3 Reasons Your Chatbot is Not Successful

I think we’ve all run into one or two inconvenient chatbots in our lives.

13:29 16 December 2019

You know, when you’re trying to browse around a company’s website, and that little window in the corner pops up. You decide to give a try, only to end up frustrated and perhaps even more confused about whatever questions you had.

What most customers don’t know, and frankly don’t care about, is how challenging it is for businesses to create and maintain a successful chatbot. And these situations don’t happen for a lack of trying—businesses know how important chatbots are. In fact, the 2019 Gartner CIO Survey, revealed that CIOs identify chatbots as the main AI-based application used in their enterprises.

That’s exactly why we are seeing such an increase in software development services and offshore software testing for this technology. But today, the scope and support channels capabilities that customers value go beyond answering simple questions. If you want your conversational AI-powered virtual agent to truly become the powerful support automation tool it is meant to be while also providing an ideal user experience, you better keep reading.

What’s my purpose?

Every chatbot is born asking the same question: “What is my purpose?”, and you are the only one responsible for answering that. So whether your chatbot is run by simple rules or Artificial Intelligence, remember its goal. That is, to interact with customers in a pleasant manner, and save them from wasting time clicking around or worse—actually calling customer service.

Bear in mind that chatbots will always be limited by the technology underneath them. If it relies exclusively on rules, it will only be capable to process a limited number of inquiry types, and its answers will be limited as well. A “smart” chatbot that employs sophisticated AI algorithms, such as Natural Language Processing, will have further-reaching possibilities.

However, both of these methodologies are fully capable of satisfying your customers’ needs. Truth be told, chatbots are not technically difficult to develop—their greatest challenge is to provide an enjoyable user experience. Under these terms, success equals users coming back regularly to bots that are able to perform as expected and provide consistent value.

The recipe for a successful chatbot

1. Keep a constant improvement mindset
   
   

Remember that meeting where you decided it was a good idea to have a chatbot? Well, try to come back to that moment and think about the initial goals you set for it. What was the plan before developing the bot? And most importantly, how did the plan changed when it launched? Were you able to gather enough user feedback and act upon it?

The answers to these questions should start setting you on track. As an automated representative of your brand, your chatbot’s design should help you achieve your business goals, but also be flexible enough to adapt to real-world situations. Whatever features end up in the code need to be properly tested, so you can be sure the bot is decreasing difficulties, rather than increasing them.

You shouldn’t build a chatbot just because. Address whatever actual problems your users are having, prepare the bot to remove friction from that process, find out if it worked as expected, and repeat. That way you will deliver real value to your customers.

2. Commit to a personality
   
   

Just like people, bots have personalities. And naturally, people don’t like to talk with someone who keeps communicating in confusing ways. In other words, an undefined personality can come up as dishonest and, considering it is a bot, just plain annoying.

A chatbot’s personality comes from the combination of its tone, word choice, general behavior, and motivations. Believe me, a clear and straightforward personality can determine whether users interact with the bot again or not. Committing to a personality means building all communications over a crystal-clear defined persona, whose traits should be a result of thorough end-user testing and research.

This persona is the stepping stone for the development of engaging conversation flows that resonate with the user. Remember to take some risks as well—you don’t want to end up with a generic, boring, or undefined personality that has zero benefits on user experience.

3. Balance tension (structured) and release (unstructured)
   
   

If you are among the innovative entrepreneurs that implemented Natural Language Processing (NLP) on their chatbots, you should be aware of both its possibilities and limitations. Sadly, NLP is not yet at the reach of guiding authentic flowing conversations. The way users communicate in the real world is just too complex and unpredictable, and their behavior will most likely continue to surprise us.

However, this doesn’t mean that we should just give NLP up. Instead, it is best to balance unstructured and structured conversation elements, in a way that the bot can control some degree of the unexpected, but let users know when they need to try other paths. Don’t be afraid to sacrifice some of that “cool” conversation capabilities for structured UI elements that will help users finish their queries quicker.

Remember, it is all about UX

Technology is only a tool—what really matters is how you use it to make your user’s lives easier. You certainly don’t need tons of resources and experience to develop a well-functioning chatbot. Just a bit of research can get you a lot further than you may think. But if that’s not your thing, it is not a bad idea to reach out to a software outsourcing company.

The future of chatbots looks brighter every day. Machine learning and natural language technologies are revolutionizing the way humans interact with machines, and there’s no reason your business shouldn’t take advantage of the situation. As long as you keep User Experience at the core of your chatbot project, you should be able to achieve your desired outcomes.