Chatbots began to gain popularity along with a massive exodus of users to instant messengers, which today have the same status and potential as mobile applications in the 2000s. Fatigue from publicity and excessive amounts of information on social networks are the main reasons why audiences switch to messengers. However, the true potential of instant messengers began to be revealed along with the development of chatbots.

In any case, we are witnessing the development of a new ecosystem in which the messenger-chatbot combination will dominate. How to enter a new era and should you rush to create your own bots?

Simple bots and “intelligent bots”

A chatbot in its simplest form is a script interlocutor that responds to keywords in messages coming from a real user. If there are none in the message, the chatbot responds with a message like “Sorry, I don’t understand.” Despite the modest capabilities of such bots (although in theory you can specify many “commands” - keywords and expressions), they perform simple tasks quite well. For example, if a person needs to select a couple of items from a relatively small list, then a simple bot operating on the basis of decision trees can be very useful.

The functionality of “simple” chatbots is limited by the ability of developers to take into account the maximum number of options for developing a conversation. But, one way or another, “simple” bots cannot analyze the context of the conversation, much less learn – their destiny, roughly speaking, is to show the client varieties of pizza using the keyword “pizza”.

Chatbots based on “artificial intelligence” (in other words, machine learning) are able to create the feeling of a conversation with a real person. So far, such bots are rare, since processing natural language and training a bot based on it is a very labor-intensive task. In addition, there are still very few tools that allow you to work at this level specifically with the Russian language.

What chatbots can do today

Despite the fact that in just a few years the level of development of today's bots will seem ridiculous, they can already be useful in everyday life. They help with work, allowing you to obtain and process the necessary information faster than through search engines with websites, help you relax and have fun, and sometimes even find a mate.

@EGRUL_bot gained great popularity among Russian Telegram users, created by the developers for their own convenience - in the process of work they needed to quickly receive extracts for legal entities from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. The bot coped with this task faster than a person manually searching for information on the department’s website.

But a bot like @ExpenseBot can make it easier to keep track of your own finances. It can separate expenses by type, collect information on them, and issue a detailed report at the end of the month. At the same time, the functionality of such a bot is quite enough to control the budget of a medium-sized company. An advanced type of financial bot, integrated with other company systems, can enter information into the database, doing it automatically or at the user’s command, which greatly simplifies the accounting process.

Bots are also already good at providing legal advice, planning team work, sending out newsletters, and assessing the value of created content (along with tips for improving it):

Bots have great potential for integration with various “real” things, such as smart home components, which can be effectively managed using a special chatbot. Thus, bots are bringing the era of the “Internet of Things” closer and becoming a kind of new interface between the user and technology.

Viber bot is a convenient way to advertise your company!

The number of users of the Viber messenger is growing steadily: in 2016 alone, the audience increased by 23 percent. Therefore, using this application to promote your company’s services and products is a solution that can bring significant profits.

Developing a chatbot for Viber will help you:

• Find out more about the target audience and improve the level of service;
• Provide customers with valuable information in a form convenient for them, increasing their loyalty to the brand;
• Provide clients with initial consultation, improving the company’s service and reducing the burden on managers;
• Receive affiliate income by sharing links to partner sites and products;
• Serve an unlimited number of potential clients at the same time.

By giving users the opportunity to get the information they need, you significantly increase their trust in your company. Using a chatbot for Viber, you help the user in many aspects of working on the Internet.

Save time: to obtain the necessary information, he only needs to enter a request in the Viber messenger, after which the robot will make the necessary clarifications and find the necessary data.

Saving mobile device memory: to interact with a chatbot you do not need to install a separate application; all communication takes place in Viber.

Obtaining information in the natural environment: communication with the robot occurs through messaging in Viber, while the smart bot learns, understands complex queries and provides the most relevant information.

Chatbots for Viber with Grizzly

Grizzly has assembled a team of experts who are ready to create a chatbot in Viber for the needs of any business. We develop the following types of robots:

• Informational;
• Entertaining;
• Educational;
• Bot consultants;
• Software for conducting surveys;
• Bots for booking services and goods;
• Bots for notifications and reminders;
• Bots for Viber with unique features.

