/ What is a chatbot framework?
Alexander Wijninga
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5 min
A chatbot framework gives companies an easy way to build, maintain and optimise chatbots, often without needing extensive technical knowledge. This tool makes it a good deal easier for companies to keep an overview of their customer service. A chatbot framework, also called a chatbot platform, lets companies keep a clear picture of the chatbot and how it deals with customers in a user-friendly way. How exactly this works, you can read in this article.
There are various chatbot providers on the market that offer a programmable chatbot. For this you do need the expert eye of a developer. In this case the chatbot provider offers everything a developer needs to make the chatbot function properly. Think of data mining tools, which make it easy to build a connection to analytics in order to gain insight into general use of the chatbot. There is also room on the platform to implement machine learning that you have programmed in a language such as Python or Ruby. Through the platform you then easily implement it on various channels; ideal when you have enough knowledge in house for it.
An advantage of a chatbot you program yourself is that you have every choice about the chatbot's appearance and workings in your own hands. The chatbot provider offers a platform on which all the tools can be found for the developer to build a chatbot themselves.
Fortunately a developer is not always needed to build a chatbot. Through code-free platforms you easily build a chatbot without having to program yourself. A chatbot that works on the basis of artificial intelligence also works through this kind of platform. All the programming and coding work has already been done; the only thing left to do is to fill in the chatbot's content. Think of the conversations the chatbot holds; closed questions, open questions, feedback forms, and so on. Thanks to a pre-programmed drag-and-drop system, all you have to do is add different elements to the chatbot framework. Add a field where people enter their email address to increase the number of leads, for example, or add a field in which people give feedback on customer service using smileys. This is done through a user-friendly interface. An advantage of such a platform is that you set up a chatbot easily and quickly. This is the type of chatbot platform Watermelon offers.
Artificial intelligence can be deployed on both programmable and code-free chatbot platforms. Artificial intelligence makes the difference between a smart, helpful chatbot and a chatbot that drags customer satisfaction down through misunderstanding. Artificial intelligence makes sure different question variations are recognised and linked to a fitting answer. The longer the chatbot is online, the more the chatbot understands the customer.
Curious about the benefits of a chatbot platform? We have lined up the biggest ones below.
A big advantage of using a chatbot platform is that you can easily keep track of which questions come in most. If more questions come in about particular product pages, for example, it is time to take a closer look at those pages and optimise them. Or perhaps you can optimise the navigation of your website, or is something hard to read? Use these insights to optimise your website.
On a chatbot platform you build and train your chatbot in the same environment. That is handy for your staff; all the information about the software can be found in one place. This improves efficiency, and avoids any confusion.
Building a chatbot by means of a framework, whether with or without a developer, saves you time above all. With a ready-made package you immediately have everything you need to build a good chatbot. The platform serves up all the tools and information you need; it is therefore no surprise that this saves you a lot of time. Exactly how much you save depends on the hourly rate of the staff you deploy. The following formula gives you an indication of the actual costs: (gross hourly wage of employee x 1.3) - licence costs of the chatbot platform. The 1.3 stands for the employer's contributions that come with an employee.
When you choose a chatbot platform, it is important first to look at the features of the most successful chatbots. They have a number of factors in common. On that basis you can choose a chatbot platform that suits you well and responds to these.
The most important features? We have lined them up for you below!
By optimising your chatbot from the moment it is online, the bot gets steadily smarter. This will take a bit more time at the start in particular. It does remain important, though, to keep clearing away the questions the bot does not understand; society is continuously on the move, so you will see that the questions the chatbot receives slowly change along with it. By continuing to follow these trends, you keep responding to your customer and your audience. That keeps customer satisfaction up to standard.
Does your chatbot not understand the customer's question? That can happen; some questions simply need more personal attention. Make sure your chatbot passes the question on to a human agent when it does not understand the question (repeatedly). When the human agent takes the question over from the chatbot, the conversation history has to be shown as well, so that the customer does not have to repeat themselves.
Some chatbot platforms offer the possibility of connecting your CRM system to them. This lets the bot easily recognise the customer, address them by name, or recognise them from an earlier conversation they had with customer service. Research shows that 49% of chatbots already have this mastered; that is why this chatbot trend is an important one to go along with.
Make sure your customer service can be reached through all the channels you use. That way the step of asking a question is smaller for the consumer, and the customer will move to conversion faster. Since this chatbot feature has a big impact on sales and customer satisfaction, it is an important characteristic you cannot overlook.
When analytics can be connected to chatbot use, you can see far more data and optimise the chatbot more efficiently. That way your chatbot will be able to answer more questions, and you can automate more and more of your customer service questions.
Watermelon's platform belongs to the code-free chatbots and is easy to use. It combines a chatbot platform and a customer service tool: on this platform, conversations from all the channels used, by humans and chatbot alike, come into a single overview. You therefore pick up conversations easily and distribute them among staff without effort. When you use this chatbot framework there is always a member of staff on hand to answer your questions, which lets you build, train and use your own bot as fast as possible.
Read our whitepaper: How companies use chatbots successfully.
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