A Complete Guide to Design a Chatbot Tech Stack

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By: Sagar Sharma

A Complete Guide to Design a Chatbot Tech Stack

Human beings have been constantly trying to simplify their lives by bringing changes through innovation. We have come far from our preliminary stage and today, technologies have taken over the biggest changes in our lives. With each new development, life becomes simpler and comfortable.

A lot of technologies have hit the market in recent years and the count is still continued. Among these tech advances, bots have made a significant mark in recent times. Bots can be Chatbots and voice bots. Bots have made our life simpler, and you can take examples of Google Assistant, Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa. They have simplified our lives by automating routine tasks and improving the end-user experience.

The demand of Chatbots has considerably increased and the forecasts of Gartner are a testament to it. Let us take a look at the statistics given by Gartner.

As per Gartner, “Twenty-five percent of customer service and support operations will integrate virtual customer assistant (VCA) or chatbot technology across engagement channels by 2020, up from less than two percent in 2017.

What is a Chatbot?

Chatbots are the chat robots that communicate with humans online and trigger conversations that people have with one another. Industries like E-Commerce and banking use them to answer questions of customers and help them navigate their website.

Chatbots bring a new component to your website and to how your customers interact with your company.

How to Select the Right Tech Stack for your Chatbot

Chatbots can be a mix of mobile and web-based. Therefore, the technology stack you will you choose will depend on the application it is required. You can use the combination of the tech stacks mentioned below for creating your Chatbot.

Scripts (JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, Python, SQL, etc.)

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) it is used when a specific data request is created by the browser. It improves server-to-browser communications.

Server to handle API calls and HTTPS connections

Cloud Service offers storage service of the chats for better understanding of the intent, suitable response, scalability, etc.

NLP Framework intelligent Chatbots use Machine Learning Algorithms and Natural Language Processing to get a deeper understanding of the syntax and semantics of the sentences.

Steps to Select the Right Tech Stack for your Chatbot

Define the Scopes
Analyze the project scopes & identify the feasibility, scalability, and technicality of the Chatbot

Design the Conversation Flows
Use RealtimeBoard, BotMock or other tools to design conversation flow

Tech Stack
Choose the most appropriate group of technologies for frontend and backend development

Develop
Integration of different features, functionality, frameworks, and tools as per the custom requirements of your project

Scale Up
Follow analytics & Key Performance Indicators and compare them with the goals you want to achieve

Factors to Consider for Chatbot Tech Stack Designing

1. Messaging Interface

When you plan to design a Chatbot tech stack, it is crucial to determine which messaging platform you will focus, where your users are, whether your service will be accessible by everyone or only by a certain group, what device they will use to chat, and a lot more.

Facebook Messenger, Kik, Telegram, Allo, Line, Viber, etc. are excellent for mobile users, and it enables you to quickly access lots of users. For example, WeChat is the primary platform if your focus is on Asian users. Slack is great if you focus on startups and developers. Skype and Microsoft Teams are more appropriate for corporate use, wherein you can design a Chatbot for employees for a big company with high data privacy issues. There are lots of such examples when you think of designing a Chatbot.

2. Graphical Botflow Building

When you design a Chatbot, you need to consider what technologies you will use. The advanced technologies consist of coding or configuring technical tools but are often more powerful.

While code-free technologies allow anyone to modify the bot with a graphic interface with the help of drag & drop feature. However, it is less customizable.
Now, the question is whether you want non-tech people to be able to modify the content of the bot in real-time or not. If there is a possibility of frequent changes in the content, and you want to give autonomy to business people, then you should consider all solutions with simple graphics interfaces.

3. Fluid Conversations

Are you planning to build a basic QnA or want it to act like a real person? For example, if your bot sends multiple messages, proposing options, etc.then you will get plenty of solutions built on a question-answer base such as QNAmaker from Microsoft, Operator by Intercom, and others. Therefore, you do not need to create something too complex. You can accomplish this purpose with the help of several simple tools available on the market.

4. Natural Language Processing

Many organizations believe that Natural Language Processing (NLP) is mandatory for all Chatbot development. However, it is not necessary to integrate NLP in every Chatbot. Some Chatbots are simple and follow easy flowcharts, while there are other intelligent ones that behave more like humans.

For example, the Chatbots that offer simple functionality like a product catalog does not need NLP to function. However, Chatbots for advance human-like behavior surely need NLP.

5. Supervised Learning

A Chatbot cannot function without human interference, particularly when you want to improve its conversation flow, add new intents, or enrich its knowledge base. The process of assisting the Chatbot by a human team is called supervised learning or training. You can undertake this process either live or after the conversation.

A Chatbot offers the following functionalities:

Live Coaching: when a Chatbot is not sure enough to give the right answer or recognize any intent, then a human can interfere to help qualify the right intent.

Daily Training: an operator goes through all conversations on a daily basis and confirms/denies the intent qualified the Chatbot.

Weekly Improvement: the team will gather weekly and prioritize the new features to be added to the Chatbot. For this purpose, it is significant to listen to and observe your users. They will have unexpected behaviors that you need to understand and integrate the relevant features.

6. Human Handover

Can you afford to have a human ready to answer those questions that the Chatbot doesn’t understand? However, if you build such a Chatbot, then it will give an amazing user experience to a customer.

Hence, if you plan to incorporate a human in the loop, then make sure you choose the right tech solution. The following examples will give you insights.

Facebook Messenger: it allows you to see all your conversations in the page manager. They also announced a Handover Protocol for developers.

Operator: Intercom designed it allow human interference in the conversation.

Chatfuel: it offers a button to begin a Live Chat Session.

Even Dashbot has a handover feature.

7. API Integration

Many Chatbots integrate third-parties via web services. If you have a plan to develop such a Chatbot, then it is critical to use the right tech stack that supports the functionality. For example, Chatfuel allows you to connect to Zappier. However, most WYSIWYG platforms do not allow to connect to external web services. The best solution to resolve this issue is to code the Chatbot logic and use REST APIs.

8. Language Support

You can determine the language of your Chatbot on the basis of your target audience. Majority platforms handle English quite well, but not all of them can include other languages as well. Sometimes, if the language is supported, then the performances are not up to the mark.

9. Pricing

It is crucial to consider the price of software solutions that help you anticipate your user growth. Mostly, you will find business models such as Free, Freemium, Pay per messages/API Request, Pay per users on platform, and Subscription.

Final Words

In this article, we discussed how you can create a robust Chatbot. It is significant to consider the selection of the right Technology Stack that you will use in the Chatbot development. From the points we discussed above, you can develop your required Chatbot.

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