Chatbots vs virtual assistants: In the Artificial Intelligence world, Chatbots and Virtual Assistants are buzzwords that are used interchangeably often while both are different things. Sometimes, you might even hear the term ‘virtual assistant chatbot’ in today’s digital market.
As its name implies, a virtual assistant chatbot is a combo of two separate programs such as a chatbot and a virtual assistant. The only similarity between both is that they are developed to make human lives easy via conversations.
In this blog, you will learn the differences between chatbots and virtual assistants. Let’s first start with each introduction.
What is a Chatbot?
Chatbots are designed to engage customers in human-like conversations. So, business owners deploy this program to interact with customers and offer help around the clock.
What Is a Virtual Assistant?
Virtual assistants are online personal assistants that support people in managing their email, scheduling meetings, and other regular activities. The popular program includes Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant.
Let’s come to the main concern that is the differences between the chatbot and virtual assistance.
Key differences between Chatbots vs virtual assistants
#1 – Technology
Chatbots: Chatbots vs virtual assistants
Rule-based chatbots: These chatbots allow for interaction via buttons, and reply with several pre-defined answers.
Analytical independent chatbots: Machine Learning enabled chatbots are designed to understand customers’ requests.
Contextual chatbots: These advanced chatbots are backed by AI, ML, and NLP. It enables chatbots to continuously learn, offer precise replies, and maintain context to customize conversations.
Virtual assistants: Chatbots vs virtual assistants
It uses the same technology as a contextual chatbot. But, virtual assistants have advanced NLU and AI that enables them to understand natural language commands.
#2 – Core-functionality
Chatbots
Chatbot’s functions can be widely classified into the two categories such as:
- Help businesses and customers
- Service as an experimental platform
Virtual assistants
Virtual assistants such as Jarvis-AI, and Bixby perform human tasks. It includes taking notes, reading text or emails, scheduling, and reminding the end-user about appointments. It also helps with giving updates about the weather and engaging the users in fun conversations.
#3 – Channels – Chatbots vs virtual assistants
Chatbots
Chatbots are deployed on web and messaging channels such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. It can also be deployed on apps and in-app chat widgets to solve customer problems.
Virtual assistant
Google Home and Echo have their corresponding virtual assistants developed. The functions on voice commands while devices have an app that users can use to interact with the virtual assistant.
#4 – Interface
Chatbots
Chatbots have a conversational User Interface (CUI) – a chat-like interface that allows customers to converse with the chatbot via message.
Virtual assistants
While they have a chat-like interface, virtual assistants can perform without an interface after getting activate via voice commands.
So, these are key differences between chatbots and virtual assistants. So, whether you choose chatbots or virtual assistants, you can provide your customers a seamless experience when visiting a website or app.
If you want chatbots or virtual assistants for your business, get in touch with a dedicated chatbot development company like Yugasa Bot!
How can Yugasa Bot help in chatbot development?
Yugasa Bot is a reliable chatbot app development company that has experience in developing interactive & personalized chatbots which are AI-powered & ML coded.
We have a dedicated team of highly skilled chatbot developers with many years of average experience developed bots with conversational, self-learning abilities, and context-sensitivity.
So, if you are planning to outsource customized chatbot or virtual assistant development solutions, get in touch with our experienced developers.
Read More: Key differences between a chatbot and a virtual assistant
