It’s not uncommon to encounter an AI bot that feels stiff and rigid. You know, the ones where you’re almost afraid of writing your questions in a sentence, because you think it won’t understand, so instead you write search words. Bots are usually like this due to the way it has been trained.
A bot does not appear out of thin air. It is something you create, train and shape to fit to your company’s needs. It should be a reflection of what your company stands for and fit in amongst your human employees.
So what are things you should not miss if you want to create a bot that your customers will love?
Bot is not synonym for boring and stiff. You want your real personnel to be warm, friendly and kind, right? So let’s make sure you build your bot to be that way too.
Make sure the bot speaks your brand language. Maybe it’s fitting to use emojis, maybe it’s not. If you have a younger audience, then a “gotcha!” might be an appropriate response to entries from visitors. Are your customers more of a formal kind, than a polite “thank you for your response” might be more accurate.
Have a good think-through on who your customers are and how you usually communicate with them via different channels. Then create the bot to reflect this. That way, your bot will feel like a part of your brand and your staff.
Stop guessing what the customers want. Guessing and assumptions are always a gamble. You can spend hours and hours on entering questions and answers that you think is super important to your customers, all in vain.
Instead, base the information you enter into your bot on real data. By having a bot system that collects questions that the bot was unable to answer, you will get a clear view of what is missing. This helps you save valuable time and to be more accurate at the same time.
No dead ends! Build conversation flows so that it is always easy to select options, rephrase or add a new question. And when the bot hasn’t got the answer or can help your customer any further, make sure you have a smooth way for the bot to pass the conversation forward to a live agent.
Bots fail when they don’t understand and there are many ways to phrase the same question. Therefor alternative phrasing is crucial to make the bot feel more human and to make it more effective. Some bot services have alternative phrasing as a part of the built in service, so that it will automatically create several different ways of phrasing a question. That way, you as a bot trainer will only need to enter a particular question once.
When it comes to communication and customer care, no service is an island. In most cases you will need several ways to communicate with your customers, to complement your AI bot. Real agents are certainly something that is a must, but also services such as a great telephony system, contact center and an amazing self-service are parts of a holistic way of taking care of your customers.
These are some things that you definitely should pay attention to when creating and training your company bot. If you would like to learn more about our own bot service, you can read more here.