What Is Natural Language Processing?

Natural language processing, or NLP, is a term you've undoubtedly heard while shopping around for automated webchat for business. But what exactly is natural language processing? ZyraTalk COO Brian Scruggs is joining us here on the blog today to provide some insight on NLP for the uninitiated. Take it away, Brian!

What is natural language processing?

Natural language processing is the method of taking a human text input, analyzing it through some sort of algorithm which is typically based off of some sort of data model and giving an automatic output, mimicking the response a human would give.

Why is natural language processing important for small businesses using webchat?

In today’s day and age, there are so many ways to communicate with a business. The days of expecting your customer to just call are long gone, and companies need to adapt with improving technologies. By opening up new forms of communication, you can provide your customer with the way they want to communicate with you, whenever they want to communicate.

By automating some of these communication channels, you don’t have to overwhelm your team with new processes and systems that you expect them to learn. Our job is for you to rely on us, so we can completely automate these new channels of communication that customers are demanding more and more. New technology and new communication channels shouldn’t be stressful, but rather seamless and easy to plug in.

How does ZyraTalk’s chatbot incorporate NLP?

ZyraTalk utilizes NLP in a variety of ways. We offer a full “intent engine” which is fully accessible to our thousands of clients and hundreds of partners. Our users don’t have to build their own NLP engine and have the opportunity to leverage our already trained data model to build on top of. We call our intents “skills” which can be added to a conversation as a rule. When a skill is triggered, a response corresponding to that skill will be triggered.

We offer over 500 different skills today and are adding new data sets every week! All of our conversations that take place through chat, text, and social mediums utilize some aspect of our intent engine to recognize human text and respond accordingly. We’ve done this successfully with over a million conversations and continue to automate interactions for small businesses across the world.

Natural language processing: wrapping up

In essence, natural language does exactly what it says on the tin: processes natural human language to craft appropriate, natural responses. Here at ZyraTalk, we refine our intent engine and NLP algorithms daily to deliver an accessible, intuitive experience to our clients and their customers.

This post only scratches the surface of what NLP can do, how we use it to power our omnichannel conversational marketing platform, and what lies ahead for NLP in the future. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post, where we'll explore the exciting future of natural language processing and delve deeper into how it works to provide top-notch customer service.

Got questions about NLP? We've got answers. Start a chat with us now to see our algorithms in action. Or, ask us questions about how AI can better serve your customers and generate more leads and revenue for your business.