Travel Chatbots Update

dean wang

Aug 27, 2017

These are early days for travel bots. They mostly specialize in customer service, customer information and sometimes online booking. Advanced AI technology is good and getting better by the day, but it does not replace a person. And that's unlikely to change for a while.

In order to create a positive and enjoyable experience it is imperative to have a clear understanding of what bots do well and what they don’t.

One area where they have clear advantage over humans is response speed. Using bots makes your travel business scalable. Bot can handle mutlple user conversations simultaneously and replies instantly.

The part of the bot technology that needs significant improvement is understanding of the meaning of what customer said. The solution is to take the user off the bot when this stage of the converastion is reached. One of the popular techniques is to redirect the user from bot to the website when the questions get complicated. The majority of users are at ease with website navigation where they find themselves in the familiar environment.

This approach allows to utilize the scalability of the chatbot while maintaining the high level of customer service.

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WHAT IS AI TRAINING

AI training is a critical part of conversational AI solutions, a part that makes AI software different from any kind of software previously created.
AI training is not coding.
Unlike all other existing software which is fully coded.

Let us consider a simple example:
We create chatbots for two companies, one company is selling shoes, another is selling cars. From the software standpoint it is one chatbot solution running as an online service accessed remotely or a program available locally. In both cases they are two identical instances of the same software (one instance for the shoes company, another for the cars company).
Yet, for the first company the chatbot is supposed to talk about flip-flops, summer shoes, high heels and so on. For the second company, however, the chatbot is not expected to know any of that. Instead, the chatbot should be able to support conversations about car brands, car models, should know how to tell Toyota Camry from Toyota Corolla, etc. This shoes and cars knowledge is not programmable. It is trainable. It is not coded, instead it is a part of language processing capability that AI solutions like chatbots have. And herein lies the major differentiation and advantage of the AI solutions compared to traditional software.

How to train AI?
There are several ways to do it. Sometimes AI system can train itself, improve its linguistic ability over time. It also can be trained by professional linguists. And in some cases, by the users. The latter is the desirable scenario because businesses know better than anybody else what they want their chatbot to talk about.
It is not easy, given the existing state of AI technology, and usually requires a high level of technical knowledge. You may have heard mentions of intents and entities in chatbot discussions. These are examples of linguistic elements AI training is currently based on.
Without proper understanding of what these linguistic elements are and how language acquisition process works in existing AI systems it is better to leave AI training to professional linguists.

How nmodes Intent API Improves Social Intelligence

Social media generates a vast amount of data. There are 500 million daily messages on Twitter alone. Still more data on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and other social networks. Some of this data is useful to businesses, in fact, it is extremely useful.

A business can use social data to generate actionable insights about customers, competitors and their company strategy. Social information empowers departments and teams, and when used correctly, creates a strong sustainable bond between businesses and their customers.

nmodes Intent API helps businesses to execute their social strategy efficiently. Here are the major elements of social strategy Intent API contributes to:

1. Listening. Intent API finds customer intent with any level of granularity. You might want to know who is looking to buy shoes in general, or looking to buy flip-flops in particular, or interested in buying only Nike footware, or interested in buying sneakers in New York region.

2. Sales and marketing. Intent API understands what stage in the purchase process your customer is in. Intent API tells if a customer is ready to buy, or is in the awareness stage, or considering the purchase but not ready yet, and so on.

3. Social intelligence. Intent API delivers meaningful intents and behavioral information on a large scale and for all verticals. Any insights and topics, as long as somebody is conversing on this topic, are available.

4. Teams and projects. Intent API channels information to the relevant departments within the company. Sales prospects should go to sales department, complaints to customer service, brand conversations to the marketers, and technical issues to tech support.