Abstract:
The communication of potential students with a university department is performed manually
and it is a very time-consuming procedure. The opportunity to communicate with on a one-toone basis is highly valued. However, with many hundreds of applications each year, one-toone conversations are not feasible in most cases. The communication will require a member
of academic staff to expend several hours to find suitable answers and contact each student. It
would be useful to reduce his costs and time. The project aims to reduce the burden on the head
of information officer or a support manager, and potentially other users, by developing a
convincing chatbot. A suitable algorithm must be devised to search through the set of data and
find a potential answer. The program then replies to the user and provides a relevant weblink
if the user is not satisfied by the answer. Furthermore, a web interface is provided for both users
and an administrator. The achievements of the project can be summarized as follows. To
prepare the background of the project a literature review was undertaken, together with an
investigation of existing tools, and consultation with the head of information officer or
customer support manager. The requirements of the system were established and a range of
algorithms and tools were investigated, including keyword and template matching. An
algorithm that combines keyword matching with string similarity has been developed. A usable
system using the proposed algorithm has been implemented. The system was evaluated by
keeping logs of questions and answers and by feedback received by potential students and
visitor that used it. A pre-trained application can deliver high quality information service to the
user and the database can be designed on basis of frequently asked questions from the students
and visitor. In the current days of technology, A chatbot application can build conversation
with the customer or can make customer relationship by chatting. A customer, students or
visitor can easily get any kind of specific answer of any question by just asking through the
chat, and a computer program (known as chatbot) can deliver the answer or do the job for
hundreds even thousands of visitors at a time.