML) is also vital to your chatbot’s ability to acquire new knowledge in the course of its operation. The Best AI Chatbot calls upon predictive intelligence and analytics to personalize a response based on user profiles; it remembers a user’s preferences and offers solutions and recommendations or makes informed guesses at a customer’s future needs.
Best AI Chatbot Software Feature #2 - Omnichannel Messaging
The Best AI Chatbot recalls past interactions with every user over every channel—whether online, via SMS, web portal, or phone. It pulls from a user’s information, order history, previous purchases, and other data to carry out accurate, relevant, and pleasing conversations. It resolves user issues in a matter of seconds.
People today have an almost limitless spectrum of channels to carry out their business and lifestyle needs. They switch among channels with agility and expect the bot to respond and keep pace.
Your ideal chatbot must also be able to communicate seamlessly on whatever channel the user prefers. So an omnichannel messaging platform is the key to a positive user experience and quick self-service resolution of customer, agent, and employee service issues. The omnichannel is broad and growing, so the bot must be capable of performing across that every-widening spectrum.
That includes enterprise messengers like Skype and MS Teams; social messengers like Twitter and FB Messenger; voice assistance like that offered by Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant; email, and web/mobile apps. At the heart of the omnichannel are NLU and NLP, which guarantee that your chatbot both understands and interprets communications properly and responds in a personally relevant way to conversations, whatever the relevant topic.
Best AI Chatbot Software Feature #3 - A No-Code Visual Flow Builder
Building an AI Chatbot should be easy, intuitive, and hassle-free. That means code-free as well—even drag-and-drop! Look for a visual flow builder that tailors to your uses and enables zero-code bot building, enabling you to design and customize your bot directly on the platform without calling on technical knowledge.
Without coding proficiency, you can now construct a powerful bot that starts delivering benefits from day one. Your visual flow builder lets you automate resolutions for basic customer issues and ensure productive interactions with your customer.
The Best Conversational AI Platform also uses machine learning to continuously improve its performance and adjust your bot’s workflows. You can tweak and customize the bot to map to new business trends, initiatives, and customer feedback. Jump on opportunities and watch the responses soar.
AI Chatbot Software Feature #4 - Live Chat Handover & Intelligence
There comes a time in some interactions when a human is needed to resolve an issue. That’s why the Best AI Chatbot allows smooth human handover at the right moment. The chatbot is engineered to handle two scenarios: 1) when the bot cannot accommodate the complexity of the query; and 2) when the user prefers (or insists on) interacting with human support.
Bots need a special type of intelligence to intuit and analyze a growing sense of urgency or complexity when participating in a conversation. This capability preserves the value of the chatbot by informing it when to relinquish the interaction and hand it over to a human. For example, when a chatbot taking an online order cannot understand or carry out the request, it can hand off the conversation to a human promptly, avoiding frustration and protecting a positive outcome.
It’s the NLP technology that empowers a chatbot to analyze whatever sentiment a user is communicating and detect dissatisfaction, for example. At that point, the call or other channel can connect smoothly to a live agent for personalized, hands-on help and engagement.
Even after the agent engages, some chatbots can continue to support the process by forwarding background information on the caller’s location (even street or ZIP code!).
The chatbot can also apprise the agent of prior transactions and any pertinent data about the user. So the Best AI Chatbot can continue working even when not expressly called upon, and help both the agent and caller to enjoy a satisfying, successful experience.
Best AI Chatbot Software Feature #5 - Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis is one of the newest and most amazing functions of AI. How the chatbot can interpret the intent behind a user’s query, understand sentiment from the tone of voice, and respond appropriately is an extremely valuable skill when customers are often short of time and temper. Even when sentence structure, spelling, or grammar are inconsistent, ambiguous, or informal, like jargon or slang, the chatbot can intuit the meaning and enhance the experience.
Like humans, Conversational AI and Chatbots also learn quickly and store away that knowledge for future use. The bot thus becomes more intelligent, insightful—and functional—with each interaction. In the past, a chatbot could do little more than parrot its responses; the ability to decipher customer attitude was speculative at best.
But today’s narrative mapping technology enables the bot to pick out important words and assign them a relative value: positive, neutral, or negative. This informs the bot’s “understanding” of the mood and tenor of an interaction. The bot can then figure out how to respond to the user and conduct a meaningful dialogue.
Pulling it all together for The Best AI Chatbot Software
The Aisera AI Chatbot is built on NLP/NLU and robotic process automation (RPA). It smoothly interfaces with current systems like Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, Zendesk, and ServiceNow. That means you can offer a service experience for users that boosts customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS) while drastically reducing support and operations costs.
Aisera’s Conversational AI solution empowers customers with an unprecedented level of self-service accompanied by an Alexa-like natural language interface. So Aisera learns as it goes along, and ultimately helps an organization’s competitiveness, growth, and productivity. Aisera is a powerful ally that is available 24/7 and has a built-in mission: to optimize your customer’s experience and grow your business.
Aisera’s AI chatbot resolves most issues in a short span, ensuring that each participant feels understood and acknowledged: customers receive accurate answers with minimum hassle; meanwhile, Aisera liberates employees to focus on more complex and higher-value tasks. If you wish to learn more about the Best AI Chatbot, visit the Aisera website and Request a demo today.