The Rise of Building Chatbots: Native or Cross Platform?
June 27, 2018
Conversational AI i.e Chatbots are the new user interface for connecting people to your brand’s products and services.
Upcoming years are going to be amazing for chatbots. A study by Juniper forecasts, businesses with chatbots will save $8 billion per year and is estimated to generate $20 million in revenue this year.
Chatbot Developers are building intelligent bots to solve significant problems like availability 24*7, dedicated resource allocation, and much more. So, as they develop, pioneering developers get multiple choices to create them. One of the most influential choices they need to make is selecting the right platform for your bot. With a native approach, you need separate bots for multiple platforms whereas the code is written only once and run anywhere with the cross-platform approach. Depending on your business requirements, you can switch to the best option for your enterprise.
There are several messenger APIs including Telegram, Slack, KiK, Hipchat, Twitter, SMS, and other, however, the purpose of any solution is to engage a larger consumer base. To deliver bona fide business results, you need to think wisely which platform works well for your business.
Let’s analyze pros and cons of both Native and Cross-platform chatbot development approach
Native Chatbot Development
Familiar with native development approach? Native chatbot development is somewhat similar to that process. Specifically, building a bot for one platform lets you optimize user experience to its fullest extent. As these bots are promoted in ‘bot stores’, the platform can update to its newest features, when available.
Native chatbots come with major development costs. From building to upgrading and maintaining for a specific platform is not only expensive but it continuously goes on increasing. Moreover, it doubles the working time of a developer as each bot has different capabilities which utilize different APIs. Another big challenge is ‘user experience is fragmented’ i.e different customers will experience the same product different on every platform.
Cross-Platform Chatbot Development
Once the code is written, it can be experienced anywhere that is supported by cross-platform APIs. Along with offering uniform user experience, cross-platform chatbots are simpler to build, update and maintain. Developers need not put an extra effort to build these bots.
Using third-party platforms are also risky and won’t give you complete control over its operations, possible downtime, and updates. Also, while ensuring a delightful customer experience there may be chances of some comprises in few features of optimization on multiple individual platforms.
It is important to think wisely and for long-term before pitching into bot development as it needs a huge investment in either of the platforms. You can also look for a reliable Chatbot Development Company which can guide you in selecting the right platforms for your business. It will skip the pain points of developing bots and provide you with quick customer service anytime.