How do we define the intelligence of a chatbot? What makes a chatbot appear intelligent?
A chatbot is intelligent when it becomes aware of the users’ needs. Its intelligence comes from the chatbot’s ability to handle any possible scenario of a conversation with ease.
What makes a chatbot intelligent is basically two aspects: the way it is designed (it has to anticipate different scenarios and it has to build a friendly path for its user) and the way artificial intelligence is implemented, so the way it will be able to understand sentences that the user himself can type.
There are currently several platforms that allow you to create an online chatbot. Let’s see what we think are the 5 best online chatbots for your business.
The Artificial Intelligence community is still quite young, but there are already a lot of great platforms for creating chatbots. It seems like every day there is a new Ai feature launched by Ai Developers or by the chatbot platforms themselves.
For many entrepreneurs, it can be difficult to be able to select the best platform for their business. That’s why we have created this list of 5 chatbots and Natural Language Processing (NLP) that we have experimented with in recent months.
Each of these platforms has its own unique characteristics and each has a particular niche, so this article is not meant to be a platform judgment, but is just our personal view on which platform is best for different types of businesses (small, medium, large) and different coding skills (beginners, basic knowledge, advanced knowledge).
A few months ago it looked like ManyChat would be the winner of the Ai competition among the dozen chatbot platforms launched in early 2016. ManyChat’s user-friendly tools, coupled with a great UI UX design for its users, certainly attracted a lot of bot makers.
ManyChat is a great platform for people without any coding knowledge.
However, if your business wants flexible Ai apps, this is not the way to go.
Pros: easy to use, free plan, great marketing tools
Cons: Lack of flexibility for custom coding, lack of community resources
When I first became interested in online chatbots, I literally fell in love with Chatfuel. And this love endures to this day! For this reason
I have written an article that you can use to take your first steps into the world of ChatFuel: https://www.comunicarekairos.it/blog/software-tool/61-come-creare-bot-messenger-con-chatfuel.html
I recorded video tutorials in Italian on the ChatFuel platform, here’s how to access the first 3 lessons for free: https://www.comunicarekairos.it/corsi-marketing-comunicazione/corso-completo-chatfuel-2020.html
Chatfuel is now the No. 1 leader in online chatbot platforms and deserves this honor because of the hard work the moderators continuously do by answering all the questions that are asked in the official Chatfuel community group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/chatfuel/
In this regard, we have created an Italian ChatFuel Group that you can access from here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/518166851867224. We are always there to answer your questions in Italian!
Chatfuel’s greatest strength is its balance between a user friendly solution without compromising the advanced custom coding that ManyChat fundamentally lacks.
If you don’t know what to choose between ManyChat and Chatfuel, ask yourself the following question: will my Business Ai solution require customization in the future? If the answer is yes, use Chatfuel; if the answer is no, choose ManyChat. In this article I have compared these two platforms: https://www.comunicarekairos.it/blog/software-tool/62-chatfuel-vs-manychat.html
Pros: Easy to use, flexibility for custom coding, community support, plug-ins open to third parties, no coding experience required
Cons: Limited integrations to conversational channels, lack of marketing tools
With clients such as Budweiser, Marvel, Pizza Hut and TGI Friday, to name a few, Conversable is definitely a front runner in the Ai world. As described on the Conversable Web site:
“Conversable is the SaaS (enterprise-class-as-a-service) software platform for designing, building, and deploying AI-enhanced messaging and voice experiences across multiple platforms, including Facebook Messenger, Twitter, SMS, Amazon Echo, Google Home, and many others.”
It is certainly impressive what conversation with such an online chatbot can provide. However, if you are the owner of a small to medium-sized company, this is not the platform for you since the startup is being developed primarily for Fortune 500 companies.
If, on the other hand, you work in one of these companies, it is good to know that this platform exists and that it is enjoying great success in the Entreprise market!
Pros: integrations to conversational channels, best platform for large companies
Cons: not easy to use, no solution for small and medium-sized companies
No one will be surprised if you say you have a personal love affair with Dialogflow 😉
Let me tell you why, in my opinion, Dialogflow is now the number 1 Ai and Natural Language Processing platform in the world for all kinds of businesses.
With integrations to Voice and Text Ai applications to the Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Microsoft Cortana, you can create any kind of chatbot for your customers. This way they will be able to interact with their cell phones or with Google Home or Amazon Alexa.
Dialogflow not only integrates to all these fantastic platforms that enable speech recognition, but it also has text integrations for Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Slack, Telegram, Twilio (SMS) and Skype, just to name a few.
Pros: more advanced NLP, integrations to conversational channels, free, exportable agents
Cons: number of languages available
I actually haven’t spent much time exploring GupShup, but it looks really promising and has similar integrations to Dialogflow, which means this platform will be able to evolve with AI and machine learning updates. GupShup also has an impressive library of SMS, voice, text, NLP APIs. I promise I will draft a new article on this platform!
Pros: conversational channel integrations, free plan, API library.
Cons: not easy to use, Dashboard UI / UX design.
RECAP.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, all these online chatbot platforms have their own niche, pros and cons. I hope this article has helped you choose the right platform for your business needs. If you are still not sure which one you want to select, you can always log on to our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/comunicarekairos.it/ and, after liking ;), ask us questions that we will be very happy to answer.
The process of creating a chatbot should not scare you. It is not an extremely complicated process, you just need to know well the steps that can lead you to create a chatbot in the best possible way. And you just need to choose the chatbot for your business in the right way, just as I explained in this article.
Always remember that the most important part of creating chatbots is the design. The user must feel that he is talking to a real person who can meet his needs, while knowing that he is talking to a robot with artificial intelligence. This is what the user must be amazed by: the ease of dialogue with the chatbot.
