The future of chatbots is just starting to unfold. Numerous applications are developed and one of Chatbots.org objectives is to find and test new chatbots and their capabilities.
For example, I have tested every chatbot compatible to America Online’s Instant Messenger which are displayed at AIM’s online gallery.
As per definition Chatbots.org: chatbots, virtual agents or virtual assistants are artificial (branded) human-like characters which have natural (body) language conversations with human beings. For dummies like me: a virtual assistant should be able to chat and interact with you by creating intelligent human like phrases, responses and interpretations.
Unfortunately, none of the tested AIM Chatbots use NLP (Natural Language Processing). Instead, most of the AIM Chatbots just offer a standard menu. A standard chatbots menu is a multiple-choice based application. You can choose from for example A, B or C, press enter and a standard answer pops up. These menus are usually updated on a daily base, for example: Shoppingbuddy .
Furthermore, during the test day many chatbots seemed to be offline. Most online chatbots responded with a single answer to different questions or didn’t give a response at all.
Although there is a great variety of existing AIM Chatbots, none of them uses NLP, what a shame! Wouldn’t it be great if these AIM Chatbots and all these creative ideas would be further developed into genuine chatbots using NLP, i.e.:
- Entospa: translation chatbot (English to Spanish)
- Joketellerbot: tells jokes
My favourite chatbots application is Poynt (if it would be further developed as an NLP application) : ‘Find a new restaurant, look up your doctor’s address & phone number, view a movie trailer, decide when and where you’d like to see it then buy the movie tickets - all in one handy application. Poynt provides instant, accurate, proximity-based business and movie listings based upon your keyword search and specified location.’
Some other companies aim to commercialise their chatbots with for example advertising. Other chatbots will give you just a single answer, which includes a link to the company’s website. I don’t think that is the way to commercialise chatbots, but at least these companies are making an attempt to explore the options. I believe chatbots will be more about customer service and providing accurate real time information. If the information is usefull to the customer, the company’s profile will be raised and customers might buy from your company on the spot or in the future .
So, if chatbots will be used to communicate with customers, how should you or your chatbot ‘chat’ with your customers? Which operational tools are involved? How should employees deal with chatting? Floris van der Veen has written Chatiquette. This book offers companies tips and tricks about responsible chatting. Ilonka Coenraad has written a review about this book. In addition to this review, she offers some great ideas on how chatbots should use chat.
If you are interested in a more detailed overview of the AIM Chatbots I have tested, please see attached overview of all tested AIM chatbots, which includes a description of each AIM Chatbot (you will notice that I have tested the AIM Chatbots last August, however since then any new AIM Chatbots haven’t been entered. What’s going on?!)
