You have decided it is time to embrace the AI revolution by building and deploying an AI chatbot for your business. There are many options in terms of function, content, live chat availability or AI capabilities. One of these options is where to deploy the bot. The two most popular options are on a Web site or via SMS (texting). We will discuss how to pick the right medium Web-based chatbot (the familiar chat icon on the bottom right corner of websites) Advantages: Sleek User Interface: depending on the Web bot provider you pick, the Web bot may have some fancy UI capabilities ..read more

by Vagelis H. Building effective chatbots is challenging for several reasons.  Chatbots must first understand the user’s information need, as expressed by one or more dialog utterances. Then,the chatbot must figure out how to best respond, by combining available information which may be in the form or flow diagrams, FAQs or documents. An often ignored attribute of chatbots is that they must show empathy and emotionally connect with the user, to maximize their effectiveness.  A recent article by Prof. Rosalind Picard of MIT identifies three key principles that chatbots must possess t ..read more

    by Vagelis H. Marketers from all industries have always relied on outbound campaigns to reach potential customers. Before the time of the Internet, letters and phone calls were the main means to reach customers. Email Campaigns Then email blast campaigns became popular, as they offer a cheaper and more efficient way to reach out to customers. email campaigns evolved into email drip campaigns, where a marketer can design a sequence of emails that will be sent over time to leads. Conditional drip campaigns are also possible, where the next email depends on whether the lead opened ..read more

    by Vagelis H. In a previous article, we discussed how a chatbot can leverage a document collection to respond to user questions. The simpler method is to return a document snippet that is relevant to the question, while a harder method is Question-Answering (QA), which tries to generate the actual answer to the question. SmartBot360 is at the forefront of such document-driven chatbot capabilities, which enable the creation of effective customer service chatbots. In this article, we discuss the ways that SmartBot360 offers to enable document-driven AI in a chatbot.  For a li ..read more

by Anthony Y. More and more healthcare businesses are taking advantage of digital services, but with so many new technologies out there, it is best to keep things simple while providing access to as many patients as possible. With 96% of text messages being read within 3 minutes, utilizing HIPAA-Compliant texting can minimize no-show appointments, improve engagement between provider and patients, and even provide more effective post-procedure instructions—all while saving your practice time. Is Text HIPAA-Compliant As SMS is handled by native apps on most phones, it is generally not going to b ..read more

by Vagelis H. 04/29/2021 Provider time is a scarce resource. AI technology is well-positioned to automate some of the components of the provider-patient interaction, to make visits more efficient for all parties. Chatbots can be effective at collecting patient information before a visit takes place. Two of the most critical operations where chatbots can play a significant time-saving role are: Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) screening. SDoH can account for up to 80 percent of individual health outcomes.1 Periodically collecting SDoH information can improve the quality of care, save man ..read more

by Anthony Y. 04/22/2021 Whether you own a small healthcare office or manage the customer experience in a large healthcare company, there are many ways to use an AI chatbot to accomplish business goals. For small offices, a chatbot is usually used to provide support 24/7 by responding to most questions while routing more complex situations to a staff member, but typically chatbots built for small offices do not need to be too complex and can be easily set up using one of our many healthcare templates. Large healthcare companies have different goals and needs but chatbots are typically used as ..read more

by Vagelis H. 03/29/2021 OK, so you have trained your healthcare chatbot to help patients make appointments, book a COVID-19 test,  check their symptoms, or recommend procedures. What’s next? Chatbot platforms, such as SmartBot360, generally generate a short HTML snippet that you copy-paste to your Web page and this is it, right? Not really. There are several options to consider that can have a big impact on the degree of engagement, that is, how many page visitors interact with the chatbot and for how long. We analyzed statistics across healthcare web sites that host chatbots and discus ..read more

by Vagelis H. 01/26/2021 We live in the time of AI and expectations are high. I had several customers ask me about the extent of AI used by SmartBot360.  A common question is if a chatbot can become smarter as more people chat with it, which I cover in an earlier article. Another question, which is the focus of this article, is if a chatbot can search for an answer in a Web site or other document collection (such as SalesForce documents). The answer is that there are several techniques to achieve this, with different levels of sophistication, which lead to different user experiences. Bel ..read more

by Anthony Y. 01/04/2021 Are you a healthcare professional looking for an easier way to engage with your patients? You may be interested in our AI healthcare chatbot – it’s one of the few chatbots available that makes use of HIPAA-compliant chats. SmartBot360 is an AI-powered healthcare chatbot that can be used in any setting. Whether you’re a local physician or you’re running a national healthcare chain, SmartBot360 can be of assistance. It can be used to organize patient interactions on a small or large scale. While the chatbot can be set up in minutes for a basic workflow, it can also be c ..read more