A cognitive bot (also called a Conversational AI bot or just a chatbot) is a software program that is built to understand and have conversations with people. Just like you would chat with a human, you can chat with a chatbot. It is a way to automate processes and tasks so that people get useful information immediately.
Cognitive bots understand user intent from free text. This means that you can ask a question and the bot understands what you are saying.
A cognitive bot can understand what the user wants from analyzing their message (usually written inside a chat window on a website or mobile app) and then perform the task by executing some back-end action (e.g. pull up customer data, fill in a form etc).
The main reason to use cognitive bots is to increase customer and employee satisfaction. By simply stating their wish (writing it in the chat window), the bot takes the query, understands it and executes it with measurable results. This saves significant amounts of time for customers and employees.
We went through tens of software providers and put together a list of the top cognitive bot software tools on the market today.
AlphaChat is a cognitive bot tool allowing companies to build Conversational AI bots for their website. Aside from Natural Language Understanding, the AI is capable of authenticating users with deep RPA automations for online customer service and sales.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Powerful tool with no-code interface for anyone to build cognitive chatbots. Launch an RPA chatbot in minutes. API available for advanced users with deep insight into bot content and AI suggestions on how to improve the Conversational AI. SLA and Alpha Operating System with custom code available for enterprise bots.
Pricing: 10-day free trial. Paid plans from €399/month.
Hyro is a cognitive bot software platform that analyzes conversational data to create a basis for conversational interfaces.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Focus on the healthcare, government and real estate sector.
Pricing: Paid plans price available on request.
Mindsay is a cognitive chatbot automation tool which gives Software as a Service companies the possibility to build and train chatbots.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: With Mindsay it is possible to train the virtual assistant in multiple languages, connect to third party tools and analyze interactions.
Pricing: Pricing available on request.
Activechat is an automated intelligent bot platform for customer interaction automation through building smart AI chatbots that are bundled with a live chat tool and a conversational intelligence module.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Activechat gives a tool for training the chatbots and connects them to built-in live chat.
Pricing: Prices from $33/agent/month with extra agents $299/year.
Meya is a cognitive chatbot software for developing customizable virtual assistants and robotic automation.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Meya offers its own Bot Flow Markup Language for developers in building their chatbots.
Pricing: Paid plans starting from $799/month.
Ebi is an intelligent RPA bot platform for building chatbots. It uses IBM Watson machine learning models.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Ebi offers custom virtual assistant development projects to build an MVP in 30 days.
Pricing: Price available on request.
Aivo is an RPA chatbot product for omnichannel customer service automation.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Aivo provides a chatbot training engine and connections to multiple platforms including Genesys, Zendesk, Zapier, Slack and Salesforce.
Pricing: Paid plans starting from $99/month + $0.15/conversation.