A Chatbot Software Ultimate Guide for your Business (100% fluff-free)

Human conversation with Machines has undergone rapid changes in recent years. The developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technology have brought a revolutionary change in Human-Machine Interaction methods. Human interaction with Machines is no longer mere command-oriented. Instead today humans can converse with Machines in Natural Language. In other words, conversing with a machine is as good as conversing with a human being. So, this development has led business players to use chatbot software or virtual assistants in their business interactions.

The Inside Stuff

So, this Chatbot Software ultimate guide is an effort to educate readers on types of Chatbots, application of Chatbots in various business domains, popular Chatbot building platforms for your specific business needs, and introduce salient features of Chatbots developed by big corporations like Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.

What is a Chatbot Software?

Chatbot Software is also known as a Virtual Assistant or a Virtual Agent. This software is used to establish conversations with external stakeholders like customers or internal stakeholders namely employees. The conversation or chat can be either in text or voice form. In simple terms, Chatbot Software exhibits the capability to interact with you asIf you are conversing with another human being. 

Chatbots Classification

Broadly chatbots are categorized into two types: 

1. Scripted or pre-programmed Chatbots (Rule-based Chatbots)
2. AI-based or self-learning Chatbots

Rule-based chatbots have a predefined set of scripts using which they can answer to customer’s queries. They do not have self-learning abilities. For example, Chatbots of corporate websites answering FAQs fall under this category. Menu/Button Chatbots are the best examples for Rule-based chatbots. They operate similar to automated Phone-Menus using the options a user selects.

AI-based self-learning chatbots have the ability to learn on their own. Initially, they are trained using a sample dataset. For example, voice-based Virtual assistants like Siri or Alexa learn to interpret new human voices they come across in their journey.

AI-based self-learning chatbots are further classified into two types:

1. Keyword recognition-based Chatbots
2. Contextual (AI) Chatbots

Keyword recognition-based chatbots operate by listening to or recognizing questions typed by the users.  They extract important keywords from the user query and try to answer them. For example, if a user has a question ‘How do I install Whatsapp in my Phone? the bot would likely use the keywords ‘install’, ‘Whatsapp’, and ‘Phone’, and responds appropriately.

In simple Contextual (AI) Chatbots can analyze a web user’s behavior to identify their interests and needs. Followed by analysis they proactively offer suggestions and solutions for that user. For example, a user interested to know about discount offers on a product is provided with instant promo-code popups.

                       Chatbot Software Hierarchical Classification

Why Your Business Needs Chatbots?

Always, The Customer is King. Customer Experience (CX) has paramount importance in today’s business world. Employing chatbot software enhances both productivity and CX in the following ways.

1. 24/7 customer support can be provided.
2. Next is, Instantly answering your customer queries is possible.
3. More importantly, Your business can be easily made scalable.
4. Further Offers the right product and service to your customers.
5. Tech-Savvy Y-Generation customers can be attracted.
6. Using chatbot software is more effective than developing an app.
7. Business Lead-Capture becomes efficient.
8. Chatbots can empower support, sales, and marketing departments equally. 

Some Interesting Applications of Chatbots in Business 

• FAQ Chatbots are the simplest chatbots that can provide instant answers to customer queries. usually, they assist website visitors to instantaneously collect information extracted from the website. The best example of an improvised FAQ chatbot developed by eBay online retailer is called ShopBot. It not only provides information about services but also on inventory. It helps customers to choose products based on item, brand name, and price. 
• Entertaining Chatbots are employed by many restaurants and food outlets to keep customers happy. For example, Starbucks coffee outlet has a superstar chatbot called Pumpkin Spice that chats with customers and entertains them.
• Airline Chatbots are used by many Airways to issue boarding passes, give booking confirmation, provide check-in information, etc. For example, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines’ chatbot is known for having issued more than 50,000 boarding passes in a span of three weeks.  

Chatbots as Relationship Builders: Chatbots can act like teachers by imparting knowledge or skills relevant to products. They take an intermediary place between playful and practical bots. For example, Unilever company promotes its Signal Pepsodent Toothpaste by educating kids on ‘Healthy Brushing Habits’ via animated videos.

How to Choose a Chatbot Solution?

Today every organization small, medium, or big needs a Messaging bot or a Voice assistant to keep abreast with the business needs of the market. Here are important parameters to be considered while selecting a Chatbot Software solution that fits into your organization’s needs. 

