Yonder News
Most people have experienced either a live chat tool or a chatbot on a website — but do you know the difference between them? They can be surprisingly hard to spot, since both use a similar chat widget that typically sits in the bottom right corner of your screen.
They can even be programmed to pop up and greet you with something like "Hello, do you need any help?"; but that automated message doesn't necessarily mean there's a person behind it.
What Is Live Chat?
With a live chat tool, you're usually talking to a real person on the other end. You type your question into the pop-up widget, and if someone is available, they'll respond in real time. The catch? Live chat only works when someone is actively at their desk — typically during business hours. Outside of those hours, many live chat tools will ask for your email address so a team member can follow up later. That means plenty of customer questions go unanswered until the next working day.
What Is a Chatbot?
A chatbot is software that has been trained to respond to a set of questions automatically — no human required. Chatbots vary widely in sophistication, and that range of intelligence has a big impact on how useful they actually are.
- Routing bots — These are the simplest type, designed to direct users to the right place. Think of pressing 1, 2, or 3 when you call a large company. They're functional, but limited.
- FAQ bots — These respond to specific questions by matching them to pre-written answers. The better ones use a Natural Language Processor (NLP) to understand variations in how questions are phrased, improving the quality of matches.
- Intelligent bots — These can hold a proper conversation, where follow-up questions build on earlier context. They're complex to build well, but extremely powerful when done right. Air New Zealand's chatbot Oscar is a well-known example — it can answer around 72% of customer questions. Any chatbot consistently clearing 50% is considered highly capable.
Yonder's AI Chatbot is built specifically for tourism operators and handles up to 95% of customer questions instantly — 24/7, including after hours when over half of all chats happen.
Why Are Chatbots Hard to Build Well?
Building an effective chatbot is no small task. Here are the key challenges:
- Handling question variations — The same question can be asked in thousands of different ways. An NLP helps, but the bot still needs extensive manual training, especially at the start when your data set is limited.
- Understanding context — A bot needs to know what a conversation is about and when it shifts to a new topic. A question like "what does it cost?" only makes sense if the bot knows what "it" refers to from earlier in the conversation.
- Connecting to live data — Useful chatbots need to pull real-time information from your systems — things like availability, pricing, and account details. Yonder's AI Chatbot integrates directly with your reservation system to do exactly this.
- Getting the tone right — The way a chatbot communicates matters. A good conversation design creates a positive customer experience; a clunky one frustrates people.
- Time and cost — Building and maintaining a chatbot is a significant investment. One major New Zealand telco has a team of five full-time staff dedicated to their bot. That's why purpose-built solutions like Yonder — designed specifically for tourism — are often a far more practical option for operators.
Can You Tell the Difference?
Next time you use a chat tool on a website, see if you can figure out whether you're talking to a human or a bot. If it's a well-built intelligent chatbot, it might take you a while — and as the technology continues to improve, it'll only get harder to tell.
For tourism operators looking to automate customer conversations without sacrificing quality, book a demo with Yonder to see what's possible 👇
