What are the Main Challenges of Building a Customer Service Chatbot?

Last updated on October 11th, 2023

The technology industry continually evolves with ongoing developments affecting business and everyday life. For instance, a Customer Service Chatbot has been implemented to see how technology can be used effectively. Despite the fact that chatbots have changed communication methods, they also present some challenges. Before understanding these challenges, it’s imperative to know what exactly chatbots are all about.

What Are Chatbots?

The chatbot is a computer program that emulates a conversation with a live person on-line. In a chatbot, you are not conversing with another person, but with a piece of artificial intelligence. Whether you are taking a cab or ordering a coffee from a nearby café, you have probably interacted with a chatbot at some point. Besides, on most websites and mobile apps, a Customer Service Chatbot is incorporated, so you must have benefited from them in some manner.

In the information technology field, a chatbot is a computer program that can converse with a user, just as humans do. It can be through messaging applications, websites, mobile apps, or over the telephone. Depending upon the user’s needs, chatbots are capable of answering questions, performing actions, and offering recommendations.

Types of Chatbots

Nowadays, it is very common for chatbots to be used for customer service to understand their inquiries and respond accordingly. Several companies have already begun to implement Customer Service Chatbot solutions. Known as digital assistants, these devices possess the understanding of human language and can be used in a wide variety of capacities in a wide range of industries. There are essentially two types of chatbots:

• Non-Learning Chatbots: 

These bots provide limited assistance and are fixed in nature. They carry out only those tasks that programmers have assigned to them. Although they are capable of solving repetitive or simple questions, they cannot learn from human behavior, reactions, or emotions.

• Learning Chatbots: 

By using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), they can improve their functions over time based on the interactions and communication with users. These improvements lead to better responses and enhanced customer experiences.

It is possible to find learning chatbots on platforms such as eBay or Lyft. Additionally, they are becoming more popular. Approximately 60% of consumers have used a chatbot in the past year. Although AI chatbots are more effective, they do encounter some unexpected errors and require some adaptation.

Chatbot Development Challenges You Cannot Ignore

Today, businesses can use a Customer Service Chatbot as a cost-effective and powerful method to communicate with their customers. Known for providing human-like service to large numbers of users at once, these are certainly the preferred method for engaging your users.

In certain cases, however, chatbots have failed to meet expectations and have turned into failures. While chatbots are still a relatively new development, there are a few challenges to be addressed in order to implement a stronger messaging strategy.

• Cold user experience
• Lacks engagement
• Lacks user experience
• Chatbot security
• No clear scope
• Multiple language support
• Weak memory

Detailed discussion of these challenges follows:

• Challenge 1: Offering Cold User Experiences

One of the major shortcomings of these chatbots is the lack of conversational flow. Occasionally, a chatbot conversation may sound robotic or scripted. Unlike human conversations, chatbot conversations lack personalization. In order to understand the client’s query, an organization must first empathize with it. However, while chatting with a bot, the empathy factor is not present. Users may feel like they are not being heard on occasion, as chatbots always respond with a system-generated response.

In spite of this, many web development solutions have addressed this issue by using the following guidelines:

1. If the visitor heard a human voice instead of the robotic one, they would feel more relaxed and comfortable.
2. Emojis are an interesting way to make a conversation more engaging.
3. The language should be simple so that a layman could understand it all.
4. Inject humor into the communication so that if the consumer does not receive a satisfactory result, he will leave with a smile.
5. Be patient and don’t bombard the consumer with too many questions.
6. Further, if the chatbot is prepared with a polite answer prior to an unanswerable question, it would contribute significantly to the customer experience. The appropriate response would be, “I apologize for my inability to understand you in this context.” or “I will do my best next time.”

• Challenge 2: Lacks Engagement

In many cases, chatbots are programmed to follow scripts and cannot respond to commands not included in the sequence. Consequently, this can present a repetitive and frustrating experience. Furthermore, not all chatbots are engaging, and as a result, people lose interest when they do not receive a response or a delayed response. Therefore, it is considered more effective to use the Customer Service Chatbot that quickly identifies and resolves the problems as opposed to the one that asks a myriad of questions before looking into the issue, resulting in a waste of time. In this regard, a chatbot developer is in a good position to overcome the challenge by using AI software development concepts.

For bots to become more efficient, they need to be programmed to learn from their conversations with users. Initial difficulties may arise due to a lack of information for chatbots, but as time goes on, chatbots must be refined to have engaging conversations with users. Therefore, the business should gradually begin exploring new technologies to improve the user experience.

