MultiMed Engineers has experimented the application of chat-bot technology to several business cases, proposed by customers. In particular, it has developed two “proof of concept” MVPs, that explore the following business cases:

• NLP-based “query language” for a CRM database, to enable sales agents to quickly retrieve data about customers “on the spot”, through an intuitive, mobile chat-bot. This work includes the identification of “intents”, to translate relevant query verbs to/from natural language, and the extraction of “entities”, to denote relevant database objects
• Conversational application to support a business-to-business “classifieds” system, to search for and offer opportunities for partnership, collaborations, investments and the like, among Italian SMEs. This work included the design of “stories” to represent patterns of conversation in the chat-bot (see screencast below).

 

Both cases have been developed on the Wit.ai NLP conversational platform, integrated into the Facebook’s Messenger instant messaging app.

The following Python frameworks have been used in development:

• the Python Flask microframework for writing the chatbot’s business logic
• the behave framework for conducting Behavior Driven Development.