Best Essential Guide: Create Your Own AI Chatbot

No-code platforms have changed the landscape of the tech world. In the past, creating a chatbot was a responsibility that solely rested on skilled experts.

Now, you can create your own AI chatbot without hassle — in record time. Yes, you heard that right. The best part is you don’t need to be a programming guru. 

With the right tools and resources, creating a bot is easier than ever! In this guide, we’ll provide you with all the details you need to get started. 

From understanding the basic components of an AI chatbot to discovering the right bot builder platform, we’ll help you craft a chatbot the easy way. 

Without further ado, let’s get this exciting journey started. 

What Are ChatBots?

Chatbots are software used by companies to initiate personalized conversations with their audience. They are creative tools that allow companies to automate responses and access user inputs in real time.

Chatbots are instrumental in reaching your audience personally without jeopardizing other company tasks. By creating a functional chatbot, you can boost your customer satisfaction. 

The two essential types of chatbots are:

• Rule-based bots 
• Artificial Intelligence Chatbots (NLP chatbots).

Conversational apps with rich UI elements may also classify as a chatbot. This type often combines elements from the two basic variations mentioned above. 

Why Do I Need A Chatbot For My Website?

The chatbot craze seems to have taken over every industry. “Why?” you may ask. Here’s why a chatbot is a vital feature of a functional 21st-century business. 

• Provides radical efficiencies to businesses
• Proactive response to customer’s queries 
• Saves costs by conducting multiple conversations simultaneously
• Delivers impressive sale returns
• It offers insights on conversational interfaces
• Fosters engaging, interesting, and credible website
• Improves mobile user experience 
• Collects feedbacks

Chatbots are generally great tools for e-commerce stores. It helps you cut costs on customer service without risking customer satisfaction. The ability to implement personalized conversations at scale is a highlight that makes this technology more attractive. 

Creating a chatbot from scratch through coding could be a hassle. Not to mention the cost of operation–especially where AI algorithms and natural language processing are concerned. 

So, how can you create an AI chatbot using a building platform without coding?

Let’s get to it. 

How To Create Your Own AI Chatbot?

Citizen development options have infiltrated several industries, including chatbots. It undoubtedly allows people to innovate and create their chatbots with intuitive tools. 

Try these simple step-by-step guides to create your own AI chatbot without breaking the bank. 

1. Decide The Purpose

Chatbots serve different purposes. Be specific with the purpose you want your chatbot to serve. That way, you can decide on the type of chatbot to build. 

You can simplify your decision process by asking yourself these questions: 

• What are your customer’s use cases? 
• Why are you building a chatbot? Is it for lead generation or improved customer service? 
• What chatbot feature would appeal to you if you were your customer? 

Answering these questions will guide you in the right direction. 

2. Decide On A Preferred Channel

For every business action, your customer’s needs come first– developing a chatbot is no different. 

You can decide on the right channel by answering this question: where do you experience the most customer interaction or engagement? This ensures you create the chatbot on any platform they prefer. 

So, depending on your customer’s behavioral patterns, you may host your bot on your website, Facebook, a mobile app, or any other social media channel. 

You can also explore a multi-channel strategy if customer engagement is divided across several channels. 

Remember to confirm your chatbot builder supports numerous channels because it’s more reasonable to use the same chatbot on all platforms. 

Pro tip: Check to ascertain that your selected bot builder integrates with all your tools.

3. Choose A Technology Stack

After finding out the chatbot’s purpose and your customer’s preference, it’s time to choose a platform. 

You have two choices: 

DIY Chatbot Builder

With an opportunity to create chatbots for free, this option is a more popular choice. Chatbot platforms feature easy-to-use bot builders for any kind of user. Besides being cost-effective, it’s time effective as you can build your bot in a few minutes. 

AI Frameworks

This option entails using a chatbot framework like Microsoft Bot as a template for a developer to create a personalized talkbot by coding. AI frameworks are pretty much a developer’s library. If you opt for this choice, ensure the SDK or library integrates well with other software. 

Now, it’s time to get to work.

4. Structure The Chatbot Conversation

Following your decisions on the most appropriate chatbot platform, you can design your chatbot conversation flow.

If you are using a talkbot platform, creating a conversation flow is seamless. Just create a sequence using drag-and-drop features. 

Contrarily, infusing an AI framework with AI capabilities requires the expertise of specialized chatbot developers. The developers will create a server and the front side of the talkbot. 

Although you can explore UX elements, you can’t do much about your chatbot’s UI on a DIY builder.

5. Train Your Bots

If your chatbot focuses on AI instead of simple basic rules, this step is essential. But if you created a simple bot focused on decision tree flows, skip this step. 

Basically, AI chatbots rely on massive data sets to understand user intent. This means you must provide an extensive data set by analyzing customer queries. And train the bot on the dynamism of human questions. 

You can achieve this by exploring third-party data sets to provide your chatbot with the information it needs. Another alternative is to train your chatbot based on available data sets like support tickets and customer reviews. 

6. Test Your Chatbot

For a chatbot to fulfill its purpose, it must provide deliberate answers that steer the conversation toward a required goal. Or seamlessly fallback on a human agent intervention. Either way, you must test your AI chatbot.

Although humans are unpredictable, your tests can reveal loopholes in your chatbot’s conversation structure. It also helps to foresee obscure customer questions and offer a way to tackle them. 

7. Deploy The Chatbots And Get Feedback For Maintenance

After ensuring all loose ends are secure, you can deploy your bot. Ensure you integrate it with any necessary software and improve it frequently. 

One great way to improve is through feedback. Hence, you can automate surveys with the chatbot to get customer opinions on your chatbot’s performance. 

Developing a chatbot isn’t a one-off. Therefore, you must keep updating and finetuning the answers to keep your users happy. 

Final Words

Whether you’re creating your AI-powered chatbot or exploring pre-made solutions, chatbots offer unlimited advantages. 

They help keep costs low, save time (you can create one in just minutes!), and improve your overall results. This guide will help you learn to create your own AI chatbot without stress.