• Challenge 3: Lacks User Attention

The challenge is to develop a chatbot that can maintain user interest until the end. With such a hectic lifestyle, it has become commonplace for people to want their queries resolved immediately without answering multiple questions. Nevertheless, sometimes a machine cannot render the same empathy that a human can, therefore a human replacement is considered necessary. Typically, chatbots do not have the ability to pay attention to all the details of the user’s request. A chatbot cannot learn everything on its own, not even the most intelligent ones. In terms of human society, it is for the best that there is no automated machine or chatbot that is entirely self-sufficient yet. Such machines should always be supervised by humans. That’s where conversational UI is the most beneficial.

Challenge 4: No Clear Scope

Getting ready for the user’s responses requires a clear understanding of the topic for a chatbot. It may be difficult for the Customer Service Chatbot to provide a satisfactory answer if it is used on a wider scale or for several different topics. Thus, it is very important to outline the scope of the application in order to ensure a user-friendly experience.

Often, a chatbot is unable to comprehend what a user is attempting to say, resulting in high dissatisfaction. So, businesses must keep their chatbots up-to-date and continue to enhance technology. As an option, companies may also hire dedicated development team to design customized chatbot solutions specifically tailored to their business needs. Embedded chatbots powered by machine learning would also be of great benefit as they would keep learning and updating as they would allow developers to update smartly.

NLP modification

If a chatbot has been programmed according to the natural language processing or neuro-linguistic programming method, the robot is capable of interpreting, recognizing, and comprehending the queries put forth by the incoming individuals. As a result of the combined use of machine learning and artificial intelligence, these issues can be improved with the assistance of a team of AI and ML experts. Prior to its development, it is necessary to have a model set for machine learning and natural language processing.

Challenge 5:- Chatbot Security

Chatbots are still not widely trusted by users; they can sometimes appear as spam, and users refrain from interacting with them. The use of chatbots should always be transparent with users, since there can be times when users may think they are talking to actual people. This is one of the primary reasons users will lose trust in the company.

Moreover, businesses must pay attention to the security features of their Customer Service Chatbot solutions, in addition to other aspects, such as functionality. Aside from this, you must ensure that your chatbot is secure so that no one can view your conversations.

Chatbot Security Solutions

• A chatbot could be developed using the HTTP protocol in order to keep user information secure.
• Be sure to beta-test all the features of the chatbot before going live in order to take precautions if necessary.
• The chatbot-advancement is constantly evolving over time, so it is essential to test its features regularly and add necessary security measures in order to ensure their safety.

Challenge 6:- Multiple Language Support

Chatbots are notoriously rigid regarding how they interpret data and what they deliver. When it comes to chatbots, the data is in the form of Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP is a field of study that combines Computer Science and Linguistics so that a text can be interpreted in a way that an average person can easily understand it. Therefore, it is essential to be cautious when choosing NLP for fixation.

A Customer Service Chatbot developer considers generative and retrieval-based models when building an intelligent and interactive solution for your business. Nevertheless, NLP has some drawbacks, particularly when adjusting to different languages, dialects, and colloquial terms. In this case, chatbot developers must push to have this issue resolved as quickly as possible. It is possible to develop intelligent and smart chatbots using a multitude of chatbot development platforms.

Challenge 7: Memory

Chatbots are inherently weak in memory due to their mechanical nature. Developers and software development companies should enhance chatbot memory to provide better support and a more human connection. Ideally, chatbots should be designed in a way to preserve previous conversations and other vital details. Therefore, bots will refrain from asking the same questions repeatedly and increase engagement.

Chatbots must be integrated with context and provide meaningful responses if they are to evolve. As a result, companies face challenges in creating, developing, and maintaining the memory of bots that respond in a personalized manner. Therefore, these virtual assistants must not behave in the same way as old predefined models.

Are You Looking for Customer Service Chatbot For Your Business?

All of these challenges may be resolved if professional IT services are involved, and a strong feeling of trust exists between the project owner and the project team. Moreover, some customers are curious about how chatbots can be used to solve customer service problems. By the end of 2022, these chatbots may be used by almost 45% of customer service operations.

As a matter of fact, the most widely used social media platform ” Facebook” itself has more than 500,000 chatbots in Facebook Messenger alone. By replacing human representatives with chatbots, a company can expand globally and provide service 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Users can interact with chatbots through websites, mobile applications, or even popular messaging applications. As reported by HubSpot, 47% of consumers are interested in buying items via chatbots. Therefore, it can be predicted that chatbots will play an increasingly vital role in business in the near future.

With iTechnolabs, you can create a Customer Service Chatbot in a few minutes with the desired features employing the open stack chatbot development tools. Using a SaaS-based chatbot development software will save time, and a single code base will cover all chatbot projects. Get in touch with the IT consulting services offered by iTechnolabs, and get your business an intelligent chatbot solution for better customer interaction.