Do you want to know how to create a chatbot for business? But what is the need to create a chatbot?
To make you understand the need for a chatbot. Here is an example.
Let’s say you visit a website related to booking doctor appointments. Now you don’t know which doctor to book. You know your problem, you need help to decide on the specialist.
Traditionally you will call up customer care, explain to them your problem, they will put you on hold, go through their document and then answer your query.
With this digital age, millennial doesn’t like much human interaction. They want everything to happen by the tip of their finger. So, calling up customer care isn’t the desired choice anymore.
That is where chatbots come into the limelight. These chatbots act as virtual assistants just like Google Home or Alexa but specific to your website.
Website visitors can easily chat with these chatbots and get their desired answers in a jiffy. This is the best way to handle users’ queries these days.
It is predicted by Gartner the users will 85% of their relationship with businesses without any human interactions by 2020 and chatbots have a huge role to play in this.
In this article, we will cover how to create a chatbot for your business.
What Can A Chatbot Do?
There are 3 types of chatbots:
1. Scripted Chatbots
Scripted chatbots have predefined questions and answers on which they work. They present the user with few options to select for each question and present their solutions based on it. These chatbots cannot handle ambiguity in terms of response
2. Intelligent Chatbots
These chatbots are backed by artificial intelligence. They can understand the non-standard response and provide the solution accordingly. Though, they cannot provide a solution in graphical content.
3. Application Chatbots
This is a type of intelligent chatbot that can show the solution in a graphical interface to the user if in case the user can perform more effectively using a graphical user interface.
How To Create A Chatbot For A Website?
1. How To Make A Chatbot In HTML – Build The Conversation Flow
The first and foremost step is to prepare a conversation flow for which you want your chatbot to be designed. Initially write down the basic flowchart of conversation which can happen.
Now, think of the various scenarios in which your users can go off track and include those things in your conversation.
The next step is to go online and play with all the available chatbots and try to break their flow. See the various steps in which a chatbot breaks in conversation and avoid such mistakes in your conversation.
Finally, try to break your chatbot conversation by yourself and your friends. Do everything to ensure your chatbot is ready for any scenario.
2. How To Make A Chatbot – Replicate It In API.AI
API.AI is one of the linguistic processing units. It has the capability to comprehend the user texts which are received in the form of text or speech. This is one of the effective platforms available to comprehend the users’ text. Let’s understand with an example;
A user is on the website trying to order Puma shoes of size 9, so the user types – “My name is Rohan and I want to buy black puma shoes of size 9”. Now the API.AI interprets it as follows;
Intent: Purchase_shoes
Action: Process_purchase
Name: Rohan
Product: Shoes
Brand: Puma
Size: 9
This is the simplest example. API.AI can process such similar or complicated requests in a similar manner.
3. How To Create A Chatbot For A Website – Merge With External Code
The next and most important step is to merge with external code. Heroku is one of the best external codes to build an app. If you are working in python, you need the following code from Heroku;
#start
req = request.get_json
print(“Request:”)
print(json.dumps(req, indent=4))
#process to do your thing and decide what response should be
res = processRequest(req)
# Response we should receive from process request (you’ll need to write some code called process request and make it return the below, the weather webhook example above is a good one).
{
“speech”: “speech we want to send back”,
“displayText”: “display text we want to send back usually matches speech”,
“source”: “your app name”
}
# Making our response readable by API.AI and sending it back to the service
response = make_response(res)
response.headers[‘Content-Type’] = ‘application/json’
return response
# End
Your app and API.AI will be able to work together if you are able to receive and respond to the requests.
4. How To Make A Chatbot – Make Use Of Database
Heroku lets you update and set up databases very easily. Postgres add-on is the best to choose from. This blog post will help you to set up and run the database in Heroku.
5. How To Make A Chatbot In HTML – Amalgamate With Slack
Integrating with other messaging services might not be similar to integrating with slack, but it will give an idea of how to work on other platforms. One has to complete 2 authorization processes in slack.
While working with API.AI, follow these steps; create a conversation in API.AI, move to integration, switch back to slack, and do as per the instructions set in slack. Post this, you need to change the events URL to your app URL.
6. How To Create A Chatbot For A Website – Process Of Asynchronous
Flask can be used to run the app. It is a bunch of code that is extremely useful to receive information over the internet. For a secondary process, Redis & Celery can be used. The instructions for adding Redis & Celery are provided in many sources.
Most Powerful Platforms To Build A Chatbot
1. Chatfuel
Chatfuel is a power-packed platform with various exciting features. Some of them are collecting user information using forms in messenger, allowing user interaction with bots in a click, allowing content cards, user request forms, spread updates to users, etc.
2. Flow XO
Looking for a chatbot with a ready reckoner visual editor, then you need flow XO. This platform can provide up to 100 integrations. It is built with pre-build templates as well.
3. Beep Boop
It is the platform directed towards providing an easier way of creating slack bots. It also provides an end-end experience for developers.
Conclusion
Chatbots have become necessary to run a business through digital media marketing now. It is never too late to build your very own and customized chatbot and provide a better experience for your user. Know every trending aspect of digital marketing to make your business flourish.
Hi Soumya,
Thank you for the wonderful information on creating a chatbot and integrating it with the website. I am enthusiastic now to go ahead and check the technical part of chatbot as well.
Hi Sushmita,
Thanks for your appreciation. We will surely fulfil your requirement.
Great information!! I am developing a chat bot for my website and now i can think more in deep to customize it more!!
Thanks for sharing these
Really i appreciate your work