I am regularly questioned by Service Support managers, Communication teams, eCommerce directors on the merits of providing a FAQ or chatbot on their website.
You can read here or there articles from colleagues and customer relationship specialists who, quite rightly, highlight the differences between these 2 tools. In conclusion, they direct customer services and marketing teams to either one or the other.
But why not use both at the same time?
Why should one choose FAQ or chatbot if one can benefit from the respective advantages of these two tools at the same time?
FAQ or chatbot: what is it?
Mais avant d’aller plus loin… c’est quoi une FAQ dynamique et c’est quoi un chatbot 🧐 ?
Dynamic FAQ
A dynamic FAQ is an application that takes the form of a search bar (in an FAQ page for example) or a tooltip and in which you can ask any type of question, including new questions. It’s ideal when the questions are all over the place. Find out more about Dynamic FAQs in our dedicated article.
Chatbot
The chatbot, rich in history and even subject to fantasies, is traditionally presented in one form: a tooltip. In general it has 3 modes of operation:
- Either it is conversational (decision tree): I ask a question, it answers and questions me, I answer, it gives me information ..., it works only after a heavy setup and having anticipated the key questions;
- Either it is a simple "opentext" search engine (which points to your site or your documents) ... but since only 20% of the knowledge is documented, the chatbot does not give the information or information that may no longer be;
- Either it is an automated form that collects information (CRM chatbot in particular).
But in most people’s minds, a chatbot is conversational… and over 50% of users feel it doesn’t work well.
The chatbot is not doing well in reality because after the euphoria of the last 5 years, if the users plebiscite it in order to avoid waiting for answers to simple questions, the studies show that they are very critical and do not appreciate its limits. As for the teams in charge of setting it up and especially maintaining it, they suffer and spend a lot of money.
FAQ or chatbot: TeamBrain makes the synthesis
In summary, some strong and weak points of these 2 tools:
| Points forts | Points faibles | |
|---|---|---|
| FAQ dynamique |
- Souplesse
- Simple à initialiser - Accepte les nouvelles questions |
- Pas conversationnel
- La plupart des moteurs de recherche utilisés* ne sont pas efficaces pour trouver une question déjà dans la base |
| Chatbot |
- Conversationnel
- Apparence intelligent/innovant |
- Budget conséquent
- Peu souple - Lourd à initialiser - Ne comprend pas bien les formulations alternatives - Difficilement maintenable même pour les versions ‘no code’ |
*opentext search engine, with or without “elastic search”. In both cases, the engine does not sense intentions and is not self-learning.
So, at Teambrain, we said to ourselves “Why not combine the advantages of one and the other, without their drawbacks? Let’s create the synthesis of the dynamic FAQ and the chatbot!”
And this is how the idea of theAnti-Chatbot was born!
You take a dynamic FAQ, but be careful: a dynamic FAQ that really uses machine learning (self-learning, otherwise it doesn’t work), and you add the ability for referrers to answer interactively through a choice tree (decision tree). You now have all the advantages of the dynamic FAQ and the chatbot combined.
To go even further, we have added a multilingual module and dynamic customization fields. This way, your users ask a question in their own language and get an immediate answer, personalized with their data (in compliance with the RGPD of course), and certified by your experts.
The Anti-Catbot is thus:
- Flexible like a dynamic FAQ and conversational like a chatbot (interactive answers)
- Ultra simple (business experts and support are autonomous), without setup, and without code
- Efficient (self-learning search engine), without linguist
- Custom (dynamic customization fields)
- Multilingual
Dans un prochain article, mon associé vous parlera du NLP qui serait soi-disant l’alpha et l’oméga de la compréhension du langage, que neni 👎 !
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