What is an AI Chatbot? Secrets to Increasing Revenue with a Smart Virtual Assistant

Have you ever felt frustrated waiting for hours to get a response from customer service? With the advancement of technology, you can now receive fast and professional support from intelligent virtual assistants—AI chatbots. AI chatbots not only help businesses save costs but also offer customers an excellent shopping experience. Let’s find out what an AI chatbot is and why it has become an indispensable tool in modern business.

What is an AI Chatbot?

An AI chatbot is a program that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to interact with humans. This tool replaces human agents in answering customer inquiries. The AI chatbot operates based on two core steps: analyzing the user’s request and sending back a response. First, it analyzes the user's request to identify the intent and provides the most optimal response. Then, it sends the most appropriate feedback to the user based on the analysis.

How is an AI Chatbot Different from a Traditional Chatbot?

Based on current analyses, experts believe that AI chatbots are superior to traditional chatbots in many aspects. Below is a comparison table that helps you better understand the differences between the two types of chatbots.

These are the most fundamental differences between the two types of chatbots today. It’s evident that AI chatbots have more advanced features compared to regular chatbots. However, the cost of deploying an automatic response tool is relatively high, so businesses must choose based on their scale and needs.

What Are the Benefits of an AI Chatbot?

Integrating AI-based automatic responses into online sales provides numerous benefits, optimizing the customer experience while reducing costs and ensuring the quickest customer responses.

1. Reducing Costs

Hiring customer support or sales staff can be very costly. However, AI chatbots can perform tasks such as product introductions, quoting, giving advice, closing sales, requesting feedback, etc. This helps you save a significant amount on salaries for sales and customer service staff.

Moreover, AI chatbots can reduce the number of users needing to speak to a human representative. This can help businesses avoid scaling up staff as demand increases or deploying a 24/7 support team.

2. Quick Customer Response

AI chatbots don't require breaks like humans do. They can be online 24/7, helping you respond to customers at any time. Customers won’t have to wait long for a response or solution, enhancing their experience and goodwill toward your business.

3. Increased Professionalism

Your brand will appear more professional if it remembers customers’ birthdays or automatically sends holiday greetings and promotional messages. Instead of spending time sending costly emails or SMS, which can be marked as spam, the AI chatbot can handle this automatically. This helps you easily connect and remain memorable to customers, prompting quicker purchasing decisions.

Popular Types of AI Chatbots

Many businesses currently use various AI chatbot tools to increase revenue and improve customer experience. Here are three of the most commonly used AI-based automated response tools:

1. Sales AI Chatbot

This tool allows you to operate 24/7 and handle orders anytime, anywhere. It ensures quick customer responses and prevents missed requests.

A standout feature of sales AI chatbots is their simplicity and ease of use. This chatbot doesn’t require natural language processing software but instead uses simple interaction blocks to engage with customers. The response script is pre-built.

2. Customer Service AI Chatbot

AI chatbots for customer service help respond to and address queries and issues quickly. For simple questions, the chatbot will automatically answer them. For more complex queries, the chatbot will escalate them to a customer service representative. During operation, the chatbot can learn to provide accurate and relevant answers.

3. Conversational AI Chatbot

This type of chatbot records specific questions or statements from users and then provides answers to those inquiries. To respond, this model uses text data from the internet. Users can chat with this tool to resolve queries or even talk with it during lonely or idle times for entertainment.

Free AI Chatbot Creation Tools

Given the convenience of current automated response tools, users may seek free tools to help businesses or stores increase sales and drive higher revenue. Below are some AI chatbot tools you can consider:

• SnatchBot: SnatchBot allows you to build chatbots for free on Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Line, Skype, Website, Viber, and many other platforms. It has its own natural language processing engine that supports 135 different languages. The interface is intuitive and easy to use, with no programming required.
• Chatfuel: Chatfuel is the leading chatbot platform for Messenger. Creating and setting up this chatbot is free and straightforward, with no coding necessary. You can easily connect with other social networks like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc. This tool supports 50 different languages, making it user-friendly.
• Hana Chatbot: Hana Chatbot is a platform that helps you easily create Facebook chatbots. It’s also a social media customer management software. By linking with your Fanpage, Hana can manage all information about the customer lifecycle who interacted with or purchased from your shop.

Common Questions About AI Chatbots

Along with the many conveniences and benefits that AI chatbots bring to businesses, there are also many concerns about whether these tools will replace humans in the future. Let’s address these questions below.

1. Are AI Chatbots Safe?

After learning what AI chatbots are, you should understand how automatic messaging tools can significantly help businesses in sales and customer service. Many users wonder if AI chatbots are secure and safe. This depends on the type of chatbot and the entity that created it. When developing and creating chatbots, security issues are optimized by programmers to prevent data breaches or leaks. However, there are now counterfeit software versions of automated response tools, posing risks of data and information loss.

2. Are AI Chatbots Free?

Many AI chatbot tools are available today, with both free and paid versions. Free AI chatbots are an ideal solution for small and medium-sized businesses. They offer the same features as paid chatbots but with limited storage and less depth. Nevertheless, both types allow businesses to respond quickly and flexibly to customer queries.

3. Will AI Chatbots Replace Humans in the Future?

There is some speculation that AI-based automatic response tools could replace certain human jobs in various industries. This is true to some extent but not entirely accurate. AI chatbots are created and programmed by humans to assist in basic customer service tasks and can even learn to provide satisfactory answers to customers. However, they operate based on what humans have pre-programmed, and human needs and demands are complex, often requiring human intervention. Therefore, AI chatbots cannot fully replace humans.

Humans continuously advance their knowledge and skills to control ever-evolving technology. Building chatbots into the most optimized support tools to serve work and life is the goal. This article has provided insights into what AI chatbots are and how they differ from regular chatbots. We hope it has shared useful information that can help you find the best solutions for your business.