Creating bots in Grizzly means supporting your project at all stages of development. We support the project from the moment of drawing up the technical specifications to the development and launch of the chatbot.

Providing a comprehensive solution to your business problems, we also support the product after its launch:

• We make the necessary adjustments to the program;
• We improve your chatbot’s ability to understand requests and provide useful answers;
• We correct emerging defects;
• We help with monetization of the project;
• We make marketing proposals to promote the product on Viber.

By partnering with Grizzly, you can order a user-friendly and smart chatbot for Viber. We implement functionality of any complexity, which allows us to create both a simple robot for sending data and a complex program based on artificial intelligence, capable of learning as it functions.

Chatbots with Grizzly - use Viber to promote your business!

Experience in setting up chatbots and desktop chat for public company accounts in Viber.

In this article we will talk about our experience in setting up chat bots and chat for the Viber computer for public company accounts in Viber.

Let us remind you that the API for creating a chat bot appeared on Viber back in November 2016. However, at first, creating chat bots in this messenger was not an easy procedure - it was necessary to create a public account (the bots were tied only to them), and not all users, but only large and well-known companies, had the opportunity to register such an account.

In September 2017, this policy was revised: group public chats and bots are now separated; each user can create a bot directly through the application Administrator Panel.

The Viber chatbot allows you to automatically respond to messages, send messages, images, links, files and other content to your channel, add quick buttons or survey items to messages to allow the user a predefined set of actions or responses, check the status of channel subscribers and receive public information about them.

Technical support via Viber and consultations, communication with clients

What is good about chat on the Viber website for communicating with clients:

• clients do not need to install an additional application on their phone, they already have everything they need
• customers can place an order via Viber, receive technical support via Viber
• The correspondence history is stored, you can always return to it
• it is possible to program the bot to answer the most common questions, take orders and thereby reduce the load on operators

Chat for computer Viber

There is a desktop application - a chat program for a computer in Viber. Your client will be able to contact you from both a smartphone and a laptop, whichever is more convenient for him at the moment.

For the reasons listed above, many customers are now contacting us to install a button on the Viber website and a call widget. We considered different options on how it would be better for a business to solve this problem - organize a convenient chat on the Viber website. The idea was to write a chat bot yourself from scratch, buy a more or less suitable one, or use one of the chat bot design services. In addition, in many cases, it was necessary to integrate such a bot with CRM in order to record orders and maintain a history of client requests. It should also be taken into account that the customer may have several operators who all need to communicate with clients from the same corporate account, work with several instant messengers and other means of communication in a convenient interface.

In general, we assessed the advantages and disadvantages of all work options, and ultimately settled on the Chat Helpdesk system https://chat2desk.com/. In it we found everything that our customers needed:

• single interface for chat center operators, technical support, supervisors
• ability to customize a chat bot, program automatic responses
• integration with CRM
• the ability to download dialogs and make various reports to evaluate the operator’s performance
• fast feedback and support from system developers who can help with any technical questions

So far this is the most convenient solution we have come across. We recommend Chat Helpdesk to everyone who wants to set up communication with clients via Viber.

Viber recently introduced public accounts. With their help, businesses, brands and famous people will be able to openly interact with their audience using the capabilities of the messenger. One of the differences is that in a public account, companies can create chatbots and use them to communicate with the audience. We found out how a business can use new opportunities for promotion.

The growing popularity of the application is also evidenced by the financial report of the Japanese corporation Rakuten, the owner of Viber, for 9 months of 2016.

Number of Viber users (unique phone numbers, excluding inactive ones), million.

The report states that in the medium term, Rakuten will continue to invest in the Internet Services segment, which includes Viber. Including the development of the messenger.

Viber was created by Belarusian-Israeli developers and in 2014 sold to the Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten for $900 million. The company's development center operates in Minsk.

