A chatbot or chatterbot is a piece of software which conducts a online chat discussion utilising text or text-to-speech instead of communicating directly with an actual human agent. Chatbots are a software application that may help customers by having automated chats with them and engaging with them through messaging platforms. Bots are frequently meant to behave like an interaction partner in the same manner that a human would, although many in production are quite unable to speak adequately, but none of them could pass the traditional Turing test. Michael Mauldin (developer of first Verbot) invented the name “ChatterBot” in 1994 to characterise these talking systems.
Chatbots are used in Dialogue System for a variety of reasons, including customer support, routing, and informative collection. Even though some of the chatbots does heavy utilization of word categorization, natural-language processing, & complex AI, others just scan for basic keywords & construct answers by using phrases which are common from a database or library.
The chatbots majorly  were accessed via site pop – up ads and virtual AI assistants. Commerce, educational, amusement, finance, healthcare, media, & productivity remain main areas in which these may be categorised.
Chatbot AskdishaÂ
In October 2018, IRCTC became the first public sector organisation to launch the ASKDISHA chatbot, which aims to improve the user experience of its 5.2 crore customers who visit its ticket booking website to reserve rail as well as airline tickets & tourism products.
A chatbot is a computer software that simulates human-to-human dialogue, particularly via the internet. Users’ enquiries on ticket reservation, cancellation, refund condition, price, PNR lookup, train running status, retirement rooms, & tourism items have been answered by AskDISHA in Hindi & English without any need for human agent participation.Â
AskDISHA has been designed to comprehend ‘Hinglish,’ a combination of Hindi & English throughout discussion, to make the connection between clients and chatbot more easier.
IRCTC recently improved its AskDISHA chatbots with capacity to respond to live enquiries from users about train ticket refunds resulting from cancellation, TDR filing, & unsuccessful transactions, which account for over half of all consumer queries. Users may now enter in or orally transmit any PNR or Transaction data to AskDISHA and receive an instant refund status.Â
IRCTC intends to save time and effort for its clients by introducing this new feature of AskDISHA, which allows users to access refund-related information directly from the chatbot without having to phone the 139-Rail Madad inquiry number or log into their user profiles.
And over 178 million active users have used AskDISHA’s services in very little than two years since its start. Since its launch in April of 2020, around 5 million customers have asked refund-related questions. Consumers’ overall response to AskDISHA’s service has indeed been highly favourable, with 92 percent positive feedback, as well as the chatbot’s accuracy in comprehending and engaging with customers was a whopping 95 percent.
IRCTC created the AskDISHA chatbot in partnership with a Bengaluru-based startup that specialises in AI-based digital engagement agents. In November 2019, the Asia Leadership Award for ‘Innovation Using Technology’ was given to IRCTC’s AskDisha Chatbot.
Chatbot History
Alan Turing’s renowned paper “Computing Machinery & Intelligence” was published in 1950, and it presented as the Turing practice as an intelligence criteria. This criteria is based on computers program’s capacity to imitate a person inside real-time textual discussion with a person court to a point where the judge seems unable to consistently discern in between the programs with a genuine human based only on the conversation content. The prominence of Turing’s suggested test piqued curiosity on Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA software, which is known to deceive commoners in imagining that they were conversing through chat with such a real human and therefore, this was published in 1966.
Conclusion
Humans’ willingness to accept computer output as really dialogic when it is actually based on relatively simple pattern-matching—can be leveraged for productive reasons, according to interface designers. Most people like to deal with computers that appear to be human, therefore chatbot-style tactics might be effective in interaction design which need to extract information from the user, as long as the information is simple and fits into expected categories. Online help systems, for example, might benefit from using chatbot techniques to determine the type of assistance that users seek, perhaps delivering a “friendlier” than the more conventional searching and menu system.