Most Popular Platforms and Tools to Build Modern Chatbots for You Business

Chatbots enjoy unprecedented popularity across the spectrum these days and the latest progress in artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) technologies has further helped the advancement of chatbots as the interactive tools for communicating with the users.

There are more than 300,000 chatbots on Facebook alone and this statistic is enough to prove the ever-growing popularity of the chatbots. As per the reports published by Salesmate, around 41% of customers now prefer live chat on websites and shopping from businesses they can contact by messaging.

In this respect one must take note of the evolving capabilities and features of the modern chatbots over time. The rule based chatbots are now replaced by more intelligent AI powered chatbots. Here through the rest of this blog post we are going to explain some of the top tools and platforms for building sophisticated chatbots. But before that we must have a look at the types of chatbots that are in use across the web and mobile apps.

What exactly is a Chatbot?

A chatbot basically refers to an AI-powered software capable of carrying out a simulated conversation with the users through a chat interface whether on a website or any other messaging apps such as Skype, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.

Now thanks to chatbot communication, businesses can provide online support to customers and offer systematic communication regarding any queries for products and services. Chatbots help customers and users to find the exact solution they were searching for. With the help of chatbots users can easily access information just by making queries and without searching the web.
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Three Different Types of Chatbot

Since chatbots refer to highly sophisticated and interactive communication technology for connecting the users and customers, integrating chatbots can really be an overwhelming experience for the web admin or mobile app admin. This is why it is important to have an in-depth knowledge of the various types of chatbots that are presently in use.

Rule-Based Chatbots

Rule-based chatbots are basically chatbots that work following a predefined flow of conversation. As per this conversation flow a bot can communicate based on the probable logical answers and the corresponding user queries in a conversation.

To make this communication easier several options as queries can be presented as interactive buttons. The rule based chatbots can also incorporate carrousels and menu options for easy selection of options based on the context.

AI Chatbots

AI chatbots or intelligent chatbots use natural language processing technology to have a better understanding of the user queries by deciphering the sentence structure, tonal variation and other speech attributes.

By understanding the user queries, corresponding expression and intent over time a chatbot can understand the user questions better. In AI chatbot conversation, deciphering the user context is the key to carry out communication and answering the questions.

Hybrid Chatbots

As it is evident from the name of this chatbot, hybrid bots make use of both rule-based chatbots and AI technology to some extent. These chatbots answer queries by following the pre-defined rules and also by deciphering the specific contexts of communication.

Top tools and platforms for Chatbot development

Now that we have explained the different types of chatbots and the way they work for communicating with the users, it is time to present here some of the most useful and widely acclaimed tools and platforms for building robust chatbots on web and mobile apps.

Chatfuel

Chatfuel is a great tool to allow even the non-skilled developers to build highly sophisticated chatbots. By using this tool you can easily build AI chatbot for Facebook platform. While using this tool you can also use external resources by using different plugins to build your own chatbot.

The chatbot built with this tool is also capable of recognizing some specific phrases, expressions and words and providing predefined replies to the users. It is capable of delivering automated replies to various queries that are common and frequent in nature. The tool is absolutely free of cost and can be used by anyone to build chatbots.

WotNot

WotNot is one of the leading chatbot development platforms to help you develop intelligent chatbots. This awesome platform offers great conversational marketing solutions for as many as 16 different industries.

The platform allows you to build chatbots without any coding just through the easy to use drag and drop interface. You can either develop your custom chatbot from scratch or else, you can always use any of the templates provided by the platform to build a bot quickly.

WotNot platform can deliver both chatbot and the live chat tool to offer unmatched scalability and support. The tool can also be used for live chat involving human support in case it is needed.

Botsify

This is also a robust Facebook chatbot platform. This tool can also be used to incorporate and integrate other chatbots into the system. It is not free and you need to pay a subscription fee for using the tool.

Some of the effective and simple steps to activate chatbot by using this tool include by using the web address botsify.com, integrate the bot by using any of the market available plugins, create a web hook, creating your custom commands for the chatbot and finally using the bot for customer query handling. This tool also uses AI technology to detect certain phrases and words as per the context.
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Drift Chatbot

Drift is a platform that basically started its journey in the space of live chat and only recently it started a no-code chatbot platform. This platform particularly focuses on creating chatbot for meeting with sales teams.

The chatbot offered by this platform can facilitate conversations with sales leads. Evaluating website visitors as leads, identifying the appropriate sales representatives, and scheduling meetings as per availability, are some of the important things done by Drift Chatbot platform.

Some of the key features of this chatbot platform include offering both chatbot and live chat functions, making conversations that compel people to share information, capability to accommodate a whole array of integrations, push notifications, etc.

Smooch.io

It is another well acclaimed chatbot development tool that basically performs as a connector to streamline communication across multiple messenger apps such as Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Line and different business apps such as Front, Zendesk, Scout and several others.

Smooch.io once configured properly allows getting all chat notifications from various messaging apps. While you can answer through Sunshine or any other business chat app, the conversation across multiple platforms get streamlined. Smooch by offering several chatbot connectors make this communication possible across multiple channels.

Landbot.io

It is an intuitive chatbot development tool that can be used to build both simple rule-based bots and intelligent AI-powered bots for facilitating smooth interactions with prospects and customers leading to increased business conversion.

Landbot can also accommodate human agents to take part in the conversation in the middle of a chat and make real-time dialogues. Some of the key features of this chatbot tool include drag-and-drop interface for quick building of chatbots, creating dialogue flows, testing and analysing, integration with numerous online apps, personalisation by using brand elements, etc.

Beep Boop

Beep Boop is a chatbot hosting platform allowing integration of chatbots with messenger platforms such as Facebook Messenger and business apps like Slack. Needing just some minutes to setup and install the chatbot, it is also the most easy to use tool for creating chatbots.

For using this tool one can just visit Github where different versions of the tool are maintained within a repository. Just by availing a web hosting service, you can implement the code and further you can incorporate the code within the Beep Boop platform. Thereafter you can link the tool with your respective Facebook or Slack account. You can also use a separate analytics tool to evaluate the performance of the tool.

HubSpot’s Chatbot Builder

HubSpot chatbot builder tool has made the acquisition of Motion AI back in 2017 and since then the live chat platform offers a comprehensive intelligent chatbot development mechanism that requires no coding knowledge or skills.

By using HubSpot’s free chatbot builder a business can use the automated conversion for booking meetings, deliver answers to common queries from the customers, offer support to customer issues, qualify business leads, etc.

On top of all these, HubSpot’s chatbot builder tool also allows integration with the free CRM tool of HubSpot. Thanks to this integration with CRM, chatbots can provide messages with a lot more personalisation.

BotKit

BotKit comes as a top notch tool for developing sophisticated chatbots that can be integrated easily with all major messaging platforms.

Boasting of a huge open community of developers comprising more than 7000 developers Botkit provides the best of chatbot development expertise. The platform also offers great support from the BotKit team.
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Conclusion

Thanks to these ready to use tools and platforms, building sophisticated chatbots is no longer a tough task. You can simply use these tools to incorporate communication features and offer customer support.

Dhaval Sarvaiya

I am Dhaval Sarvaiya, one of the Founders of Intelivita, a leading mobile app development company having expertise in developing mobile apps using AI and ML technologies. I help Enterprises and Startups overcome their Digital Transformation and mobile app development challenges with the might of on-demand solutions powered by cutting-edge technology.

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