Chatbot Software development has two

1. Bot-Frameworks

1. Bot-Platforms

In a layman’s language, Bot-Frameworks build bots from scratch. So, in other words, Bot-Frameworks are useful for hard-core programmers who have an in-depth knowledge of technology. Whereas a Marketing head, Customer Relations Executive can also develop and deploy chatbots as per their needs by using Chatbot-Platforms. So, In a nutshell, Chatbot-Platforms are for beginners and Frameworks are for geeks.

Also, Chatbots Software development can be done by both technical experts and executives without much programming knowledge by acclimatizing Chatbot-Platforms. So, if you are an enterprise in the software development domain with programming expertise Bot-Frameworks can be employed. Otherwise, you are in a different domain like finance, education, hospitality, banking, advertising, tourism, etc. utilizing Chatbot-Platforms to develop messengers for your business aptly suits you.

11 Best Chatbot Platform Tools for Your Business

BOT#1.Chattypeople (Now it is acquired by MobileMonkey Chatbot enterprise)

Chattypeople is a chatbot-platform that primarily focuses on deploying chatbots on the Facebook platform. Most importantly it doesn’t expect the developer to have in-depth coding knowledge. Aptly suits small or medium-size organizations looking forward to building enterprise solutions.

So, Important features of Chattypeople that can be explored by you are:

• Build Facebook Messenger bots and Facebook commerce bots
• Integrate Shopify with Facebook easily
• Provides multi-platform support
• Effective bot analytics
• Deploy customized solutions
• AI and ML capabilities

Disadvantage: According to reviewers, online following drawbacks are observed.

• Primarily Focuses on the Facebook platform alone. 

Pricing: It is free to start with but for advanced automation and integration it costs $14.25 per month

BOT#2.Botsify

Botsify is a Chatbot-platform that allows you to develop a chatbot without having programming expertise. It can be used to deploy chatbots to Messenger, Slack, or any website platforms.

So, Key features of Botsify are:

• Can develop Multi-lingual Chatbots
• Provides many chatbot templates
• Ability to store user data
• Bot builder and editor provides a visual flow
• Develop chatbots capable of sending email notifications
• AI/Machine Learning capabilities
• Provide auto-response
• Integrating with other business systems

Disadvantage and Pricing: 

Available on free-trial for only 14 days. The pricing system is also complex with $50 per month for 30 Thousand subscribers and after that, it jumps to $300 per month for unlimited contacts.

BOT#3 Chatfuel

Chatfuel is a chatbot-platform that does need coding experience to develop bots. Moreover, it provides customized coding capabilities which are primarily useful for Facebook messenger development.

Here are the Key features of Chatfuel:

• Provides Bot templates
• Supports Multilingual bots
• Provides keyword auto-responses
• Capable of storing user data
• Capable of integrating with other business platforms

Disadvantage:

According to reviewers following drawbacks are observed

• The main drawback is it does not possess marketing tools.
• Almost limited to Facebook messenger deployment alone.
• Beginners find it difficult to learn this platform as it has numerous Messenger bot builders.
• You have to rely on many third-party tools to get the chatbot up and running.
• Importantly no Machine Learning capabilities.

Pricing: Free version comes with only basic features and for 1000 subscribers. The professional version starts at $15 per month for 500 subscribers. 

BOT#4 Flow XO

is a chatbot-platform that does not demand programming skills from users. It has an easy user interface. And moreover, chatbots can be deployed to not only Facebook but to various platforms like Slack, Telegram, Twilio, webchat. Importantly bots can be integrated with third-party platforms.  

In addition, Key Features of Flow XO are:

• Provides Lead Capture tools
• Comes with virtual mat for visitors
• Provides Live chat capabilities
• Develop chatbots that accept online payments

Limitations:

• According to Reviewers though, the interface looks simple. Developing a functional chatbot in this platform takes a lot of time

Pricing: It is free for beginners and the paid version starts at $19/Month

BOT#5 MobileMonkey

The next bot on our list is Mobile Monkey. It stands out from the crowd as it comes with Free-Forever Edition for basic users. Importantly it is an all-in-one chatbot platform supporting web chat, live chat, SMS, and Facebook Messenger bots. Also, they possess omnichannel marketing features.

In addition, Key Features of Mobile Monkey are:

• Mobile friendly deployment capabilities
• Supports Zapier and other integrations
• Multilingual bots development features
• Numerous chatbot templates
• Capable of Analytics and Report generation
• Supports multi-channel chatbot platforms

Pricing: The biggest advantage is pricing as it comes with a non-expiring version for free. Whereas for advanced automation and integrations it starts at $14.25 per month and goes up to $299 a month. Thus it truly addresses the needs of users at the beginners’ end of the spectrum and highly skilled professionals at the other end of the spectrum.

