How NLP’s contribution to the chatbot benefits customer service

The chatbot has come a long way since its introduction in 1966 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s scientist Joseph Weizenbaum. These days, chatbots can do everything ranging from booking a flight to help you choose an outfit. Recently, with OpenAI’s chatgpt chatbots have gotten an increase in publicity. This advance in chatbots’ potential is partially thanks to Natural Language Processing (NLP). So how does NLP improves a chatbot’s performance and finally, how does this increase customer service in businesses?

NLP explained

Natural language processing is an artificial intelligence application that allows chatbots to understand the actual meaning and context of a conversation. It helps them understand the way people communicate with it. In other words, NLP makes chatbots more human-like. The language can be either spoken or written.

Why NLP is useful for chatbots

Conversational chatbots use natural language processing to give meaning to its interactions with human users. More than simple ones and zeroes, the human way of interaction is unstructured and complex. Thanks to NLP, chatbots are able to understand complex questions instead of humans having to use specific commands. Nowadays, chatbots are even capable of understanding slang and regional dialects. This way of conversating feels much more human to users, making them happier about their experience interacting with the bot. It also contributes to a higher Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). NLP also allows chatbots to seamlessly combine different technologies, like Siri or Alexa. This way chatbots can also process human voices instead of only text written commands or questions.

How does this benefit businesses?

It doesn’t only lead to a higher Customer Satisfaction Score; it also allows customer services to react in real-time. This is especially helpful when interacting with large crowds of customers, all trying to have different conversations. With the use of chatbots boosted by NLP customers can get immediate and relevant answers. This human experience can also be strengthened by chatbots being able to share images or video material that are relevant for the customer like maps or instruction videos.

NLP fueled chatbots don’t only contribute to a better customer service experience, it’s also very cost-effective.  The swiftness of these type of bots is a great asset, meaning they’re able to resolve a big variety of problems at the same time, saving businesses a lot of money otherwise spent on customer service agents. They’ve also automated different use cases, which helps in keeping the operational costs spent on those activities low. With all of this efficiency, this may improve a company’s profit margin.

But one of its greatest benefits is the enhanced contextual engagement. One of customers’ biggest annoyances is being transferred from agent to agent, leaving them to end up with an agent without any context to the problem. When chatbots are equipped with NLP systems it allows them to identify certain key words giving context to the user’s particular situation. This gives the bot the chance to offer customers answers with background information, adding context to the conversation. This helps the user to avoid endlessly repeating their questions.

Overall, NLP contributes to chatbots by offering an improved user experience and potentially leads to a higher customer satisfaction. It’s rapidity also makes the customer service more cost-effective. And finally, it saves customers the annoyance of having to endlessly repeat their questions to different agents without context.

Have we sparked your interest to learn more about all the possibilities in the world of AI? Contact us via our Baise website and let us know what you're looking for. We offer our personal advice and expertise on AI for your company. Our aim is to connect brains with business by providing you with talented and ambitious students looking to gain real experience in the field.

‍