6 Best Chatbot APIs to use in 2023- Freshchat by Freshworks (2024)

What is chatbot API?

A chatbot API (Application Programming Interface) is a software layer that enables communication between a chatbot and other software. It acts as a link to access data from other applications so that the chatbot has all the relevant information regarding a user’s interaction history across all apps and touchpoints that they interacted with - to offer quick, relevant, and personalized responses without requiring much effort from the user.

For example, a customer wants to check the status of their subscription plan. After getting this request, the chatbot will make an API call to check the payment status and validity of the plan. If the status is paid, the chatbot will tell the user that their subscription is active, else it will display a simple message to the customer showing the status of their subscription as inactive.

Benefits of chatbot API

1. Seemless customer experience

A chatbot API allows your data to flow smoothly between your CRM, helpdesk, or any other database within your company. With the help of this API, you'll be able to connect not only the bot but also your entire customer support software with your existing data, so that the right information can be shared with your leads during a chatbot conversation.

2.Helps build smarter chatbots

Bots process tons of data with each new interaction they have with users. With the help of APIs, you can get this humongous data for your chatbots from your CRM, HRMS, ERP, or helpdesk software and also use that data to train the bots on different types of conversations. The bigger and richer the data corpus on which to train the bots, the better the quality of training and, consequently, the better the customer conversations. Hence, APIs are critical when you want to build automated chatbot flows and have smarter customer interactions.

3.Improves agent productivity

Who knows better than a customer support agent that gathering customer information while attending to them isn’t a simple task? Usually, it takes a lot of time for agents to find the right information and proceed with the conversation. This causes delays in agent response and degrades the overall customer experience. However, with the help of a bot API, you can deploy internal bots to fetch that information for your agents—and help them with crucial data while they attend to user queries.

How does a bot API work?

A bot API is a medium that requests data access from the database of any other software and delivers it back to your chatbot. A simple chatbot API flow looks like this:

1. The user interacts with the chatbot

2. The bot processes that question using NLU (Natural Language Understanding)

3. If the user requires any data, then the API is triggered to access the data from the required data source

4. The chatbot gets the data

5. Then by using NLG (Natural Language Generation), the chatbot composes a response

6. Finally, the bot responds to the user

To understand the working of a chatbot API even better, let us consider the scenario of a fictional bank called AG Bank by using Freshchat’s web widget.

1. When a customer sends a message, your custom bot starts engaging with them.

2. With the interactive button element, you can display multiple options to the user. From here, the customer chooses to view their account statement, and the bot asks for card details.

3. Once the customer clicks card details, with the secure web view option, you load the bank's web portal within the widget wherein the user can securely enter their details and get the account statement.

4. After this, you can either close the conversation or redirect the user to the conversation flow where the bot can resume the interaction.

The above example is just one use case. With customized Freshchat APIs, the possibilities are endless.

1. When a customer sends a message, your custom bot starts engaging with them.

2. With the interactive button element, you can display multiple options to the user. From here, the customer chooses to view their account statement, and the bot asks for card details.

3. Once the customer clicks card details, with the secure web view option, you load the bank's web portal within the widget where the user can securely enter their details and gets the account statement.

4. Post this, you can either close the conversation or redirect the user to the conversation flow where the bot can resume the interaction.

The above example is just one use case. With customized Freshchat APIs, the possibilities are endless.

How to configure a new API in Freshchat?

To configure API in Freshchat:

• Go to Bots from the left pane.
• Create a new bot or select the bot you want to edit.
• Navigate to Flows > Configure > API library
• Click the Add New button to start configuring a new API call

Get the complete step-by-step guide on configuring chatbot APIs here.

6 Best Chatbot APIs You Can Use in 2023

1. Freshchat API

Freshchat is a unified and contextual conversational engagement software that makes it easy for Support, Marketing, Sales, and even bots to have conversations at scale with customers.

Freshchat APIs can be used by customers and partners to build custom integrations and workflows. APIs help solve the problems around customising existing workflows and tailoring it to specific business structures, integrating bot flows into messaging, syncing-up and transferring data from external systems, and so on.

2. Facebook Messenger API

Facebook provides a free API for its Messenger application. The API can interact with users in groups or chats, and the bots can handle specific requests, post in groups, and send notifications in chat.

You can configure your Facebook Messenger bot to answer real-time questions and perform actions as per requests in the comment box. For more information on how to get started with Natural Language Processing (NLP) on the platform, you can check out Facebook's documentation .

3. Google Chat API

Google's Chat API lets you interact with customers over chat. Its most powerful functionality comes from its integrations with Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and other Google applications, allowing your bot to answer questions by pulling data from these resources quickly and easily.

4. Slack bot API

Using Slack's bot API, you can build chatbots to communicate with customers and handle routine tasks. These can range from onboarding a user to handling to-do lists to chatting.

You can give your bot a name, image, or a profile in your directory. Then, allow users to chat with them through direct messages or specific channels and conversations to handle requests. You can also program your bot to automatically post messages and reminders to members on Slack and add interactive components such as buttons and links to your messages.

5. Bot Libre

Bot Libre is a free, open-source platform for building live bots—for your mobile applications, websites, social media accounts, SMS, email, or IoT networks. These bots are compatible with Alexa and Google Home. They also work well with the metaverse.

In addition, there is a feature for creating 3D animations and video avatars of different persona. You can use these personas on your website to interact with customers for a fun experience.

6. ChatBot API

ChatBot uses an NLU framework to help developers create intelligent bots that integrate with their messaging applications. The bots can handle requests, carry on conversations, and interact with rich-media messages and images.

You can also track your bot's activities to teach it to improve, helping you increase its intelligence over time. ChatBot integrates well with Slack, Facebook, and LiveChat.

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Chatbot API use cases in Freshchat

In Freshchat, you can set up and trigger a chatbot’s API response in three different ways.
1. Through a message
2. Under actions
3. By using a condition

1.Using Message to add an API response

• Type out the message or the question that needs to be displayed to the customer.

• Click on the + icon to access placeholders > APIs.

• The bot builder will display the list of all the APIs configured under the API library.

• Choose the required API to append it to the text box.

For example: If you are creating a ticket for the bot conversation, you can set up a create ticket API call. You can then reference the ticket ID from the response parameters.

2. Use Actions to add an API response

• Create a new action in the dialog

• Set the Action type to Trigger API

• Select the required API from the list of all the APIs configured under that bot’s API library.

• You can insert the Trigger API action anywhere in the flow.

• If you need to trigger the API before a message, create the Trigger API action before it.

Similarly, if you need to trigger the API after a message, create the Trigger API action after it.

3. Use Conditions to add an API response

• Open the Conditions tab for the required dialog > click on + icon to access placeholders > choose APIs from the drop-down.

• You will see the list of all the APIs configured under the API library.

• Select the required API call and then proceed to choose the response value.

• You can use the API’s response both in the body of the condition and in the condition’s value section.

For example: In the case of a simple subscription flow, you can get the status of the payment from the API response and redirect customers to a different dialog/flow if the status is unpaid or set up a dialog to display a simple message to the customers if the status equals paid.

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Frequently asked questions about chatbot API