AI chatbots are increasingly becoming commonplace on websites as AI technology improves. Using artificial intelligence, these chatbots can now respond intelligently to customer inquiries while maintaining your brand voice after being trained on your internal knowledge base.
If you want to cut down on customer service costs, adding an AI chatbot is a great option. Building an AI chatbot is a multi-step process that requires a fair amount of programming knowledge. Our team can help you design and build an AI chatbot that can be integrated with your website, app, and across social media channels.
Inclind helps medium-sized businesses, membership organizations, government agencies, and nonprofits throughout the United States with their website design and development needs. We can help with website designs, redesigns, custom integrations, and more - including AI chatbot integration. Reach out today to talk to a team member about our services.
What Isan AI Chatbot?
An artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot is a software coded and trained to analyze and respond to human speech. Chatbots use AI algorithms and technology such as natural language processing and machine learning. An AI chatbot is trained with data sets comprised of large swaths of information. It also learns from conversations, saving that data to utilize in the future.
AI chatbots have taken off in popularity. They are widely used to assist customers with inquiries. Rather than asking users to select from a predefined list of options, the AI chatbot can respond to questions and conversations using information from its knowledge base. It’s estimated that around 19% of all online businesses currently use AI chatbots with chatbot adoption expected to grow at an annual rate of 23.3% until 2030.
The Benefits Of Having An AI Chatbot On Your Site
AI chatbots are a great way to save employees time - and money. The AI chatbot is available 24/7 to provide personalized support. For example, if a customer wants to know if a particular item of clothing is available in youth sizes, the chatbot can respond instantly - without needing a customer service agent to respond to the inquiry.
These chatbots can also boost business. They may offer recommendations tailored specifically to customers based on their purchase history, preferences, and past interactions. They can collect customer data, which allows companies to provide better, more personalized service.
AI chatbots also meet customers where they are. Many people would prefer to browse for goods and services online rather than go to a store - and hate to make phone calls. With an AI chatbot, website visitors can get assistance without chatting with an agent.
Other benefits of AI chatbots include:
- Multilingual capacity, which means that customers from around the world can interact with your business in their preferred language
- Automation of routine questions, such as hours or whether a particular product is available
- Improved interactions based on customer history
- The ability to connect data from the chatbot to your customer relationship management (CRM) software for lead generation
- Better customer experience by personalizing customers’ journeys
- The potential for anonymity for users who may not want to ask an agent a sensitive question
If you decide that an AI chatbot is a good option for your website, you will need to know how to build one. Inclind can help with that process, working with your organization to create both an AI chatbot and a custom knowledge base to train it.
Building an AI Chatbot for Your Website
There are 2 primary options when it comes to building an AI chatbot. You can use an AI chatbot builder, a software that creates a chatbot. Alternatively, you can develop a chatbot from scratch. This allows you to create a more customized chatbot with more advanced features.
Define Your Use Case
To build a chatbot from scratch, you must start by defining your use case. In other words, why do you need a chatbot? Will it completely replace your customer service agents or supplement them? Are you trying to drive sales using a chatbot? Answering these questions can help you narrow down what features you want your chatbot to have and make it more useful to your business or organization.
You will also need to consider where to deploy your AI chatbot. Typically, organizations will have a chatbot directly on their website. You can also add a chatbot to a mobile app and social media channels like Facebook Messenger. Make sure that where you place your AI chatbot, it can be integrated with your other software (such as CRM).
Determine Your Tech Stack
Once you understand what you want your AI chatbot to do and where you will place it, you must choose the proper technology for the job. There are lots of different options based on your needs. For example, AWS and IBM offer commercial chatbots that can be customized for fairly basic chatbots that answer customer questions. If you want a fully custom chatbot, you must use technology like Python machine-learning libraries and frameworks.
You will need to include a few custom AI chatbots. This includes:
- Cloud infrastructure such as Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud so that you can scale computing power to your AI chatbot
- A natural language processor (NLP) enables the chat box to understand and respond to inquiries like a human would. Several NLP platforms like Amazon Lex and IBM Watson Assistant can be used to build an AI chatbot.
- AI/Machine Learning (ML) software to power the chatbot. Many different resources can be used to create AI/ML software, such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, and Scikit-learn.
Create A Knowledge Base
Next, you must build a custom knowledge base for your AI chatbot. Essentially, this is a library of information that trains your chatbot. A knowledge base typically includes internal data, such as product manuals and FAQs, public data that can provide standard answers to questions, and generated data, which is knowledge that you create to help your chatbot answer questions. For example, if you know that customers often ask about returns, you could write a few variations of the likely questions to help train the chatbot.
Train Your Chatbot
Design the chatbot conversation once this custom knowledge base is complete. This is planning out the conversation flow. To generate a simple question-and-answer chatbot, create a decision tree (i.e., if a customer asks X, respond to Y and go to the next step). You will also have to train your chatbot to understand user intent so it can answer questions. Using AI, NLP, and ML can help your chatbot learn how to respond appropriately. Remember that these technologies empower your AI chatbot to learn - it will only improve over time.
Integrate Your Chatbot With Your Website
Now, it is time to integrate your chatbot into your website and software and test it. This step aims to ensure that the chat interface is user-friendly and intuitive. To ensure the data is synchronized, you must check the chatbot is properly linked to your website and any software you use. You will also want to place it where it can connect to any necessary apps and that its overall design is consistent with your branding.
Testing involves checking both the functionality of the chatbot and its performance. How does it respond to questions? Does it provide fast, accurate responses? How does it handle heavy user loads? You should also ensure that you have security measures to prevent data breaches.
Publicly Launch Your Chatbot
Launch your AI chatbot once the AI chatbot has been fully integrated and tested. Once it is on your website, app, and/or social media channels, monitoring its performance and updating it as necessary is important. For example, suppose you find the chatbot is consistently responding with an incomplete answer to certain queries. In that case, you might fine-tune the knowledge base to ensure that it is providing accurate responses.
Building an AI chatbot requires a fair amount of coding and tech skills - but the payoff can be immense. While AI chatbot builders can provide a fairly basic option, if you want to take full advantage of the benefits of this technology, a custom chatbot is the way to go. Inclind’s website designers and developers can work with you to design, develop, integrate, and launch a personalized AI chatbot that will benefit your business.
Build a Smarter Website with Inclind
An AI chatbot is becoming almost mandatory for businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations. An AI chatbot will save you time and money and allow you to serve your clients and customers. A custom AI chatbot can provide a more personalized experience and drive sales or donations.
At Inclind, we are proud to provide the highest quality website development and design services to clients throughout the United States. Our team stays on top of the latest technology trends, including AI and ML, to provide creative, effective solutions to our clients. Our services include react application development, support and maintenance, conversion optimization, and more. If you’d like to add an AI chatbot to your website, we can help you explore your options and develop a chatbot that works best for your needs.
We're available if you’d like to learn more about our web services, including custom integrations for AI chatbots. You can fill out our online contact form, or call us at 1-302-856-2802 to talk to one of our experts about your website.