Top tips to create engaging and useful chatbot

We all know chatbots are technology’s answer to reduce human intervention and workload. The possibilities of using a chatbot in your business are numerous, and so are the benefits. These bots are created to add value to the business.

The one common complaint against the chatbots is the lack of human touch. Conversation with bots sometimes feels useless and repetitive. If the user criticises the performance of your bots, then it is hard to bounce back. It creates a negative impact on business.

Don’t worry; we have brought some useful tips which you can incorporate in your chatbot while developing to achieve the best results. These tips help you ensure that your bot has all the necessary ingredients to build and engage in conversation with the user.

But before learning tips, let’s first understand a few terms and facts.

Chatbot uniqueness (what makes it unique?)

A chatbot is a program that replicates human conversation. Most chatbots use the decision tree to create a conversation. They either catch keywords or allow the end-user to select from options to direct the conversation. Let’s dig in to clarify what a chatbot is and what it isn’t.

• Chatbots are a type of conversational design.

Chatbots use a decision tree to replicate human conversation. They recognise keywords and respond accordingly. What is conversational design? It is conversation-like content that comes from headers and text on the web page, voice UI such as Alexa or Google Home. It is specifically a computerised system.

When the design and engineering team determine the best way to communicate with their audience, they use shorthand. Here the designer may refer to the audience via text on a page or imply chatbot to appear to inform the audience. In the early stage of conception, it doesn’t matter what the conversational design team has in mind because, in the later stage, the content team will be responsible for more work if the end result is a chatbot. Thus it is important to clarify what form of conversational design the team has in their mind.

The example of the non-chatbot conversational design is a conversational UI. Another example is voice UI. Voice UI can speak to the audience. Well, these may sound the same from conception purpose, but again they have different requirements. Voice UI has no ability to trigger or prompt the end-user into action with no visual design.

• Chatbots can answer many questions.

The above lines may sound that chatbots are the perfect answer – they are conversational, incorporate a visual UI, and launch notifications. Well, chatbots are popular because of these benefits. Sometimes the assumptions are that human conversation is the best way to connect with end-users. Sometimes it is true, but not always.

In Michael J Mett’s Button talk, “Sorry, I can’t help with that,” he said a company must know what is their goal and figure out if the chatbot will help fulfil the goal. A chatbot is a solution, and the best approach is to employ a chatbot when it is the solution to the problem.

Customer service and sales are good goals for chatbots to fulfil. In sales, the common problem is “how our customer service team will respond to questions quickly” or “how our sales team helps customers learn about the product or service without using significant time”. In the above cases, chatbots prove helpful as, without the wait or hold, it will help people get the answer they want. However, on a few questions like “how our hospital more accurately diagnoses health issues” or in a bank “how to find lost paycheck”, a chatbot may not be the right fit to answer these questions.

A chatbot is not a good option to handle nuances or complicated situations because of human error. Too many variables like “quick”, “accurate”, and “appropriate” are yet to achieve in chatbots.

• The algorithm controls a chatbot, but it is not an algorithm.

Never forget a chatbot is only as good as its content. A chatbot is controlled by algorithms and can assist by machine learning. But before ML starts working, the chatbots need to set rules and need content to speak. Now here comes the role of content designer, UX writer, or content strategist to define.

Voice assistants and chatbots are frequently identified as sexiest and racially biased. As said by AI ethicist Josie Young in herTED TALK“, they are not biased because the design and engineering team make them so. They are biased because they reflect the biases in the teams’ viewpoint that develop it”. It is equally important for those building chatbots to be anti-racist or anti-sexist. We need to connect machine learning very smartly until we have content designed, and we want the AI to learn from it. Chatbots answer questions- but what questions and how? This guide to the next steps: what are the next appropriate steps, and how does the chatbot respond when something goes wrong? What makes a true impact is how chatbot accomplishes things.

Tips to ensure your bots have got all necessary details to build an engaging conversation with the user;

• Establish goals

Goals are very important as it is the guiding factor for both brand and the users. The purpose of chatbots can be to provide online support, book orders for the customers, and help solve any customer grievances. The company can work towards customising the communication pattern of the bot once the goal is set.

• Make chatbot proactive and user friendly.

The chatbots are easy to communicate with. Brands should avoid complicated technical jargons and keep the language simple. The customers are from all sec, so keeping complex words can confuse them. The user expects only responsiveness and expects answers to his/her questions.

Bots need to keep the conversation flowing and engaging. Bots can also add value to the conversation by sharing some discount/offers/other information that can prove useful. The value addition keeps the chatbots apart from others.

• Incorporate call to action button

Sometimes users might be looking for simple and quick answers and don’t want to engage in long and interesting conversation. In this case keeping the CTA button is very helpful for both the parties. Incorporating CTA buttons at the right place helps provide quick solutions to the customers. Some examples of CTA buttons are the feedback button, contact us button, link to certain web pages. These buttons track the effectiveness of the bot.

Best practices for building engaging chatbots

If your team is building a chatbot, it’s obvious your team has done a lot of upfront work.

• If you have decided the chatbot is the right solution
• If you have identified technological constraints
• If you are looking for what capabilities will be available in the systems, including auto-correct and built-in-thesaurus of synonyms.

As stated above, your chatbot is not just an algorithm; instead, you have to design some content. Build the content for your chatbot as it is the right time. Let’s check five best practices to make your chatbot humanesque;

• Define actions
• Separate response type
• Embrace robot-self
• Creates numerous scenario
• Design for errors

Wrapping up:

Developing and maintaining a bot is a journey, and this can prove a boon

if triggered at the right time, right place. With the tips mentioned above, you can ensure your bot has got all the details to build an engaging and effective conversation with users, which proves fruitful for both the brand and users. Your chatbot is a program and not a human so adding it to your application development or website can bring wonders.But still, a program can bring ease and happiness to your audience if it functions correctly. Follow the best practices and let us know your audience responds to your bots.