Tag Archives: Chat Bot

Technology

Evaluating Amazon Lex – AI Digital Agent / Assistant Implementation

Leave a comment

Evaluating AI chatbot solutions for:

  • Simple to Configure – e.g. Wizard Walkthrough
  • Flexible, and Mature Platform e.g. Executing backend processes
  • Cost Effective and Competitive Solutions
  • Rapid Deployment to XYZ platforms

The idea is almost anyone can build and deploy a chat bot for your business, small to midsize organizations.

Amazon Lex

Going through the Amazon Lex build chat process, and configuration of the Digital Assistant was a breeze.  AWS employs a ‘wizard’ style interface to help the user build the Chatbot / Digital Agent.  The wizard guides you through defining Intents, Utterances, Slots, and Fulfillment.

  • Intents – A particular goal that the user wants to achieve (e.g. book an airline reservation)
  •  Utterances – Spoken or typed phrases that invoke your intent
  • Slots – Data the user must provide to fulfill the intent
  • Prompts – Questions that ask the user to input data
  • Fulfillment – The business logic required to fulfill the user’s intent (i.e. backend call to another system, e.g. SAP)
Amazon Lex Chabot
Amazon Lex Chabot

The Amazon Lex Chatbot editor is also extremely easy to use, and to update / republish any changes.

Amazon Chat Bot Editor
Amazon Chat Bot Editor

The challenge with Amazon Lex appears to be a very limiting ability for chatbot distribution / deployment.  Your Amazon Lex Chatbot is required to use one of three methods to deploy: Facebook, Slack, or Twilio SMS.  Facebook is limiting in a sense if you do not want to engage your customers on this platform.   Slack is a ‘closed’ framework, whereby the user of the chat bot must belong to a Slack team in order to communicate.  Finally, Twilio SMS implies use of your chat bot though a mobile phone SMS.

Amazon Chatbot Channels
Amazon Chatbot Channels

 

I’ve reached out to AWS Support regarding any other options for Amazon Lex chatbot deployment.  Just in case I missed something.

Amazon Chatbot Support
Amazon Chatbot Support

There is a “Test Bot” in the lower right corner of the Amazon Lex, Intents menu.  The author of the business process can, in real-time, make changes to the bot, and test them all on the same page.

Amazon Chatbot, Test Bot
Amazon Chatbot, Test Bot

 

Key Followups

  • Is there a way to leverage the “Test Bot” as a “no frills” Chatbot UI,  and embed it in an existing web page?  Question to AWS Support.
  • One concern is for large volumes of utterances / Intents and slots. An ideal suggestion would allow the user a bulk upload through an Excel spreadsheet, for example.
  • I’ve not been able to utilize the Amazon Lambda to trigger server side processing.
  • Note: there seem to be several ‘quirky’ bugs in the Amazon Lex UI, so it may take one or two tries to workaround the UI issue.

IBM Watson Conversation also contends for this Digital Agent / Assistant space, and have a very interesting offering including dialog / workflow definition.

Both Amazon Lex and IBM Watson Conversation are FREE to try, and in minutes, you could have your bots created and deployed. Please see sites for pricing details.

Business, Economy, Technology

Microsoft to Release AI Digital Agent SDK Integration with Visio and Deploy to Bing Search

4 Comments

Build and deploy a business AI Digital Assistant with the ease of building visio diagrams, or ‘Business Process Workflows’.  In addition, advanced Visio workflows offer external integration, enabling the workflow to retrieve information from external data sources; e.g. SAP CRM; Salesforce.

As a business, Digital Agent subscriber,  Microsoft Bing  search results will contain the business’ AI Digital Assistant created using Visio.  The ‘Chat’ link will invoke the business’ custom Digital Agent.  The Agent has the ability to answer business questions, or lead the user through “complex”, workflows.  For example, the user may ask if a particular store has an item in stock, and then place the order from the search results, with a ‘small’ transaction fee to the business. The Digital Assistant may be hosted with MSFT / Bing or an external server.  Applying the Digital Assistant to search results pushes the transaction to the surface of the stack.

Bing Chat
Bing Digital Chat Agent

Leveraging their existing technologies, Microsoft will leap into the custom AI digital assistant business using Visio to design business process workflows, and Bing for promotion placement, and visibility.  Microsoft can charge the business for the Digital Agent implementation and/or usage licensing.

  • The SDK for Visio that empowers the business user to build business process workflows with ease may have a low to no cost monthly licensing as a part of MSFT’s cloud pricing model.
  • Microsoft may charge the business a “per chat interaction”  fee model, either per chat, or bundles with discounts based on volume.
  • In addition, any revenue generated from the AI Digital Assistant, may be subject to transactional fees by Microsoft.

Why not use Microsoft’s Cortana, or Google’s AI Assistant?  Using a ‘white label’ version of an AI Assistant enables the user to interact with an agent of the search listed business, and that agent has business specific knowledge.  The ‘white label’ AI digital agent is also empowered to perform any automation processes integrated into the user defined, business workflows. Examples include:

  • basic knowledge such as store hours of operation
  • more complex assistance, such as walking a [perspective] client through a process such as “How to Sweat Copper Pipes”.  Many “how to” articles and videos do exist on the Internet already through blogs or youtube.    The AI digital assistant “curator of knowledge”  may ‘recommended’ existing content, or provide their own content.
  • Proprietary information can be disclosed in a narrative using the AI digital agent, e.g.  My order number is 123456B.  What is the status of my order?
  • Actions, such as employee referrals, e.g. I spoke with Kate Smith in the store, and she was a huge help finding what I needed.  I would like to recommend her.  E.g.2. I would like to re-order my ‘favorite’ shampoo with my details on file.  Frequent patrons may reorder a ‘named’ shopping cart.

Escalation to a human agent is also a feature.  When the business process workflow dictates, the user may escalate to a human in ‘real-time’, e.g. to a person’s smartphone.

Note: As of yet, Microsoft representatives have made no comment relating to this article.