What Is a Chatbot?

There is no doubt chatbots are going to be one of the significant trends of 2018. However, the term chatbot can be a little misleading. Given the name, you could be forgiven for thinking the sole purpose of a chatbot is to mimic human conversation. In reality, chatbots can be used for everything from daily news briefings to fully integrated customer service agents. In essence, a chatbot is an application built into a conversational interface. Most messaging channels offer a vast array of UI elements you can use to help guide the user through the journey. To give you a better idea, let’s go through a few examples.