A major breakthrough for Artificial Intelligence is smarter bots can understand our needs, find answers and make recommendations based on patterns. Chatbots use natural language processing (NLP) that parses texts and learns accordingly. They can transform the interaction from a series of self initiated tasks to a quasi conversation. The power of NLP is such that it breaks down human language into simple keywords, creating a universal means for technology to interact with humans. 
Comprehending human language is not easy for a computer but we are building softwares that can crack the code of human language by identifying various keywords in a sentence and produce the required output known as Chatbots.
The superfluous use of messaging has given rise to Chatbots which is a new trend in the technology ecosystem. It gained momentum as Facebook announced the release of a Chatbot integrated messenger platform. It sure was not the first Chatbot available to the world but with a 900 million user reach, it caught the required attention. While it is still not perfect, it is a step towards automation to improve and connect tools, apps and services.
For an enterprise:
The invention of Chatbots as a messaging services was primarily to improve the internal communication within an organization. Here is a set to explain the same-
Me: “Are my friends in the cafeteria right now?”
Chatbot: “Yes, Ravi, Amber and Abhishek are in the cafeteria right now”
Me: “Okay”
Internal communication is the solution to many problems in an organization. Often, these problems revolve around scenarios or questions. Some of the common ones are asked to an HR like paid/unpaid leaves, upcoming holidays, events, work from home and much more. What if a software could answer all these questions and many more. The software we create can answer these questions for you. Here is an example-
Me: “How many more paid leaves do I have”
Chatbot: “You have 10 paid leaves remaining ”
Me: “Okay, How many total paid leaves do we get in an year”
Chatbot: “You are given total 18 paid leaves in an year”
Me: “Give me the dates of my leaves so far”
Chatbot: “22/1/2017 to 25/1/2017, 10/3/2017 to 13/3/2017”
Me: “Okay, I need a print out of these dates”
Chatbot: “Print out available at printer W126 on the first floor”
Me: “Okay”
It saves time for both the employee and the HR professional. The most basic use of a Chatbot is communication. However, Chatbots have evolved over time and are not just limited to communication. Chatbots are becoming intelligent in all sectors as they are collecting information, maintaining calendars, searching from past conversations, inputs, storing data and much more.
Another very important sector where Chatbots benefits the enterprise is Marketing & Sales by collecting, maintaining, refining information on various tools like Salesforce, Hubspot etc. The Chatbot application will be a relief to the marketing team as it is a step closer to full automation. Let’s say, you use excel for collecting and maintaining data. In excel, we mostly use sum, average and sometimes use VLookup. Excel provides a number of functionalities but we do not use them. Chatbot application can interact with the data in Excel. You can ask the bot to do tasks as simple as the sum of numbers to perform analytics in the background and point out issues in your data, trends. In basic terms, you ask for something and get it back.
Furthermore, Chatbots can be integrated into employee workflows as personal assistants with a voice feature that helps in increasing productivity in many ways. Instead of logging into Salesforce and searching for a client, you can just talk to the personal assistant and ask for the required information. This will give you access to customer records, transactions and updates by having a rich dialogue about a customer.
Chatbot introduces a chat interface which captures multiple communication channels while parallely syncing with other tools on your platform, bringing companies closer to their desired results.
Chatbots are:
- Easy to deploy
- Great ROI
- Scalable
There are numerous ways in which an organization can take advantage of Chatbots. The current scenario, in many organizations states that team collaboration demands attention. Chatbots add context to collaboration as they can automate monotonous tasks, scrape out inefficiencies and increase human ability.
Contact: Copper Mobile for creating a requirement based Chatbot designed specially for your enterprise. Partner with us to take a step towards achieving digital transformation and improve the way your employees interact with enterprise systems.
