A whatbot is a type of chatbot that is designed to answer questions. Whatbots are programmed with a database of questions and answers on a particular topic, allowing them to have natural conversations and provide helpful information to users. In this article, we will explore what whatbots are, how they work, their key features, use cases, and the future of this AI technology.
What are Whatbots?
Whatbots, also sometimes referred to as QA bots or question answering bots, are artificial intelligence systems designed to have conversations with humans and answer their questions. They are a type of chatbot specifically focused on providing informative answers to user queries, rather than for general conversation or completing tasks.
Whatbots work by having an extensive database of questions and pre-written answers on one or more topics. Using natural language processing (NLP), whatbots analyze the questions entered by users and scan their knowledge base to identify the most relevant answers. The bot then responds with an appropriate text or voice-based answer.
For example, a whatbot created for a consumer electronics company may have thousands of questions and answers about the company’s products – from technical specifications, to troubleshooting issues, to warranty and customer service queries. When a customer asks the bot a question through a conversational interface, the AI automatically matches it to the right answer in its database.
How Do Whatbots Work?
Whatbots rely on advanced NLP algorithms to understand natural language queries and respond accurately. Here are the key steps a whatbot takes when answering questions:
- Natural Language Processing: The bot analyzes the text or audio of the user’s question using NLP techniques like semantic analysis to understand the intent and context.
- Information Retrieval: It searches its database to find relevant answers to the question, ranking them by how well they match the query.
- Response Generation: Using a natural language generation algorithm, the bot formulates a natural language response based on the information retrieved.
- Delivery: The response is delivered back to the user through text or synthesized speech through the conversational interface.
As the bot continues conversing with the user, it tracks the context and refines responses based on the ongoing dialogue. Over time, the bot gets better at recognizing questions and providing accurate answers through machine learning.
Key Features of Whatbots
Here are some of the key features that enable whatbots to provide helpful information via conversational interfaces:
- Natural language processing – Understands natural language queries and handles variations in how questions are phrased.
- Information retrieval – Quickly searches large databases of questions & answers to find the most relevant response.
- Context tracking – Recognizes context clues in a conversation to respond appropriately and consistently.
- Machine learning – Continuously improves its question-answering capability through feedback and new data.
- Voice and text interfaces – Provides seamless voice or text-based conversations.
- Escalation – Can redirect questions to a human agent when unable to find or confirm an answer.
Use Cases for Whatbots
Whatbots have a number of valuable applications across industries. Here are some of the top use cases:
Customer Service
Whatbots are extremely useful as virtual customer service agents, providing consistent and accurate answers around the clock. Customers can get their questions answered without waiting on hold or digging through FAQ pages.
Ecommerce
Ecommerce companies can use whatbots to assist shoppers with product questions and recommendations. Bots equipped with the product catalog can answers queries about pricing, features, availability and more.
Healthcare
Whatbots have promising applications in healthcare, acting as virtual nurses or doctor assistants. They can provide information about medications, procedures, insurance, and medical conditions at all hours.
Technical Support
Technology companies often use whatbots as tech support agents, allowing customers to get help with hardware, software or network issues without waiting for a live agent.
Education
In education, whatbots can be created to help students get information quickly – such as answering questions about courses, school policies, facilities and more.
Internal IT Help Desks
Within companies, whatbots are being used to handle IT help desk requests from employees. Bots can resolve common issues like password resets, software troubleshooting etc.
The Future of Whatbots
Advancements in artificial intelligence will continue expanding the capabilities of whatbots. Here are some exciting possibilities on the horizon for this technology:
- Answering more complex questions – With more advanced NLP, whatbots will handle more nuanced queries with higher accuracy.
- Integration with business systems – Closer integration with CRM, ERP and other systems will allow whatbots access to detailed customer data for personalized responses.
- Expanded knowledge domains – Companies will expand their whatbots’ knowledge into multiple domains for wider usefulness.
- Proactive engagements – Rather than waiting for questions, whatbots will proactively provide recommendations and information to users.
- Multi-lingual – Whatbots will converse fluently in multiple global languages, not just English.
- Human-like conversations – Continued improvements in NLP and NLG will make interactions feel more natural.
While current whatbot technology has some limitations, rapid innovations promise to make these AI assistants an indispensable interface for getting information.
Whatbot Platforms
Several technology companies provide platforms to build and deploy whatbots. Here are some of the top options:
| Platform | Key Features |
|---|---|
| Chatbase | Prebuilt small talk library, reporting dashboard, integration with Google Dialogflow |
| Chata | Visual bot builder, live chat handover, Facebook Messenger integration |
| Hubbot | Tools for building chatbot dialogs, workflows and content |
| Pandorabots | Cloud-based bot hosting and training platform with NLP |
| Reply.ai | Omnichannel deployment, analytics, easy integration with business data |
These platforms provide robust tools to streamline the process of building and deploying whatbots on various channels. They take care of the technical complexities, allowing you to focus on crafting the conversation flow and questions/answers.
Benefits of Whatbots
Here are some of the key benefits that make whatbots a useful AI assistant technology:
- 24/7 availability – Whatbots provide instant, always-on assistance without human limitations.
- Reduced costs – Automation of common questions drives cost savings over human agents.
- Scalability – Whatbots easily scale to handle huge volumes of inquiries simultaneously.
- Speed – AI-powered responses are often much faster than searching through documents or waiting for a person.
- Consistency – Bots provide the same answers to the same questions every time.
- Multichannel – Whatbots engage users across websites, apps, messaging, voice interfaces and more.
These benefits make whatbots a versatile option for automating information delivery across a wide range of industries and use cases.
Challenges of Whatbots
Despite rapid advances, whatbot technology still faces some challenges:
- Limited knowledge – Whatbots only know what they are specifically programmed for, making versatility difficult.
- Difficulty with context – Tracking long, complex conversations with full context is still tricky for AI.
- Security – Protecting the private data whatbots collect and access remains important.
- User trust – Some people prefer human interactions over bots for sensitive or complex issues.
- Development effort – Creating good whatbots requires substantial investment in content creation and training.
However, continued improvements in NLP, machine learning and conversational AI frameworks are steadily overcoming these limitations. Combining whatbots with human oversight addresses many of the remaining gaps in capability.
Conclusion
Whatbots represent an exciting evolution of conversational interfaces for getting questions answered instantly. Using NLP and AI, they provide fast, accurate and consistent access to information across text and voice channels. Adoption of whatbot technology is growing quickly thanks to expanded capabilities, lower costs and ease of deployment on chatbot platforms. While whatbots have their challenges, rapid innovation indicates they will become an increasingly valuable self-service solution across many industries.