A structured approach for AI Chatbots Development, that covers the key decisions and actions during the delivery process

1. AI Chatbot Development
Methodology
19th October 2018 Lviv

2. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
About me
• Co-founder of http://Chatbots.Studio
• Co-author of course “Chatbots for marketers”
• Owner of MBA with exceptional recognition
• Bot evangelist
https://medium.com/@chatbots_studio/

3. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Content
• Scope of methodology
• Team overview
• Project stages
• Envisioning
• Planning
• Developing
• Stabilizing
• Deployment / piloting
• Conclusion

4. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
We cover how to manage the AI bot delivery
1
• Inherits waterfall methodology ( I love MSF)
2
• Distinct project activities per each project stage
3
• Criteria's of completion
4
• Key decisions per stage
5
• New team roles

5. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
What will NOT be in the methodology ?
1
• How to program any bot or its component
2
• How to market, earn money on chatbot
3
• What is the chatbot and how to use it my
business
4
• How to run a software development project. You
should know that already

6. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Content
• Scope of methodology
• Team overview
• Project stages
• Envisioning
• Planning
• Developing
• Stabilizing
• Conclusion

7. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Each problem of the project should have owner

8. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
AI Chatbot project requires 2 new roles under user
experience
Role Problem Responsibility
Conversational expert • Conversation is not
engaging, It is not fun to
talk with bot
• Bot does not understand
me
• Bot does loses the context
of conversation
• It requires me to do a lot of
actions to get what I need
• Define the conversation of
flow
• Monitor the real
conversations and
optimize them
• Maintain NLP engine,
resolve fallouts and add
synonyms
Live user support • Users are leaving a
conversation
• Users are complaining
about bots
• Service is becoming lower
• Resolve user queries
• Contribute to conversation
improvements

9. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Content
• Scope of methodology
• Team overview
• Project stages
• Envisioning
• Planning
• Developing
• Stabilizing
• Conclusion

10. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
MSF is rigid but clear

11. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Content
• Scope of methodology
• Team overview
• Project stages
• Envisioning
• Planning
• Developing
• Stabilizing
• Conclusion

12. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Vision for AI chatbot project should include
1
• Objectives and metrics for AI Chatbot
deployment
2
• Interfaces of a Chatbot
•3
• Approach for AI

13. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Each project should bring tangible business benefits
Increase
revenue
Develop new sales
channel
Increase
secondary sales
Reduce cost
Optimize
information
management
Automate manual
work
Reduce cost of
advertisement
companies

14. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Be clear at the very beginning where you bot will be
working

15. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
When you definitely need AI in your Chatbot
No Controls in
Interface
• SMS
• WhatsApp
• Voice
• E-mail
A lot of data
records
• FAQ
• Search
Assistance
Non structured
nature of
information
• Dreams
• Complains
• Reviews

16. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
When you definitely do NOT need AI in your Chatbot
Rare AI
language
• Lack of NLP
libs
• No support
from Big
players
• Ukrainian is in
the list 
Customer has a
distinct task
• Buy ticket
• Setup an
appointment
• Make a
request
No enough data
to train NLP bot
• less than 100
records

17. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Content
• Scope of methodology
• Team overview
• Project stages
• Envisioning
• Planning
• Developing
• Stabilizing
• Conclusion

18. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Should be considered during AI Chatbot planning stage
1 • Defined a detailed conversation flow
2 • Character of the bot
3 • Approach for AI implementation
4 • Define strategy for bot training
5 • Gather corpus of data
6 • Select development tools
•7 • Define requirements for integration
8 • Select live agent platform

19. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Watch dialog structure, it should be careful

20. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Consider the full technical landscape
Component Role Possible Solutions
Conversation Engine • Manage the conversation
logic
• Maintain the session
• Route the conversation
between interfaces
• Botkit
• Botpress
• Use own by using the plain
programming
NLP Engine • Identifies intent (NLU)
• Holds the context of
conversation
• Speach2text2Speach
• LUIS
• DialogFlow
• Amazon Lex
• Rasa.ai
• Wit.ai
Live Agent • Takeover the conversation
with a user
• Live Chat
• Intercom
Bot analytics • Google analytics for bots • Chatbase
UI framework • Presentation layer for web
bot and admin part
• Angular
• React
DBMS • Storage of the data • MySQL, MS SQL,
Postgres and etc.

21. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Bot is not a human, but has a character

22. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Plan to find a data for training in advance
Company
sources
• Contact
center logs
• Existing
support
scripts
• FAQ
Dedicated
sources
• Semantic
DBs
• NERs
Scrapping
• What ever
you can
find and get
from
internet

23. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
NLP Engine vs Own AI
- Cheap and quick
development
- Not need for Data
Scientist to train
- Great results in
standard cases
- Has APIs for integration
- Does not support the rare
languages
- Have issues with a lot intents
- Could miss the context of
conversation
- Limited with NLU mostly
NLPEngine
- Could implement practically
any NLP function
- Covers NLG as well
- Could support rare language
- Requires a lot of Data to
train
- Long delivery
- Requires specific knowledge
OwnAI

24. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Content
• Scope of methodology
• Team overview
• Project stages
• Envisioning
• Planning
• Developing
• Stabilizing
• Conclusion

25. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Developing of stage is not only about programming
1
• Define client onboarding strategy
2
• Create unit tests for external components
3
• Define test cases for NLP

26. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Plan in advance how the clients will come to your bot
From own
sources
• Site
• FB page
• Call center
phone
• Messenger
Search
Offline
• Posters
• Outlets
Partners
• Part of
other
business
process

27. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
What conversational AI test cases should cover ?
• Miss spellings
• Synonyms, abbreviations, professional jargon
• Big quantity of similar intents (NLP engines could not recognize the difference)
• Logical (and, or) combinations
• Rejections of previous messages

28. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Content
• Scope of methodology
• Team overview
• Project stages
• Envisioning
• Planning
• Developing
• Stabilizing
• Conclusion

29. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Specific activities for stabilizing stage
1
• Define the launch approach
2
• Issue specific environments for NLP engines
3
• Train live agents

30. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Define your launch strategy before the launch. Start with
small
Target
audience
• Limited
• Loyal
• Use the full
scenario
Scope of
launch
• What will be
used
• What will be
omitted
How to
resolve issues
• Redirect to
agent
• Set the trial
mode
Treat unhappy
clients
• Do not over
promise
• Think about
incentives

31. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Content
• Scope of methodology
• Team overview
• Project stages
• Envisioning
• Planning
• Developing
• Stabilizing
• Conclusion

32. +38 096 448 80 46igor.luzhansky igor@chatbots.studio
Take offs
• AI Chatbot is NOT a toy
• AI Chatbot delivery requires a systematic set decisions
• You will need new roles on your team