Which Chatbot should I make? AI Chatbots vs Rule-Based Chatbots

Which one to build?

It is crystal clear that most companies do not invest time researching the kind of chatbot that would fit their needs.

Before pointing out the differences between these chatbots, I would like to open Tech Leads’ eyes to the importance of having a UX Researcher on the team.

What kind of person is a UX Researcher, you may ask…

It is that guy who is supposed to research the kind of technology that speaks the brand the most. So, make sure you have one on your team.

A UX professional covers User Experience features such as writing, research, design.

Let’s come back to the topic of this article... What the hell are these chatbots?

Rule-based chatbots are also called decision-tree chatbots. They are developed within a single purpose: to make sure the user reaches the end of the chatbot. The reason this name was adopted was for users to follow a set of rules previously designed by a UX Writer or a Chatbot Curator. Have I already mentioned the importance of User Experience when designing/developing/testing/implementing/curating/maintaining a chatbot? Oh… that is content for another article 😊

Decision-tree chatbots want the user to reach the end of the conversation.

Last but not least, AI Chatbots rely on open conversations that lean on NLP (Natural Language Processing) and NLU (Natural Language Understanding). These acronyms mean the foundation of an open chatbot. The result is a chatbot that can understand more complex answers and answer with more complexity as well (using context variables, data, and so on and so forth), delivering answers in a more natural way. On the other hand, it is quite more complex to develop chatbots with these characteristics.

Alright… now that you’ve understood what these boys can do, which one to choose?

Choose rule-based (decision-tree) chatbots if…

- You want your user to reach the end of the conversation;

- Your focus is on sales;

- You want a fast solution (fast regarding its creation).

Choose AI Chatbots if…

- You want to gather information from users;

- You want to analyze users’ behavior;

- You want your service to answer questions with various themes.

Having said all this, I truly believe you now understand the differences between these two chatbots and which one will be best for your solution.