We’ve heard what chatbots are and how they're used in today’s world of automation. But what we don’t have a clear picture of how these chatbots are coded and built. The history of chatbots dates back to 1966, when a computer program called ELIZA, built by Weizenbaum, imitated the language of psychotherapists. It consisted of only 200 lines of code.

In this fast-paced world, considering the ever-evolving demands of the users, coding a chatbot has become more complex. Programming a chatbot does not mean you can simply code a text. It now involves merging Artificial Intelligence to Machine learning.  

Here, you can either create a bot by coding, or you can opt for many services out there which provide you a substructure to build a chatbot on. These DIY chatbot platforms have all the background work done, from coding, to ensuring that these chatbots run smoothly. To build a chatbot, visit us at Engati and in addition, try a free chatbot demo!

Hence, in today’s blog we talk about the Coding a Chatbot compared to DIY Chatbot Platforms. Which one is better and what to choose?

Coding a Chatbot

How does coding a chatbot work?

All the working of coding a chatbots today are mainly based on this model:

So, how do you build a chatbot? (using Python)

Pre-requisites-

Besides requiring a hands-on knowledge in scikit library and Natural Language Toolkit(NLTK), building a chatbot from scratch includes the following processes, namely-

• Download and install NLTK
• Text pre-processing with NLTK
• Bag-of-words
• TF-IDF Approach
• Cosine similarity
• Importing the necessary libraries
• Corpus
• Reading the data
• Pre-processing the raw text
• Keyword matching
• Generating response

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Once all this is done, as a result, a chatbot has been built for you. However, you have to understand the challenges that come during and post-production. Some of them particularly are:

• Coding is costly. Besides, if you're unfamiliar with coding, you will require a team to do so.
• Making sure the data is secure.
• It is time-consuming.
• Regular chatbot testing for legibility and accuracy.
• Making sure the data is viable and the USP of your product reaches your target audience.

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Click here to read our previous blog on chatbot challenges and how to overcome them the right way!

‍Now that we’ve brushed upon building a chatbot manually, let’s get on to the next section.

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DIY Chatbot Platforms

The DIY Chatbot platforms have proved to be the ultimate salvation for beginners and non-technical users without much knowledge in programming and coding. Incorporating Machine Learning and Natural Language Process programs into the platform, which are the key aspects, leaves you with only creating the conversational flow and the tasks that you want the chatbot to perform.  Thus, designing these bots is as simple as dragging and dropping from a set of pre-defined functionalities, coupled with some scope to modify and customise them for your specific business objectives. Here are some of the benefits of these DIY chatbot platforms:

• Agile: Changes in the market takes place every minute today. As a result, businesses have to be flexible. Businesses are now opting for flat structures where decision making is faster by shortening the command chain. In order to be successful in the market, usually businesses demand the turnaround time to be minimal, which in turn helps them to address uncertainties of a turbulent digital market.
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• Cost-effective: Coding is expensive. Besides, when you want to implement your chatbots on different platforms, it requires even more coding. Hence, businesses don’t go for chatbots as it involves huge initial investments. Therefore, DIY chatbot platforms offer flexible pricing. For example, Engati offers you to pay only for the features you want, check our chatbot pricing here! This enables businesses to choose a platform that addresses their goals for nominal rates.
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• Potent: When you create a chatbot manually, you usually design it with one particular channel in mind. However, when you want to switch to another platform, the entire process has to be repeated, consuming time. Omni-channel bots offered by these DIY chatbot platforms integrate into various channels when an organisation decides to switch to a new platform. All channel-specific requirements are taken care of and this is done in no time.
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• Intelligent: The learning aspect of the AI system is the very essence of a chatbot. While choosing a chatbot, always keep in mind how easy is it to train the bot. Chatbot platforms are a combination of different machine learning techniques. They involve supervised learning, semi-supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement which induces intelligence into the bots. This requires varying levels of human intervention.
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• Innovative:  With the ever-evolving customer expectations, businesses are demanded to incorporate the latest technology and keep a constant tap over the latest developments. With third party chatbot development, after a point the entire process becomes saturated, increasing the gap between consumer demands and seller supply. Chatbot platforms offer organisations with the best technology and the latest updates in a cost-effective manner, so that the skill requirements are always kept to a minimum.

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Conclusion

It definitely is a great idea to involve AI rChatbots in your digital marketing, yielding efficient results in less amount of time. But creating one that meets all the expectations of your organisation can be pretty challenging. Instead, you could just choose a platform that provides you with ready-made chatbots in accordance with your requirements.

With Engati you can build your bots without the need for processing and coding tool. You can create bots in under 10 minutes. It’s also available on 12 messaging platforms and mobile apps, making it easily accessible. Consisting of one single code base for all, it saves your time and is easy on the pockets. Engati gives you the experience of high-class technology and user satisfaction using SaaS based platform and open stack technologies.

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We've laid the tools out for you to build your first DIY chatbot. All you need to do now is register with Engati. Get started today!