Chatbots: What They Are And How You Can Take Advantage of This Technology

Chatbots are mostly known as virtual assistants, currently found on websites, applications, in specific devices such as Amazon Echo, Google Assistant and even in airports as holograms to help users with possible doubts or questions. The main purpose of chatbots is to make it easier for people to perform actions. Below we will explain chatbots in greater depth, their wide variety of uses, successful examples of their use in companies and the advantages they bring to businesses.

 What are chatbots

Chatbots are artificial intelligence software that began to be developed in the mid-twentieth century by Alan Turing, mathematician and theoretical computer scientist, Alan was the creator of the concepts and principles thanks to which computers and artificial intelligence work and operate today. The first chatbot that established the basis for today’s virtual assistants was created in 1966 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it was called Elizza and its main objective was to establish a simple communication channel between the interface and a person. Since then, the development of chatbots has evolved until nowadays they are able to learn independently, with each interaction they analyze the language to develop a communication more similar to that of humans and in this way become more efficient.

There are two basic types of chatbots, simple and intelligent. Simple chatbots respond to specifically prepared words and if the user asks a question that does not contain these words the chatbot will not understand him and therefore will remain unanswered. Intelligent chatbots, unlike the previous ones, do not respond to previously agreed words, but analyze the words of the message and offer suggestions or new ideas to the user, i.e. they perform a more natural and less prefabricated communication.

How a chatbot can make your life easier

There are more and more utilities for which we can use a chatbot, in general it is used to make lists, mark events or important appointments or even to control the home automation of a house. In the hotel sector it can be used from the web to facilitate navigation or room reservations, to implement a holographic virtual assistant at the reception, which will be available 24 hours a day to perform check in, checkout and other requests at late hours of the night. As technology advances, so will the uses and activities that can be assigned to chatbots.

Examples of how brands are implementing chatbots in their strategies

A clear example of the implementation of chatbots in a hotel business can be seen in the Vincci Hoteles accommodations that provide a chatbot as a virtual assistant in their hotels. The system implemented in the hotel rooms allows incidents or doubts that would normally be made at the reception, such as the failure of any device or any type of request to the room service, all this allows to adapt the room to the user’s needs in a simple and almost immediate way.

Other hotels also have chatbots on their websites, which make booking easier and save the user the most work. Upon entering the website, the wizard adapts to the selected language, then the customer enters the search commands and specific features desired in their room and almost immediately the chatbot presents the various options, making the customer only has to select one of the options presented.

Advantages and disadvantages of chatbots

Regarding their use, we find both benefits and disadvantages that we will explain below.

Advantages

Thanks to its implementation, many companies register a growth in the number of sales, due to the ease experienced by the user when browsing the web and making a purchase.

Data collection, the bot accumulates data constantly while communicating with the user so it will be easier to know and adapt to it, to recommend suggestions in the future.

Cost savings, since it is available 24 hours a day, it is not necessary to have switchboards, which would normally be responsible for resolving doubts.

Future forecasts, several studies estimate that by 2022 90% of interactions will be through chatbots.

Disadvantages

When setting up a chatbot we can find some disadvantages, these in most cases are focused on the negative perception that people have of virtual assistants and technology and not in its functionality. We will explain them in more depth below:

Rejection, currently there are still users who are reluctant to use AI technology and prefer to solve their doubts through people and not virtual assistants.

Data loss, there is a minimal possibility of data loss, therefore it is necessary to make backup copies, in order to be able to later analyze the information collected by the assistant.

Inflexibility, there are still messages that the chatbot cannot analyze and therefore it will be impossible for it to answer users’ questions.