Introduction:
Before we move on, let's have a look at three important concepts in chatbots.
Intents:
An intent is a goal that a user wants to achieve when they type a question. It's what they really mean, rather than what they actually say. And there can be a big difference between the two!
Example:
Aiden: it's cold here.
Ricky stands up and closes the window.
Aiden never literally asked Ricky to close the window. Yet Ricky understands what he means.
In a customer service chatbot, intents usually are customer questions that need an answer, problems that need to be solved, or actions that the bot can do.
- What is your visitor address
- Show movie overview
- Troubleshoot phone
Utterances:
An utterance is what a user actually says to the bot.
"Which movies are on?"
"Movie"
"Movies"
"Which films are playing?"
"I want to go to the movies"
"What movie s playing?"
"Show me a nice movie"
"I want to see an action movie"
"We're going to the cinema"
"I left my suitcase in the train"
An utterance doesn't have to be a full sentence. People often use incomplete sentences when they talk to a bot, and they often make typos too.
Your chatbot uses utterances to recognise the user's intent. In the example above, all utterances belong to the intent 'Show movie overview'. Except the last one, which probably belongs to an intent 'lost luggage'.
Response:
A response is a bot's reply to the user question. This can be an answer, another question, or even an action, like getting your customer's email.
Now that you know about the basics of intents and utterances, let's add a user intent to your chatbot.