Due to the frequent use of the phrases chatbots and virtual assistants, there has been a great deal of uncertainty around the two technologies — chatbot and virtual assistant.
With a flood of easy-to-use chatbot solutions flooding the market, it’s important to realize that the scope and purpose of each of these technologies are distinct.
For instance, one user pointed out that the critical distinction is that a chatbot is mostly focused on the server or corporation, but virtual assistants such as Cortana or the more popular Siri are primarily focused on the user.
Bots are pre-programmed for a certain goal and often execute repetitive actions. They are incapable of modulating their responses and are thus never unexpected in their job.
Both virtual assistants and chatbots use human interaction technology but in distinct ways. They are capable of comprehending what the user is saying and providing appropriate responses.
Here are a few ways in which the interfaces of virtual assistants and chatbots differ:
1. Intelligence
Chatbots: Typically text-based, chatbots are designed to respond to a limited range of inquiries or statements. They will fail if the query is not one from the customer’s trained set of replies. Chatbots are incapable of sustained human contact.
Traditionally, they have been text-based, but they may also include audio and visual elements. They give a more FAQ-style engagement. They are especially incapable of processing languages.
Virtual Assistants: It uses a much more complex interactive platform. They comprehend not just the language but also the context in which the user communicates.
They may learn from past experiences, which adds an element of unpredictability to their behavior. This enables them to have an extended personal relationship. They may also be programmed to execute significantly more sophisticated tasks.
2. NLP(Natural Language Processing) – Chatbot and virtual assistant
Chatbots: Chatbots are not built to adapt to changes in the way language is used. It lacks advanced language processing abilities. It only accepts specific words from the user and responds with a pre-programmed response.
Meanwhile, chatbots have a structured dialogue and are specially designed to respond to certain inquiries; they are unable to respond to complicated questions not put into them. It is unable to comprehend the client in this case and hence fails to respond correctly.
This is where YugasaBot comes to the rescue. It is an artificial intelligence-enabled and natural language processing-based chatbot that converses with your visitors on any of your digital platforms; websites, mobile apps, Facebook pages, and Whatsapp.
Virtual Assistants: Natural language processing (NLP) and Natural Language Understanding are the important considerations of Virtual Assistants (NLU).
There has been significant research in natural language processing to develop advanced capabilities for virtual assistants; for example, virtual assistants can now comprehend slang used in everyday natural conversations and analyze sentiments through the use of languages, enhancing an already strong set of communication skills. NLP enables virtual assistants to converse more naturally than chatbots.
3. Tasks
Chatbots: Chatbots are restricted in their use and lack advanced algorithms for customer service and automatic purchasing. It does things according to basic rules and is incapable of doing complicated jobs. The majority of customer service inquiries and interactions are automated these days.
Virtual Assistants: Virtual Assistants have a broader scope and are capable of doing a variety of activities, such as comparing items or determining the best product based on specified characteristics.
Additionally, it is used for activities such as decision-making and e-commerce. It is capable of doing tasks such as sharing jokes, playing music, providing stock market information, and even managing various devices in the room. Unlike chatbots, virtual assistants improve with time.
4. Science and technology – Chatbot and virtual assistant
Chatbots: The generative model and the selective model are the two most often used chatbot models. The generator ranking model has several levels of information, and the user’s query is routed through each layer to arrive at the best result.
The selective model, also known as a ranking model, compares the information provided by the user to its present memory contents and sorts it in order to arrive at the optimal answer. Structured data is used to train bots.
Node.js, javascript, and python all make it simple to create chatbots. Although Java and C# are also supported, they do not give as good an interface as the other three. AWS, Heroku, and Azure are three prominent hosting servers for developing them.
Virtual Assistants: Virtual assistants learn from their interactions with humans via the usage of artificial neural networks. Based on the analysis, ANNs are used to identify, categorize, and predict.
The virtual assistant cannot be created to learn by the use of numerous APIs. api.ai, Wit.ai, Melissa, Clarifai, Tensorflow, Amazon AI, and IBM Watson are just a few of the major APIs accessible. Cogito, DataSift, iSpeech, Microsoft Project Oxford, Mozscape, and OpenCalais are a few significantly less popular ones.
Through hard-coding, wildcard matching of terms, and time-consuming keyword training, virtual assistants can manage conversations, have sophisticated natural language processing capabilities, and conduct a limited number of chats.
Take Away
Chatbots may be a simple and enjoyable technology to implement. When your business is ready to use virtual agents for more complex activities, match your requirements to the appropriate software.
Consider the training period required, which may range from weeks to months, before the virtual agent begins working: how sure do you need to be that your virtual agent will deliver the greatest information and will adhere to business branding and standards?
Whether you’re just starting started with chatbots or ramping up to virtual agents, don’t forget to prepare your actual sales force and customer care staff. Inform them of the subjects they may anticipate seeing less of and how these technologies will enable them to focus on the more interesting aspects of their profession.
Of fact, you may easily consider chatbots and virtual assistants to be more similar than dissimilar. Rather than obsessing on the term, consider the task at hand and then choose the tool that best supports it.
Read More: Chatbots vs virtual assistants: What’s the difference between them?