In Viber you can send messages, documents, media files. It offers calls in HD quality, calls to mobile and landline phones, etc. Now the application offers public chats, public accounts, chat bots and... stickers in the Belarusian language with humorous expressions and pictures.

Viber has almost 4.5 million users in Belarus, almost 16 million in Ukraine and more than 60 million in Russia. The application's audience around the world is growing rapidly - over the year it grew by 23%, and now it has been downloaded by more than 823 million users (in September 2015 - 664 million). It's not just the number of Viber users that is growing. The application is available on all popular platforms. And the messenger itself is also constantly developing and transforming, offering new products.

Viber communication tools:

Public chat— chat for group communication that companies can create.

Public account— essentially, a company page in the messenger; any Viber user can find and see its content. It’s as if you are reading the feed of several people at once who are communicating with each other. The user himself is not yet allowed to leave comments.

The public bot function is available in public accounts.

Public bot— a robot program that imitates human actions as much as possible (for example, answering user questions, maintaining a dialogue with the user). Conventionally, two types of bots can be distinguished: with artificial intelligence, capable of learning (a very cleverly written program) and emulators (a simple algorithm, a set of commands and a limited amount of memory). The smarter the bot, the more difficult it is to write.

Public accounts Viber is built on the basis of public chats, which the company launched back in 2014. In Belarus, 50 public chats are available out of 250+, open to the Russian-speaking Viber audience. There are a total of 16 million users in this audience. Public chat is installed on more than 410 million devices worldwide.

Public accounts are channels that can be used to communicate with users in the work of sales and marketing departments, customer support services, and for sending newsletters. A tool that is available in public accounts is bots; they can answer user questions.

For now, users cannot comment on news in a public account, but the company is already working on this and such an opportunity will appear soon. Ordinary users also do not yet have access to the function of creating their own public account, but Viber accepts applications at [email protected] and am ready to consider all options. The application takes a long time to be processed, about a month. In addition, if previously there was no need for approval by the system moderators, today it is worth trying to show your future resource as potentially useful to people.

Before you launch a public account, you need to update the Viber application on your device.

The service is in beta testing, and only about 1,000 companies around the world have access to it. In Belarus, one of the first to launch it was TUT.BY. Before this, there were more than 310 thousand people in his public chat.

How to use a public account

— We have administrators who can add messages (editors and journalists), and users who can like them. The main task is to quickly give the audience the information they need, entertain them a little, and at the same time “bring” them to TUT.BY.

Maxim Gaiko
Deputy Editor-in-Chief of TUT.BY

A public bot operates in a public account. Using these tools, we communicate informally, share links to articles and news, arrange polls (liked/disliked information), asking people to like the answer they liked. This way, firstly, we find out what the audience would like to see or read. And secondly, we involve her in communication through likes - because users cannot yet comment on our information.

What has changed since the introduction of the public bot? It is now possible for the user to quickly obtain information on a specific request without comments or accompanying texts. This is convenient for those who are in a hurry, because it eliminates the need to scroll through the entire feed and look for the necessary information.

The bot’s keyboard has 6 buttons for quick access to various information (“Latest news”, “Positive”, “curiosities”, “Currency rates” and “Weather”). You can simply ask the bot a request - enter a word or phrase that you want to know more about, and it will show links to the 3 latest news on the topic.

How can these tools be useful for business? In a quick search. For example, I don’t want to search for news on a topic of interest in my feed - it’s more convenient and faster to ask such a request to a bot. There should be the fastest possible - in one click - access to the information I need. This is the most valuable thing a user can receive.

Large companies should definitely come to Viber. And the sooner the better.

Firstly, because finding information relevant to the consumer has become very difficult, and in the public I get everything I need in one place. I don't need to go to the website, look for contacts, call and try to get the information I need.

Secondly, 4.5 million users of the messenger in Belarus speaks of its popularity. This is a huge audience and you should definitely come to it. You need to offer your services where it is convenient for the user.

Viber promises that the application interface can be optimized to suit the needs of each specific organization.

What should chatbots be like?

