A chatbot, a bot which interacts with customers on behalf of a company or a business. AI chatbots have completely transformed how businesses interact with their customers. When you book tickets, ask for recommendations, or see the FAQs, they are probably chatbots with whom you are interacting. Now, the creation of these Conversational AI is not limited to a specific industry; anyone can go for it. If you are curious about how you can build AI Chatbot for yourself, which will work like your own small online assistant, you are in the right place. Here we are going to see a step-by-step Chatbot Guide.

Why should you build AI Chatbot?

• Personalisation:  AI chatbots have the power to keep a memory of each client they talk to, and then they can change their way of having conversations according to each client’s needs.
• 24/7 Support: Chatbot Development is necessary because they can work 24/7; they’re not bound by time like humans. No matter whether it’s day or night, a client can have a conversation with them at any time.
• Cost-effective:  Once the Chatbot development is done, you don’t need to spend an extra penny on it. Now your bot will serve thousands of users, and the creator can get many benefits from it.

Step 1: Choose the Platform:

You don’t need to do any big research on it; there are plenty of Chatbot Development platforms. Here are some platform suggestions:-

• Rasa:  Platform which comes with full customisation options.
• Chatbot.com or Tidio: It’s a friendly drag-and-drop builder.
• Dialogflow: Good choice for Natural Language Processing Conversational AI.
• Microsoft Bot Framework: Good for enterprise-grade type chatbots

You don’t need to go for an advanced framework if you are just a beginner. To build AI Chatbot, you can pick no-code or low-code tools; there are many options available.

Step 2: Design the Conversation:

It’s the most important part of Chatbot Development, because this will decide how your bot will interact with other people or your customers.

Free Flow Natural Language Processing: The bot will provide flexible responses tailored to the client’s query and understand their behaviour.

Decision Trees: A Simple type of bots which rely on preset questions and answers.

A well-structured conversation is essential so that the user feels comfortable while questioning, and the conversation doesn’t sound robotic.

Step 3: Train the Chatbot with Natural Language Processing

To build AI Chatbot which is smarter than you, you need NLP for that. NLP help the bot in understanding what the user is trying to say, even if it’s not put in the right form of text. For example, if the client said Where is my order, the system will automatically go for the order tracking option. Some popular NLP engines are Rasa NLU and Dialogflow NLP. This helps the AI give a more conversational form than the rule-based one.

Step 4: Connect your Data source

Conversational AI is good because of the data it can access. Now, this data source type also depends on your goal of making a chatbot. You can use Databases for the customer records, API for payment gateways and knowledge bases for the FAQs. For example. A travel chatbot should have a flight Api to help the customers in booking the tickets.

Step 5: Test

No matter how much you invest in building an AI Chatbot, the chatbot will not be perfect right away. Every chatbot needs to go through a setting phase. First, do internal testing and check how it’s working with your team and then do Beta testing, which includes testing it with the help of a small group of people. In the end, do A/B testing to see how different conversion flows are going in it.

Step 6: Make it live and manage:

Now, after all the checking and improvement, it’s time for it to go live. You can deploy it on different modern platforms and websites. Also, analyse it from time to time and monitor all the activities so it can work smoothly for a longer time.

Technology and Tools You’ll Need

Here is the  quick list of AI chatbot tools you will need to build AI Chatbot:-

• Programming Languages: JavaScript, Python.
• Hosting: Azure, AWS and Google Cloud.
• Natural Language Processing Engines: IBM Watson, Dialogflow.
• Frameworks: Botpress, Rasa.
• Analytics: Dashbot, Botanalytics.

The Future of AI Chatbots

The future of AI chatbots is looking very promising. Over time, the chatbots can become more like humans, and people will not be able to tell if they are talking with a robot. Learning how to build AI chatbot is no longer limited to advanced programmers; with easy-to-use AI chatbot tools and a guide available here, anyone can do it simply. Just follow the guide and choose the right tool in the end to keep up with the future of AI chatbots, because AI chatbots are now something that businesses must have.