Over the last couple of years, chatbots have become an increasingly popular part of not only the customer conversation but the solutions available for internal collaboration and communication too. Today's businesses use chatbots to help them find solutions to common problems, seek out customer data, and more.
Today, 35% of customers now want to see more companies using chatbots, and the marketplace is evolving at an increasingly rapid pace, particularly as bot kits and API solutions make it easier to develop AI-infused services. We spoke with Natilik, a specialist in IT and communications, about the chatbot that they built with Cisco technology, "NatBot."
Where Did NatBot Come From?
Natilik is a company devoted to helping companies access the best technology for their businesses, IT teams, and end-users. I first heard about NatBot at an event, and I was keen to learn more about the technology from the people behind Natilik themselves. I spoke to Darren Parkinson, the Natilik Chief Digital Officer who spent several years as a Solution Architect in the collaboration space before he moved into the realm of digital strategy.
"That's where the bot came from - we were always trying to find ways to improve client experience and user productivity and put more information into people's hands. A lot of the things that we do as a business is driven by productivity, and I think productivity is one of the reasons why the chatbot market is evolving so rapidly."
"We saw that chatbots and messaging were becoming more popular than social networking apps, and we thought we should start investigating it."
Natilik quickly began to explore the different ways that they could take advantage of the chatbot and messaging app solution, working on the back of their deep-seated partnership with Cisco. They wanted to create something that wouldn't only work for their business but could also be customised to offer bespoke support to different clients from different backgrounds. "It's about building the kind of support each customer needs."
How Did You Develop your Chatbot?
Darren told me that when the company first started building Natbot, it was designed from scratch, but based on the technology available from Cisco Webex (Cisco Spark at the time). "Since then, Cisco has released new tools and solutions, including Cisco Spark Support for botkit (the leading developer tool for building chatbots, apps and custom integrations for major messaging platforms) which allowed us to develop the app even further."
With NatBot, Natilik created a highly flexible and customisable chatbot solution that they can adapt and develop according to the needs of any customer. "We can add new functionality into the existing bot, add new services for different clients, and introduce a range of functionality. They already have the Webex Teams app installed, so the functionality becomes immediately available."
The more Natilik experiments with NatBot, the more it's been able to build in new functionalities and solutions like natural language processing, so people can engage with the bot and get the right answers back through contextual interaction.
