Chatbots are the new black. But this season they have also been the new red white and green – with the Cartland Law Xmas Chatbot. Having just spent 18 months developing legal AI (Ailira) when I went to send a Xmas message out to clients I thought that it wouldn’t be a hard task to create a small chatbot that can answer all of the simple questions people have, as well as have a bit of fun.

Without going into technical detail (I am a lawyer, rather than a developer), I thought it would be nice to share the development process.

 

Step 1. Pleasantries and NLP

I took a standard list of interactions “Hi” “How are you” etc and used them as a simple base. I gave the answers a seasonal brush up, and added a few new question and answer pairs that answered likely questions.

 

Step 2. Structured Conversation

So that users could quickly find out information, I created a click through dialogue that ran through the essential information, and also enabled conversational chit chat through choices.

 

Step 3. Integration with Facebook

Choosing a platform to present the chatbot that everyone would be able to access, I set up a simple Facebook page. This was not because I planned to post status updates, but because Facebook has pushed its Messenger platform (and chatbots) so much that it is an almost ubiquitous access point. It also made it easy to connect a Messenger chat platform with my website

 

Step 4. A Much Nicer Email/Status Update/Website Plugin

It was a much nicer feel to send something out that people will find novel and be entertained by, rather than a generic platitude. I very much welcomed the positive feedback, messages and thanks in reply from clients and friends.

All up it was a productive 3-4 hours creation and publishing. If you want to chat to the Xmas Chatbot he still resides at https://www.facebook.com/xmaschatbot/ or you can find him on Messenger as @XmasChatbot (Obviously Cartland Law is back from holidays now).

If you want your own chatbot for your professional website, Cartland Law have some pretty cool things we have been testing with Ailira that we look forward to sharing with you in 2017.

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