Creating your own chatbot might be easier than you think using AI chatbot builders.

Chatbots are everywhere these days. Chances are you've encountered them on websites, blogs, Facebook Messenger, and mobile apps. Companies have been eagerly implementing chatbots, hoping to gain the potential benefits they offer. Some efforts fail while others are very successful. A lot of it comes down to business intent and design.

AI chatbots can perform a variety of very structured tasks. Some companies use them strictly for customer service. For example, the chatbot might greet the customer and try to solve their issue. If the customer asks a question that the chatbot has been programmed to answer (like "how do I return an item?"), voila! - an AI chatbot can provide the answer and an agent-assisted contact is avoided. Otherwise, the chat session gets handed off to a live agent or, if this capability doesn't exist, it might be a dead end for the customer.

More sophisticated AI chatbots can perform more complex tasks, like providing order status, suggesting what wine to pair with lasagna, or scheduling a spa treatment. The implementation of these types of chatbots are more complex because they need to integrate with other business systems. Many businesses find it worth the effort and have been very creative with how they deploy chatbots, resulting in a customer experience that is useful and, in many cases, fun.

Do-it-yourself with chatbot builders.

A business can make their own customer support chatbot and there are plenty of chatbot builders available to help them do that. An AI chatbot builder is a development platform for making bots that can then be implemented on websites, mobile, and messaging apps. Among chatbot builders, there's a broad range of capabilities as well as pricing options.

Organizations with very simple use cases can find chatbot builders that provide pre-built chatbots no coding knowledge required. Alternatively, users can easily make their simple chatbot using drag and drop technology. Typical functionality of these chatbots include greeting website visitors, answering questions, and collecting information. Some of the best chatbot builders also include integration with other systems using APIs to enable, for example, elevation of a chat session to a live agent.

Do-it-yourself chatbot builders might not be the right tool for more sophisticated chatbots. Instead, companies may need to hire programmers who specialize in AI chatbot development and integrations.

Can NICE help build chatbots?

NICE CXone, the world’s #1 cloud customer experience platform, transforms your call center software – empowering exceptional agent and customer experiences: every channel, every time. Through our partnerships with leading chatbot providers, such as Omilia and Omni-bot from SmartAction, NICE is able to offer a holistic solution for your digital customer service needs. Find out more about our capabilities here.

Chatbot maker for any digital channel

Your customers are trying to reach you for service on digital channels – even if you’re not there yet. How many SMS text messages go to your call center phone number with no response? Who’s trying to find you on Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp and not finding you? Now with CXone it is easy to provide digital-first omnichannel service in all the channels your customers expect, using AI chatbot.

  • Personalized digital interactions: deliver native experiences in each of 30+ messaging channels, such as rich media, emojis, and other collaboration tools.
  • Simple to Activate: pre-integrated channels make it easy to offer to customers and agents.
  • Easy to Say “Yes”: simple packaging removes barriers to offering all channels to customers and agents.
graphical user interface, showing the visual chatbot builder
Empowered agents

CXone empowers all your agents to deliver a true digital-first omnichannel customer experience by simultaneously combining all customer interactions in one intelligent inbox across multiple digital channels and voice for agents to select ("pull"), while dynamically prioritizing the most time-sensitive or real-time interactions according to service levels ("push"). All delivered in a single application – complete with full customer context, journey history, and sentiment.

  • Single Interface: one inbox for all digital messaging and real-time (voice/chat) channels – deploy chatbots to retain the native experience of each messaging platform.
  • Agents in Control: ‘pulling’ work in natural flow, while dynamic prioritization maintains SLAs – and prevents ‘cherry picking’.
  • Customer Card: full customer context, journey and conversation history, plus sentiment.
Infographic displaying the benefits of AI chatbots for customer satisfaction
Holistic management

With CXone, omnichannel chatbot conversations are managed holistically, from agents to supervisors and beyond. Integrated workforce optimization, analytics, automation and artificial intelligence across digital and voice interactions ensure complete management across contact center operations.

Infographic displaying the benefits of AI chatbots for customer satisfaction
Related resources
Case Studies

Best Practice: The Power of a Digital First Contact Center

Your customers have different preferences in how they want to contact your business. Hear from NICE customer, ESCI on how opening digital channels transformed their contact center, improved agent productivity and drive down costs for their contact center.