How to develop a bot

A bot can bring new experience to any kind of the processes where automatization is possible. Bots perform repetitive actions with ease and sometimes can ensure the pipelines show better results faster and with fewer efforts. 

The market offers several options for a business willing to bring automatization to their processes: out-of-the-box bots, bot constructors and custom bots. This article describes the ways how it is possible to develop a bot by yourself for any purposes. In the end, we compare three options and find which one should be more effective than others for business and end-users. 

The ways to build a bot

As in most situations with software production, it can be achieved by the purchase of an out-of-the-box solution, platform builder construction or application of customised mobile web development services. 

The ready-made solutions are the fastest way to receive your bot. Nevertheless, they can serve only for non-complicated aims without waste expandability.  

Generally, it is possible to build a bot by using special platforms that allow making the system similar to a construction set. Such an option will take less time and money, though to gather all functions needed, it is often necessary to apply several builders and pay for each of them. 

The custom development costs more, but the final product will be the one planned in the very beginning. The custom solution can not be a win-win strategy in every situation, as sometimes we need a fast and cheap resolution of the problem. But today we will describe the process of bot development from the scratch by the team of developers. 

Bot development stages

Like any kind of digital product, bot composition requires the specific stages to be done for ensuring the serviceability of the product. 

Choosing the type of bot needed

When developing a bot, you should state the intended purposes of such a bot and the conditions under which it would be used. The bots can be useful in numerous processes such can include but not be limited with: 

• Marketing purposes (branding identity building, leads conversion, market evaluation); 
• Sales purposes (conversion rate improvement, left cart recovery, leads sortation in CRM);
• Customer care purposes (chat automated conversations, FAQ, updates of order status, feedback gathering);
• Security purposes (privacy and cookie bots, access control bots, payment modules); 
• Management purposes (internal bots for CRM management); 
• HR purposes (onboarding assistance, time notifications).

And it is possible to continue this list further and further. 

Defining the core purpose of the bot will set its main functions and abilities. It can seem from a glance that bots are simple and nothing more than a script performing actions. But in reality, bots can act as assistants that forget nothing and are always on time. That results in the code architecture that supposes the addition of several modules with different functional scope.  

Choosing whether to introduce Artificial Intellect or not

When the purpose is defined, it is the proper time to choose whether the bot will be empowered with Artificial Intellect or not. AI brings a wider scope of functions a bot can introduce. At one stroke, it brings some limitations. The first one – is that AI bot creation is not a cheap thing and can request some experience from the team of developers who would build it. 

To define whether you need such a bot or not – define the complexity of the processes the bot should perform. Consider the works and data complexity. In reality, such bots are needed when evaluating the huge scopes of information or when a precise evaluation and decision making is needed. The bot without AI can not think as far as it only performs the predefined actions that were inset to it. 

Development of the logics

The entire development process will be similar to any other product development. Planning, designing, coding, and testing stages circle ensure the stability of the ready-made system. Of course, if reasonably coded. The good news is that the bot can be developed in basically any language, naturally without exaggerations. Node.js or Python seem to be one of the best choices for a simple, scripts-based bot. But with proper motivation and desire – every language and framework can be suitable. 

The process of conclusion and adjustment of the script should take as much time as possible to make a bot effective. The logic of the script is defined with the primary goals stated in the very beginning. They should be tested under real-life conditions to avoid critical discrepancies that can fail the system. 

The quality of the approach to code building matters a lot for a future product stable operation. The architecture conclusion should define the possibilities for growth and expandability of the system in case of necessity. 

When arranging the bot, it is important to connect all the necessary systems to it. The task of the developers team is to design a convenient tool that can substitute the existing solutions. If the team uses defined messengers, it would be smarter to integrate them into bot pipe flow. 

Testing the bot under real-life conditions

Besides code quality testing, the bot should undergo tests under real-life conditions to show weak points in logics. Among other issues, it is necessary to outline the paths for the nonlinear behaviour of users. Together with the ways to overcome possible failures that can happen anyway. 

Try to ensure that no critical decisions are made automatically and leave the user possibility to make the same actions manually to change the things done by the bot. 

The bots can technologically improve any business as they augment the pipelines and bring automatization to repetitive procedures. But to get a really effective bot, it is necessary to bear in mind the best practices of architecture solutions implementation. The introduction of logic and testing processes matter even more than the development itself. To find a proper path, the team of developers should be skilled and experienced. 

Consider contacting the team who definitely know what to do to make the bot vivid? Contact us with any questions and we gladly help you.