8 Best Practices For Making Your Chatbots User-friendly
There are almost thousands of chat-bots that are being deployed over the years, helping humans to get their work done faster. Bots are revolutionizing our way of living.
Before planning to build a chat-bot, it is very essential to understand why this chat-bot revolution exist. As the world is getting more tech-savvy, bots are serving the business purpose.
This is the reason why enhancing the user experience of chat-bots has become a necessity now. Not only the goliath businesses are coming up with the chat-bot idea, but the small and medium businesses too, are making the best use of the bots.
In a nutshell, people all across the globe have started to realize the gradual technical paradigm shift initiated by chat-bots in a decade.
Why Chat-bots?
Communication has now become an integral part of our daily lives and currently, we all are relying on our devices to remain connected with our peers. Same happens in case of business too. We are connected to our customers through our messaging platforms that are managed by the chat-bots.
This is the best way to keep a constant touch with our customers. In fact, bot texting is more cost-effective than any other communication platform. These platforms are shaping the relationship between the service provider and the customers.
Although the bots are quite familiar to the tech-savvy people, they are still new to the majority. So, it is highly important that your bots cater to all the queries of the customers and solve their issues.
Related Read- How To Win Millennial Customers With Your On Demand App?
So, Here’s What You Need To Do
1. Never Lie To Your Users
It is an obvious fact that you want to make your bots as human as possible. But that does not mean that your bots would try to convince your users. If the users get suspicious about the bot behavior then there are higher chances of them leaving. And once they leave, it will be extremely difficult for you to get them back.
People are more comfortable if they are aware of the fact that they are talking to a machine with its own limitations.
So, never lie and make false promises through your bots. Keep it simple.
2. Go For On-board Conversation
Being a bot designer, it is your duty to let your users know how easy a conversational interface could be. You can ensure this by making all the commands and buttons actionable.
This makes the bot conversation more humane and also interesting for the person who is chatting with the bot. It is actually easier for the user to find the solution that they were looking for.
3. Design Better Human Emotion
Of course, conversation with a bot not only sounds boring but is actually boring.
So, try to incorporate some personality into your bot which the users are looking for. The best thing to do here is to incorporate a user-friendly language that is easily understandable.
Related Read- A Guide To Designing A Great UX For Your Chatbot
4. Make Your Conversations Limitless
Your users are cleverer than you think. They might play games with your bot. For instance, they may ask weird or “out of the world” questions for testing how the bots react to those.
So don’t be afraid or confused. You have to show the users that your bot is listening to them.
As I said earlier, making use of the buttons seems to make the conversation easier. Better use clickable buttons and keep the conversation going on until the user leaves the chat.
5. Try Making Your Users Comfortable
Your bot not only should form a human interaction, but should also empathize with the users. It should show that it is understanding the problem of the users and empathizing with them.
Make sure that you are not leaving empty spaces in the chat box without any reason.
Instead, offer the users with several options on how they can handle the problem.
6. The Interactions Must Be Meaningful
It is very much essential to realize that not all users want to purchase your products or services. Your bot should not force them to make any kind of purchases.
Also, it is essential to see if the bot’s interaction with the user is a meaningful one. Your bots cannot give irrelevant answers to the questions that are being asked.
That is the reason why you should label all your content blocks properly so that the interpretation becomes easier.
7. Take Your Users’ Feedback
You need to ask for your users’ help.
You might be wondering now “why” and “how” should I take users’ help?
Well, by asking for help I mean here is to ask for feedback.
Feedbacks are one of the most crucial aspects of improving your products and services. It is only through users’ feedback that you can provide them with better and enhanced services.
Allow your users to provide you with proper feedback directly through your bot during the interaction process.
Why do you need to do this?
Because your bot is, after all, a machine which cannot fulfill every requirement of your users.
By asking for users’ feedback, you are indirectly helping them in getting the desired solution.
It’s better if you ask them something like- “Are you satisfied with the responses?”
8. It’s Time To Target Your Users’ Sentiments
After you have finally managed to understand your user’s query, now it’s high time to utilize their sentiments. For instance, if they are positively influenced by your products or services, then you can casually ask them to do some promotion for you. (Remember, no pestering or forcing).
If they are willing then they will definitely do something which is favorable for you.
However, if the user is negatively influenced, then it’s totally up to you how you can manage to handle your reputation. This would be a tough job for you to get those users back.
Remember, bots do not offer a solution to every problem. There are certain pre-set limitations of how much the bots can help us.
Optimize your bots
Yes. Optimizing the bots is key to enhance your user experience. Once you have collected some user data, study it for identifying areas where bot optimization is required.
You may need to edit the way your bot handles the user paths, or clarify its wording or add artificial intelligence based on the user inputs.
There is no hard and fast rule of following the above eight best practices, but if you follow at least a few of them- your job is done.
Author Bio- Swarnendu De is the Co-founder of Innofied Solution, an Award Winning Apps, and Game Development company. He manages the Technical and Business Development Operations at Innofied. With over 10 years of industry experience, Swarnendu has also authored Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices, published by Packt Publishing, UK.
He is also the Co-founder & CTO of Crossindia Adventure Tourism and leads their IT and Digital Marketing Operations. He regularly writes at his personal blog, company blog, LinkedIn and other popular platforms.
Follow him on Twitter at @swarnendude.
