Virtual Assistant vs Chatbot: What’s the Right Choice in 2024?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a broad term that includes several branches of advanced technologies that all share one thing in common—they can operate or “think” autonomously. AI has garnered a lot of attention in the professional landscape recently because of its ability to automate manual processes and streamline workflows across a wide range of industries. However, of all its many types and applications, there’s one group of AI technology that’s drawing more attention than the rest: conversational AI.

Conversational AI uses natural language processing (NLP) to analyze verbal or written inputs and respond in a way that mimics human language. This means it can independently communicate with humans much like a real human employee would. Its ability to understand queries and answer questions without additional human oversight has huge time-saving and cost-reduction potential for businesses around the world, particularly in customer-facing roles.

Within conversational AI, its technologies can be separated into two general categories—chatbots and virtual assistants. Though these terms are often used interchangeably, they are separate technologies designed with different purposes in mind.

Take a closer look at a virtual assistant vs chatbot and learn more about Podium’s AI Employee—an advanced AI capable of using Podium’s platform autonomously to help you attract more potential customers and drive them to complete specific actions.

What is an AI Chatbot?

In simple terms, chatbots are a type of software that has been specifically designed to analyze written text or spoken audio and provide a conversational response that’s relevant to the original query. There are two kinds of chatbots: rule-based and AI-powered.

Rule-based chatbots are the simplest model. They’ve been pre-programmed with a library of pre-written responses. Using those, they’ll follow a set of predefined rules to determine which scripted response is the best fit to each question. The identified response will be returned to the user. Rule-based chatbots are bound by the rules of their programming, so these chatbots are used for automating repetitive tasks and interactions within a set workflow.

The pre-programmed rules usually include looking for keywords or specific phrases in the user inquiry to help the chatbot match the question to the best answer in its library of stored responses.

For example, a user could ask, “How do I reset my password?” A rule-based chatbot would recognize the keywords “reset” and “password,” then follow the pre-programmed rule to respond with a link to the password reset Help Guide or verbally guide them through the steps of the reset process.

Because they’re only able to follow preset rules, rule-based chatbots are more limited than AI-powered chatbots that use machine learning and NLP to understand what a customer is asking and generate a personalized response. AI-powered chatbots are ideal for customer service because of their advanced comprehension and analysis capabilities that enable them to understand questions on a deeper level. This means they can handle more complex questions than a rule-based chatbot, freeing up even more time for human workers so they aren’t bogged down by simple questions.

At its core, a chatbot’s purpose is to boost engagement. Chatbots are most commonly employed in Customer Service where they can answer questions, share company information like contact info or operational hours, and help schedule appointments. They typically are used to accomplish simple tasks whereas a more advanced virtual assistant like Podium’s AI Employee can act autonomously to drive leads.

What is a Virtual Assistant?

A virtual assistant is a more advanced type of conversational AI. Similar to chatbots, it also uses machine learning and NLP, but its programming is more complex to allow it to analyze and detect nuances in the human language. These software-based agents are usually integrated into devices, and they don’t require an interface to function.

A key feature that sets virtual assistants apart from other AI technologies is their ability to perform a very wide variety of tasks completely autonomously. In this way, they resemble—and can even replace—a human assistant, helping users with daily routine tasks such as looking up directions, composing emails, setting alarms, etc.

Intelligent virtual assistants have become commonplace in many households and businesses. For example, Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa are two very popular virtual assistants.

7 Differences Between Chatbots vs. Virtual Assistants

Chatbots and virtual assistants have a lot in common, which sometimes causes the line between them to get a bit murky. Let’s take a closer look at some of the defining traits and essential features of chatbots and virtual assistants to help you separate and distinguish one from the other.

Functionalities

Chatbots work best answering simple questions. When given more complex queries that don’t neatly fall into the pre-programmed guidelines, they are unable to sufficiently answer a user’s question. That’s why you’ll commonly see chatbots used in a website’s live chat option where they can assist with answering simple questions for customers on a large scale. If they come across something more complex, they can route those issues to a human support rep when needed.

Intelligent virtual assistants have a higher functionality overall than chatbots. However, while they can perform more complex tasks, they tend to be more user-oriented and personalized. They’re best at tackling one specific task at a time for a single user, which is why you’ll usually see them embedded in a device like a cell phone or home speaker. Their purpose is more centered around easing administrative burdens within the business rather than providing support to customers.

