;)
Business communication has been greatly influenced by chatbot technology. The global chatbot market is going to reach $9.4 billion by 2024.
Thousands of companies worldwide, SMBs to enterprises are developing various types of chatbots that focus on accelerating their customer experience and curtailing support costs.
Chatbots are supporting companies to engage and interact with potential and existing customers 24/7.
You might be wondering how many types of chatbots are there. There are hundreds of types of chatbots but the classification of chatbots depends on two main things:
In the article below, we will help you understand the different types of chatbots, what these are used for, and what type of chatbot technology could have the biggest value for your business.
Prior to discussing the different types of chatbots, let’s take a glance at the top benefits of chatbots, which is why more and more businesses are deploying bots.
Businesses deploy different types of chatbots based on their use cases starting from streamlining the business processes to enhancing customer engagement and increasing productivity. Bots help to convert users to customers, drive sales, and improve the overall consumer experience.
Let’s take a look at the key advantages of a chatbot.
REVE Chatbot platform offers you default templates to build bots and to customize too as per your business needs. Signup for 14 days free trial to test drive REVE Chat’s chatbot platform.
A chatbot deployed on the eCommerce website would be totally different from the one implemented on the banking site. Just as humans contrast in personality, traits, or capabilities, the same goes for chatbots.
Here we will discuss what are the different types of chatbots, their applications, and their functionalities. It will give you a fair understanding of chatbot classification and what would be the ideal chatbot type for your business.
So, let’s dive in.
Rule-based chatbots also referred to as decision-tree bots, use a series of defined rules. These rules are the basis for the types of problems the chatbot can be familiar with and deliver solutions for. Like a flowchart, rule-based chatbots map out conversations.
Rule-based or scripted are the types of chatbots that can be used to answer common questions – for instance, booking a table in a restaurant or buying tickets to the cinema. Followed by a decision tree, the customers are provided a set of predefined options that lead to the relevant answer.
AI-enabled chatbots combine the power of Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand the context and intent of a question before formulating a response.
Such conversational AI bots generate their own answers to more complicated questions using natural-language responses. The more you use and train these bots, the more they learn and the better they operate with the user.
When conversational AI and chatbots combine, they perform better than rule-based bots in the identification of user context and intention. They can thus decipher a user’s query and deliver a personalized experience.
The most advanced type of conversational chatbot is a contextual bot.
In order to remember the conversations that happened earlier, these types of chatbots make use of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), with particular users, to learn and grow with the passage of time.
Contextual chatbots learn by experience with the user. A few examples of these chatbots are Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, etc.
The voice-enabled type of chatbot makes personalized experiences for users. To make conversational interfaces even more vernacular, businesses are now using voice-based chatbots or voice bots.
The voice-enabled chatbots accept the user’s input when they speak, act upon the request, reply to queries, and perform numerous creative tasks. By using text-to-speech (TTS) and voice recognition APIs, businesses can make their own voice-activated chatbot.
Voice bots have been on the rise for the last couple of years, with virtual assistants like Apple’s Siri, and Amazon’s Alexa, and why?
Because of the convenience they bring. It’s much easier for a customer to speak rather than type. A voice-activated chatbot brings frictionless experiences directly to the end customer.
Hybrid chatbots are an amalgamation of simple (rule or script-based) and smart (conversational AI-based) AI-based.
The hybrid chatbot model offers the best of both worlds- the simplicity of the rules-based chatbots, with the complexity of the AI bots.
These bots have some rule-based tasks, and they can understand intent and context. It makes them a balanced tool for businesses to interact with customers.
Did you know which industries are benefiting from chatbots? The finance, healthcare, education, travel, and real estate industries. Also, roughly 80% of businesses are projected to integrate some type of chatbot technology by 2023.
Here is the categorization of all types of chatbots under their respective purposes. Let’s have a look!
Customer service is one of the vital business functions where chatbots have a great impact. 67% of consumers worldwide used a chatbot for customer support.
Customer service chatbots can help businesses to engage clients by answering FAQs and delivering context to conversations. Businesses can save support costs by speeding up response times and improving first response time which boosts user experience.
Key use cases of support chatbot:
Leveraging an AI chatbot for sales can help businesses in asking contextually relevant questions, qualifying leads, and booking sales meetings, at scale.
Chatbots convert 4x higher than traditional lead generation tools because people prefer conversations. So, engage with your visitors 24×7, to interact, and generate more leads.
Key use cases of sales chatbot:
Chatbots are greatly revolutionizing the marketing ecosystem for many businesses, while the goal remains the same for all i.e. instant and convenient service.
Key use cases of a marketing chatbot:
Chatbots are effortlessly enhancing the digital customer experience in banking and also achieving a range of other benefits.
From balance inquiries to account openings to quick replies, banking bots can help serve users promptly and efficiently, therefore enhancing the customer experience.
Key use cases of a banking chatbot:
Chatbots that are integrated with a social messaging platform like Messenger, Telegram, Slack, Whatsapp, etc are termed messaging chatbots.
Customers prefer brands offering bot support. 47% of users are open to purchasing items through a bot.
Chatbots can engage customers by answering their simple queries when the support team is busy or not available.
These types of chatbots make it simple for customers to directly connect with the bot using social media handles just like the way they talk to their friends.
Social messaging chatbots can sell and process orders, track order information, and answer frequently asked questions (FAQs). It cuts down a lot of costs for online businesses and also offers instant interaction to users.
Recruitment is an important part of HR activity. With chatbots, tasks can be handled seamlessly.
Human Capital Trends report found that only 17% of global HR executives are ready to manage a workforce with people, robots, and AI working side by side.
The chatbot acts as a recruiting assistant and manages large candidate pools so that the recruiters and hiring managers have more time to focus on interviews and closing offers.
Healthcare chatbots help in automating all the repetitive, and lower-level tasks of the medical representatives. While bots handle simple tasks seamlessly, healthcare professionals can focus more on complex tasks effectively.
Key use cases of a healthcare chatbot:
One of the vital undeniable aspects is to engage with customers where they are.
With an increase in messenger platforms for business, one of the most important channels is social.
Chatbots significantly boost user engagement on these popular social websites and communicate with customers through live chat platforms like Facebook Messenger.
Bots are taking over social media marketing as they allow consumers to engage with them in terms of customer service, and transactional engagements.
Chatbots are of different abilities from different chatbot platforms and fulfill various purposes in each industry. Different types of chatbots can be used for different businesses, from those that deal with simple requests, to those that handle advanced queries.
Here are some use cases for different industries and examples of how they have been deployed.
As technology continues to enable smart AI chatbots, more users will choose to interact with them in their everyday lives because the right chatbot knows how to respond appropriately to their concerns on time. For customer service firms, this means improved customer relationships.
The above article focuses on five different types of chatbots along with their purpose and key use cases. Also, there are different ways to implement the AI bot, depending on the use case.
Hopefully, you now know enough through this chatbot guide and are ready to implement one of the bots in your own business.
Start a 14-day free trial, no credit card required
Stay updated with the latest trends and ideas we share
Imagine a world where customers search for insurance products and services in a hassle-free and effortless way. They ask questions,...
Business competition has been more fierce than ever before in the insurance market. Therefore, generating high-quality leads is getting more...
In recent days, we have found at REVE Chat, that our Banking customers have been experiencing a significant shift towards...
