Chatbots have the potential to revolutionize user experience (UX) with little or no effort. Users get instant responses, which makes chatting a breeze. But, without any user-friendly tips and tricks, chatbots fail miserably.
Even though they are new to most businesses, chatbots are becoming a necessity in many industries to increase user engagement and drive conversion.
Enterprises can save thousands of dollars by using chatbots instead of hiring virtual assistants or answering customer service requests via email.
In this article, you will learn 5 tips that will help your chatbot succeed and reach its full potential.
A seamless user experience is key to creating an engaging chatbot. Humans and AI bots are very similar. They prefer text-based interactions and are used to getting specific information.
For example, Alexa expects you to ask specific questions and get specific answers. A human-bot interaction is like a human-human interaction.
A smooth and seamless user experience maximizes the bot’s potential, so it’s important to keep these tips in mind when designing your bot. When designing your bot, focus on giving the bot specific instructions.
Use specific phrases and commands to help the bot understand what you want it to do. If you start asking your bot questions like “How do I use the grocery bot?” or “What should I do today?”, it will have a very hard time figuring out what you want.
Consistent bot behaviour is one of the most important things you can do to boost engagement. Bots must understand the same phrases and commands to respond correctly.
Users expect consistency, especially when it comes to conversational cues and phrasing. A bot that regularly misunderstands commands or uses incorrect phrases is annoying and frustrating.
If a bot is inconsistent, it will lose users. Hence, to avoid user frustration, you need to be consistent.
That means your bot must respond correctly if you use the same phrasing each time. It’s important to be consistent with the bot commands, and not with the phrases used by the bot.
When your users ask for explanations, you can use these as golden opportunities to improve your bot. Be sure to add some context to your bot’s responses.
You don’t need to explain everything about your product, but you can explain some of the features. A simple explanation of how a bot works can dramatically improve user satisfaction and engagement.
You can also explain how to use the bot more effectively. For example, if your bot helps with grocery shopping, you can explain how the items can be used together. Adding explanations can also help users understand your bot’s limitations.
Let’s say you have a bot that sends text reminders. You can let your users know that reminders are only sent on certain days of the week.
You may become too sensitive to user feedback if you don’t want to improve. A bot that gets a lot of negative reviews may be overly sensitive to negative reactions.
A bot that’s trying to be perfect will never learn from its mistakes and will keep repeating the same mistakes repeatedly. It’s important to learn from feedback and try to improve your bot.
If your bot receives a negative review or complaint, listen carefully to the feedback. Determine why the user isn’t satisfied and try to address those concerns in future updates.
It’s better to get criticism now and learn from it, than to ignore it.
Chatbots are not meant to be perfect. They are meant to help solve certain problems, so you shouldn’t expect them to be perfect. If you design a bot that doesn’t work well, it’s better to get it working properly.
You may discover that your bot needs to be improved and re-designed in a different way. Bot improvements can come from user feedback, from missed opportunities to explain the bot, from bot design issues, or from bot programming issues.
You can continue to improve your bot to suit the needs of your users. It’s important to listen to your users, so you can learn what they want and need from your bot.
With the right tips and tricks, you can turn your chatbot into a successful business tool. A bot that provides a seamless user experience, is consistent and uses explanations when necessary, will have a much higher success rate.
As with any other type of software, successful bots require proper design, thorough research, testing, and implementation. With these tips in mind, your bot will be ready to rock the house.
Before you launch your bot, make sure it follows the guidelines described in this article. And, most importantly, make sure your users love chatting with it!