As we have already written, in Viber public accounts you can use a bot to communicate with the audience. What should a bot do to be useful for both the company and the user? Here's an expert's opinion.

Founder and CEO of the startup ALTA-AI

— Until now, few people understand why they really need a bot. We receive a huge number of requests to develop chatbots for companies from various fields. And most people ask to create a bot that either duplicates sections of the site in the messenger, or “answers questions.” Unfortunately, there are no successful examples of using this tool in either case.

First option (duplicate sections of the site) does not work because it is most often impractical and simply inconvenient. In most cases, a bot does not provide any additional value to a person compared to other channels. Trying to create a user interface like a website or mobile app using buttons and widgets looks ridiculous.

A bot is a different interface and way of communicating with a client, which means a new approach to designing communication with users is needed.

Second option (bot answers questions) difficult to implement. On the one hand, there is no understanding on the part of the business what questions the bot should answer. On the other hand, there is not enough data to train it to answer questions well in a given area: most describe the volume of questions that the bot should answer as “any question about the company” or “on those questions that are on the site.”

For a bot to really work successfully, it must solve one problem, not all straightaway. For example, if the most difficult thing for clients of a construction company is to figure out what type of soil they need, then the bot, through a clearly designed dialogue and asking the right questions, should help them solve the problem of choosing a product. And when it comes to a specific task, you can design effective work with speed reply buttons and other widgets - they will help the user make a minimum of effort to obtain the necessary information.

It is important not to forget that the bot must be tool for obtaining value. There is no value in making a bot. It's more like trying to make a mobile app a wrapper over a website. You need to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the messenger as a communication channel, and carefully design the interaction taking these features into account.

Bots continue to develop and gain popularity. I am confident that we will soon see many successful applications of them in a variety of fields. In turn, we are trying to move in this direction and are creating tools that will allow us to effectively use bots in combination with existing services.

Today we will talk about chats in Viber, what they are, their features, capabilities and what they are.

When talking about a conversation between several people, we use the term “dialogue”. Dialogue can be oral and written, if it is conducted through correspondence in the messenger or social networks.

General concept of what chat is.

Chat, like dialogue, involves communication between several people at once. When we talk about correspondence between two users, we mean private chats in Viber. They are created by one person, the second joins automatically by replying to the message received from the first. Only these two can see the text of the messages. Participants can delete their own messages from both themselves and their opponents; strangers’ messages can only be deleted from their own.

A Viber group is created by one person and sends invitations to other users to join. Subsequently, some of those who joined may be allowed to administer the community. Such assignments come from its creator. Messages sent to a group are visible to all its members, regardless of who is on the blacklist. Deleting messages according to the same principle as in private communication. A detailed article devoted to this issue will reveal this.

And a little more: in the messenger and always see it at the top.

Secret and hidden chats

Please note: the system assumes the ability to create and . Hidden chats are not displayed in the general list. To do this, you need to enter the PIN code in the search bar. First you need to create them, and then it will be possible. The secret group is marked with the image of a castle and is displayed in normal mode, but all correspondence in it is automatically deleted after some time - more about that. You can define the time period in the settings.

Integrated Search

We figured out the question “what are chats in Viber.” Now let's talk about one of the options created by the application developers for the convenience of users. This is an integrated search through which you can quickly find the desired dialogue, private or group, as well as a specific part of the conversation. The search is carried out using the names of participants, names of conversations and individual words from the history of correspondence. Using this option is very simple:

• Enter the word into the box at the top of the screen.
• Click on the “Magnifying Glass” icon.
• You wait for the search to complete and look at its results.

Unfortunately, only those who have installed the messenger on a device with iOS 9 can use search in Viber chat. For everyone else, search is available only from a computer, after downloading the correspondence history to it.

On an iPhone, you need to swipe down right in the section:

Public chats in Viber

Essentially, these are group chats, but visible to any Viber user, and not just those who were invited to correspondence. Other differences between a public and a regular group:

Today, not every person can get the go-ahead to create a public group on Viber. This opportunity is available only to individual companies and individuals, the circle of whom is determined by the creators of the messenger.