Technology Used

Both chatbots and virtual assistants use conversational AI, NLP, and machine learning technologies to help them understand human text or speech and respond in human-like ways. An intelligent virtual assistant, however, is also equipped with emotional intelligence programming, which helps them understand human commands better. Because they’re intended to assist with many different tasks, they’ve usually been trained on a larger dataset than a chatbot would be.

These technological differences are really what pushes an intelligent virtual assistant beyond the operational capabilities of a chatbot, enabling it to do more complex and varied tasks at scale. It’s also why a virtual assistant ranks higher on the AI intelligence scale than a chatbot.

Customer Experience

Chatbots are usually externally focused and can significantly boost engagement levels by providing fast responses 24/7 to customers in need. They can analyze a customer’s online behavior, past purchases, and other preferences to deliver a personalized experience that’s tailored specifically to the customer, sharing relevant and timely recommendations.

Intelligent virtual assistants can be used externally and internally in a business. They work more with big data, leveraging machine learning algorithms to compare data from multiple sources and channels. This gives them greater context about a customer’s preferences and behaviors. In turn, this insight helps the virtual assistant determine the intent behind a query so it can better assist at the moment and anticipate future needs.

Channels

Another big difference between a virtual assistant vs. chatbot is the channels they’re deployed on. Chatbots are most often added to existing channels—think websites, virtual chats, support portals, mobile apps, and even social media pages. Without the chatbot, the channel still exists and operates as normal. However, adding the chatbot to the channel increases the channel’s ability to engage users by providing an additional avenue for customer interactions.

An intelligent virtual assistant differs from the chatbot because it’s not channel-specific, but rather integrated into a specific platform or, more commonly, a physical device like a speaker or cell phone. The virtual assistant has to be integrated with something else that allows it to access data from multiple channels at one time.

User Interface

A chatbot’s user interface is much more limited than a virtual assistant’s user interface. Most commonly it’s a chat-based only system so it’s very clear to customers interacting with the chatbot that the software is limited to chat capabilities.

Conversely, virtual assistants are integrations capable of accepting both verbal and written inputs. This means their user interface may have chat functions but they’re not limited to chat. In fact, virtual assistants don’t require an interface to complete their assigned tasks. Some virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri can complete tasks and answer questions by responding solely to voice commands from the user.

Use Cases

At their core, chatbots and virtual assistants have different intended uses. Generally speaking, a chatbot is more commonly used as an externally facing tool that interacts with customers, while an intelligent virtual assistant is primarily used internally to optimize workflows and assist with identifying key insights in large data sets. With intelligent virtual assistants, business leaders can make more data-driven marketing and sales decisions.

A chatbot is better suited for automating repetitive processes like order tracking and answering frequently asked questions from customers. An intelligent virtual assistant, however, has superior algorithmic logic and analytical capabilities, so it would be better used in situations in which you need help analyzing complex data or comparing data and interactions from multiple sources.

Intelligence Levels

Within the AI family of technologies, there are varying levels of intelligence. The more complex problem-solving capabilities an AI has, the more sophisticated or “intelligent” it’s considered to be.

A chatbot is fairly low on the intelligence scale because it can only respond in ways that have been pre-programmed into it. Additionally, the conversation has to follow a workflow and logically progress from one step to the next, otherwise, the chatbot breaks down because it doesn’t know what to return in response to the query.

A virtual assistant on the other hand is considered to be highly intelligent because it’s processing information and formulating a custom response in real-time. It’s not limited to a defined library of answers. Instead, it’s constantly taking in information during the conversation and following up with more relevant information every time it answers.

Leverage the Power of AI With Podium’s AI Employee

Now that you understand the difference between a chatbot and a virtual assistant, you can see just how valuable your own virtual assistant, such as Podium’s AI Employee, can be for your business model. Podium’s AI Employee is more advanced than a chatbot. It’s an AI user of Podium itself, meaning it will help you connect with and convert leads more quickly. It delivers a unique, customized experience to each customer, all without increasing your operational costs or requiring additional human oversight.

A little software can make a big difference. Learn more about Podium’s AI Employee and see what Podium can do for your business.