What is a Chatbot?

The modern-day business world has found many uses for chatbots. From improving the user engagement count to play a significant role in the lead conversion process, chatbots have joined the world across industries. The fact that chatbots are evenly famous among baby boomers and millennials expands the user base of the technology to a vast range.

A chatbot provides a form of interaction between a human and a machine. The communication happens via written messages or voice. The chatbot is programmed to operate independently from a human operator. It can answer a question formulate to its natural languages and respond as a real person would. A chatbot comes up whit its answers through a combination of predefined scripts and machine learning.

When you ask a question, the chatbot will respond based on what it knows. If the conversation brings it to a place where it does not know what to do, the chatbot will either deflect the conversation or potentially pass the discussion to a human operator. In both cases, it will also try to learn from that interaction.

Over time, and multiple interactions, the chatbot will gradually gain in scope and relevance. The complexity of a chatbot is determinate by the sophistication of its underlying software, and the data it can access.

You may already be using chatbots in your life. If you ever asked Amazon Alexa, Apple’s, Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana about something, for example, «How is the weather today?» you interacted with a Chatbot. Many companies are looking at various ways to use chatbots to improve and scale customer experience.

 “Chatbots represent a new trend in how people access information, make decisions, and communicate”.
-Christie Pitts

How much does it cost to develop a chatbot?

Two alternatives are available to you when it comes to building a chatbot.

1. Build Your Own

If you have programming skills or have developers by your side, then you can implement the alternative of building a chatbot based on your needs and preferences. The disadvantages would be the workforce cost and the time required to design the chatbot. Plus, continuous maintenance will be entirely your responsibility.

2. Employ a Chatbot Builder

This alternative often requires paying a monthly subscription for a platform where you can design your chatbot. In this way, you can receive continuous chatbot maintenance from the vendor. The complexity of your bot determines the prices of the subscription. For that reason, giving you an exact number of how much you could spend would not be realistic because everything depends on how productive you want your bot to be.

Conclusion

It’s becoming clear that quality chatbots require a significant investment. The final cost of a chatbot will depend on the needs you have. The more complex the chatbot, the more expensive it will be. Sure, there are bots available for no cost but, is that the best move for your business? Don’t risk your customer service quality; be more confident with a chatbot that fits best with your business expectations and improves user experiences.

Are you planning to build a chatbot? Let us know, INVID can help you create a chatbot according to your goals and requirements. Click here to contact us today!