Limitations:

Do not have a big list of drawbacks except that the interfaces keep updating frequently. So, users have to get adjusted to these frequent changes. 

BOT#6 Botkit (Open Source Bot development Platform)

Botkit started as an open-source bot development platform that has a strong community of 7000 developers contributing to Slack and Github. In addition, recently Botkit was acquired by Microsoft.

In addition, Key features of BotKit are:

• Provides Open Source libraries for developers
• Has Visual conversation builder
• Numerous plugins are available
• Comes with integrated Natural Language Processing Capabilities

   Limitations: 

• If your organization is reluctant to use Microsoft technologies you are forced to use them.
• Only developers working with Node.js have more options

Pricing: Obviously as Botkit started as an opensource platform it is available free of cost. But the paid version starts with $5 per month.

BOT#7 Pandorabots – Creates Human-Like Interaction

Pandorabots is a web-based open source chatbot development platform. Its rich features help developers to build Human-Like interactions.

So, Next, let us focus on Key features of Pandorabots:

• It has Context-Aware capabilities.
• Further, it provides, Multilingual capabilities support writing Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (AIML) scripts in any natural language.
• It also has Voice-Enabled features, Easily text-to-speech, and voice-to-text conversion capabilities.
• Also possess, Cross-Channel capabilities-Easily Deployable to voice and text channels 

Limitations:

• As AIML scripts are used both input/output pairs should be defined
• Also, Developing in one platform and deploying to other platforms is a complex process.

Pricing: Sandbox or basic plan is free of cost. Developers and Professionals versions cost $19 per month to $199 per month.

BOT# 8 IBM Watson Assistant – Chatbot for Multiple Hardware-Software Integration

Further, the next chatbot on our list is ‘IBM Watson Assistant is one step ahead of current-day chatbots,’ says IBM web portal. IBM claims that Watson never tries to just mimic humans. Instead, it knows when to search knowledge-base, when to query users for clarity and when to transfer the question to a human. 

Key Features of IBM Watson are:

• It also ensures a better customer experience
• Further, Users need no coding experience
• Also, It has good Natural Language Understanding (NLU) capabilities
• Also, it can be deployed to any system or channel

Pricing: IBM Watson Assistant comes in two basic plans. Lite and Plus. Lite is free of cost. Plus plan is $120 per month or 1000 users.

BOT# 9 ChatterOn is Non-Coders Delight

ChatterOn comes with 20 pre-built chatbots that can be used as per users’ needs. So, users without any coding experience can utilize these ready-mades to instantly deploy bots. 

In addition,Key Features of Chatterton are:

• Pre-Built Chatbots: No need for coding
• The next feature is, Rich Documentation and Help
• Further, Monetizing the Chatbots with relevant and contextual advertisements
• Seamless Business Integration
• Easy to Deploy Chatbots to cloud
• The Machine Learning Abilities of chatbots help them to self-learn from previous experience

Limitations:

• According to reviewers, the chatteron customer support is pathetic for free plans.
• In addition, the testing should be done on the Facebook platform and in its messenger. 

Pricing:

• Basic Plan is free and promises to provide all features, unlimited chatbot development, and a maximum of 15000 messages per month
• Also, the paid plan is offered at $0.0010 per message with unlimited access  

BOT# 10 DialogFlow is the preferred chatbot builder for Google Assistants

Further, the next chatbot in the list is DialogFlow functions through the Natural Language Understanding Platform. It provides a conversational user interface for various applications like a mobile app, interactive voice response system, web, device, and bot. It comes in two variations:

1. DialogFlow CX- Designed for large and complex agents 
2. DialogFlow ES – Designed for simple and small agents

In addition, Key Features of DialogFlow are:

• Capable of analyzing multiple types of inputs (Voice and Text)
• Also, Capable of responding in multiple formats like synthetic speech and text

Limitations:

• Also, According to reviewers, Users without programming or coding language find it difficult to use.
• Moreover, Limited programming languages available for coding
• Heavy dependency on NLP, so the deployment of bots takes a longer time 

Pricing: Cloud-based payment strategy on pay per usage basis with no lock-in

BOT# 11 RASA -Opensource Chatbot-Platform with Multilingual Intelligence 

So, Next on the list is, RASA is an open source community providing well researched content for developing chatbots from scratch. While many platforms claim to possess Multilingual capabilities. RASA stands out from the crowd with Multilingual intelligence. 

Key Features of RASA are: 

• Supports single intent and multiple intent queries
• Supports trained and predefined entities
• Multilingual intelligence
• Comprehensive documentation and online help

Limitations:

So, it mainly demands sound technical knowledge and programming skills. Thus, Definitely not an option for non-techie or beginners.

