Chatbots are software applications that use artificial intelligence & natural language processing to understand what a human wants, and guides them to their desired outcome with as little work for the end user as possible. Like a virtual assistant for your customer experience touchpoints.

A well designed & built chatbot will:

1. Use existing conversation data (if available) to understand the type of questions people ask.
2. Analyze correct answers to those questions through a ‘training’ period.
3. Use machine learning & NLP to learn context, and continually get better at answering those questions in the future.

The adoption of chatbots was accelerated in 2016 when Facebook opened up its developer platform and showed the world what is possible with chatbots through their Messenger app. Google also got in the game soon after with Google Assistant. Since then there have been a tremendous amount of chatbot apps built on websites, in applications, on social media, for customer support, and countless other examples.