Chatbot, Anyone? Four User Experience Tips for Designing Your Best One

Customer service is more critical today than it has ever been.

In the digital age, “experience” is the thing that your clients prize more than anything else. Customers frequently say that they would happily pay more for a better experience.

Already, countless companies have begun to work on this demand for better interactions by designing more intuitive websites for customers and training agents for better face-to-face interactions.

However, there’s another element to consider in the changing service landscape too – the chatbot.

Now that customers expect more instant interactions with their favorite brands, chat is becoming an increasingly valuable part of communication. However, it takes a lot of time and personnel to keep on top of chat with humans alone.

Chatbots introduce a way to provide your customers with 24/7 support – even when your team isn’t available.

With 47% of consumers saying they’re happy to purchase through chatbots, the potential of these solutions is growing. The question is – how do you make sure that you’re delivering the quality experiences that your consumers need?

What is a Chatbot and Why Do You Need One?

First, it’s worth understanding what a chatbot is and what it means to your company.

Chatbots are an automated method of communicating with your target audience.

These solutions can be automated algorithms that respond to questions using a pre-set selection of answers. For instance, your chatbot could search through a FAQ to deliver responses to customer queries based on trigger words in their conversation.

On the other hand, you can also implement more intelligent chatbots.

AI-infused solutions learn from discussions with customers and use context in conversations like people do, providing more personalized customer service.

Although the demand for bots is growing, Forrester research reveals that many business owners using chatbots fail to use them correctly. Since the main problem with mastering chatbots is a lack of strategy for their design, here are four tips on how to create a better bot.

1) Keep Things Simple and Authentic

First, the last thing you want to do is try and trick your audience into thinking that they’re interacting with a human. While people want conversational interactions with chatbots, they also don’t want to be lied to.

With that in mind, make sure that you start each conversation by letting people know that they’re talking to a bot.

Once you’ve got that out of the way, concentrate on infusing your bot with language that makes them feel more natural and engaging.

Just because your customer knows they’re talking to a bot doesn’t mean that they have to be continuously reminded of it with complex language and awkward jargon.

• Use language like “oh” and “y’know” and “gotta” to make the conversation more informal if it fits your brand.
• Think about how you can break up chunks of information to make the experience feel more natural for your customer.
• Remember to stick to simple vocabulary. Use language that anyone can understand, combined with quick, brief sentences.

If talking to a bot gets too complicated, your user will simply leave.

2) Design Your Bot by Reflecting on Your Customer

Every customer is different. We all have our own unique ways of talking to people.

With your user personas and enough information about your target audience, you know what kind of audience you’re targeting with your bot. This will allow you to design a system that talks to your customers in their own language.

• Think about whether your customers are likely to use emojis and slang in their conversations. If so, then your bot might be more endearing if it uses that kind of content too.
• Think about what type of personality you want your bot to have. It should feel as though your customers are almost talking to a human – even if they aren’t.
• Think about whether your bots should be enthusiastic, considerate, or professional. What matches your brand style, and what’s most appropriate for the kind of queries you get from your audience?

With AI, your bot will be able to learn from your audience and respond to their style in a similar manner. That’s why AI-infused interfaces are becoming more popular today, as customers demand more immersive and natural experiences with bots.

3) Gather and Remember Context

If you are implementing intelligence into your bots, then one of the most important things you can do with that “brainpower” is making sure that your bots can remember crucial parts of conversations.

People hate repeating themselves, and in today’s world of cloud computing and data storage, they really shouldn’t have to.

AI chatbots can collect information, store it in the cloud, and then tap into that information in the future to deliver more personalized experiences.

For instance, if a chatbot has a conversation with a user about a problem with them logging into their account then the bot also gets a message again the next day, they should remember all of the previous information the customer gave the day before.

That bot should also be able to convey valuable information to any agents that take over from the bot to help address the issue. That way, people spend less time repeating themselves, and companies can deliver a better end-to-end experience.

4) Learn and Repair

Finally, although today’s chatbots are growing increasingly immersive and intuitive, it’s worth remembering that there’s always room for additional development.

As you continue to learn from the experiences that your customers have with your bots, you should be implementing changes and repairs that constantly improve the experience for your users.

In part, learning how to develop your bot will be something that you do with the assistance of your customers, who can provide you with both quantitative and qualitative feedback about their experiences.

However, if you have AI infused into your system, then your bots will be able to learn for themselves too, adapting to the information that they’re exposed to over time.

The more you and your bots learn about effective customer experiences, the easier it will be to design a strategy that resonates with your target audience.

Ready to Embrace the Bots?

The digital world is becoming more incredible by the day.

We now have cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to transform the way that we live and work on a massive scale. However, for companies to take advantage of these disruptive new tools, they need the right plan of action.

Using the tips above, you’ll be able to make sure that you approach your chatbot strategy from the right angle – focusing on putting your users’ needs first.

Good luck experimenting with your bots!