Pricing:

RASA product comes with three plans: 1. RASA-Open Source (available Free of cost) 2. RASA-X (Available Free of cost) 3. RASA-Enterprise (for Pricing should contact their sales team)

AI chatbots that address the need for a specific domain

Moreover, this section focuses on AI-chatbot builders operating with an intent to address the needs of specific business needs like helpdesk management, customer representative, sales representative, content marketing, etc.

1. Clare.ai– Front desk services for Online Banking and Insurance

Clare.ai algorithm is trained to reply to customer service FAQs. Also, it can arrange appointments and verify with the IT and HR departments to help customers. The services are accessible through messenger apps. 

2. NanoRep and Hipmunk – Customer service bots

NanoRep chatbot guides customers from the beginning to the end of their journey while buying a product or booking a travel ticket. In addition, it provides real-time responses contextually. also, these chatbots can collect customer-specific information like their location, designation, type of device they are using, and type of product the customer is searching for.  Another chatbot platform that is handy for travelers to fetch the best travel deals is Hipmunk. So, Users can book flights, hotels, and rental cars through this chatbot.  

3. Twyla- Helpdesk Manager bot

Twyla is an intelligent conversational bot. Helpdesks uses it frequently. Also, They can retrieve and send data to CRM and ERP systems of an enterprise. Importantly it can retrieve both structured and unstructured data from the enterprise. Also, a similar chatbot platform is Morph.ai. In addition, this helps to automate customer support activities. So, CRM and support tools use Twyla.

4. LEGO- Gift selection bot

Lego’s chatbot, Ralph, is another customer support chatbot. Also, it works as a virtual-shopping assistant on Facebook Messenger and helps customers to purchase gifts for special occasions. Thus, it comes in handy for indecisive customers by suggesting them with various options.

5. TechCrunch- Content Marketing blogging bot

Next on the list is TechCrunch, a technology blog company has a chatbot that suggests top-rated technology posts for the readers. Also, Readers can select Blogposts of their interest. For instance, readers can choose Gadget, Startups, innovative apps content. It also provides readers the flexibility to select the frequency of content delivery.

Chabots from Big-4 Corporations

So, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon are competing with each other in the arena of chatbot development and have come up with unique chatbots. In addition, all of them roll out campaigns to popularize chatbots through competitions. So, Here is an attempt to give a glimpse of Chatbot products released by these corporations.

Corporation	Chatbot Product	Youtube Link
Google	Google Assistant	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNfE0uaKcfY&feature=emb_title
Facebook	Facebook Messenger	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3GQs8VzXhw&feature=emb_title
Microsoft	Cortana	https://youtu.be/4P048MxXn1o
Amazon	Amazon Lex	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27kYKr3XZfc&feature=emb_title

Our Recommendations

In addition, based on the Chatbot Software platforms researched recommendations that can be made are:

1. MobileMonkey scores better marks over all other counterparts as it offers flexibility to naive users and also professional users. 
2. IBM Watson Assistant proves to be technologically superior to its counterparts. So, it goes a step ahead of normal AI chatbots by analyzing certain queries and forwarding them to human experts based on the need of the situation. So, it is the pick of the lot.
3. ChatterOn promises to be Non-Coders darling with 20 free ready-made chatbots available. But, Reviewers are not happy with the customer support available.
4. Open Source chatbot platforms discussed are Pandorabots, Botkit, and RASA. RASA is rated high by reviewers but needs sound technical knowledge. Moreover, these recommendations can act as pointers to you while choosing between chatbot platforms.

Take Away

Human-Machine interaction has changed from simple keyboard-based commands to voice and gesture-based input methods. Thus, the Chatbot software or virtual assistants have redefined the way organizations interact with customers and internal stakeholders. So, this chatbot software ultimate guide is a tour for all business players to know about basics of Chatbots, their types and classification, Chatbot development platforms that suits your organization, Popular Chatbot Platforms you can use to develop own chatbots, the contribution of 4-Big corporations to Chatbot development, and our recommendation on which Chatbot-platform might suit your business needs.

Conclusion

After having said this, every organization’s needs differ and one cannot really decide which chatbot-platform suits them before trying out the tools practically. Also, Chatbots can definitely save time and money for your organization. But How efficient a chatbot solution depends on the programming skills of the developer. In addition, Today, Chatbot development tools are available in a wide spectrum. The platforms available in the market can address the needs of both non-technical users and tech geeks. Also, the platforms are available in various price plans including free versions. So, lack of technical expertise or financial constraints should not stop you from venturing into the world of Chatbot software development. Happy Learning!!