To create a chatbot, you need to follow certain principles in order for it to work properly. Chatbots have several advantages for companies, especially in customer support. They can handle the most repetitive tasks while employees worry about the most complicated tasks. However, it is no use creating a chatbot without knowing how to make it work.
Principles to create a chatbot
1 – Chatbot should tolerate typos and ambiguity whenever possible.
2 – It should allow people to interact in various ways.
3 – Determine the best response time: if chatbot responds too fast, it will seem too artificial; if you delay responding, people get tired and give up on the interaction.
4 – Allow selection and filtering so people can filter options.
5 – Use all data that chatbot can access without direct user input, such as location, time and date.
6 – Chatbot must have memory so it can use information already given by the user in the next part of the conversation.
7 – Determine the possible answers. For example, if your business is a pizza restaurant, we would not recommend using the question “what would you like to eat?” But “which pizza do you prefer?”. Giving pizza options right after the question is also a good idea.
8 – Choose the tone that should be used by chatbot. For example, if you are a financial services chatbot, you should use more serious language; If your business has the opportunity to use more relaxed language, use it.
9 – Give users the opportunity to backtrack on their choices if they have mistaken or changed their minds. You should not create a chatbot so linearly, but create it so that people can change their options and follow different paths from the one they initially took.
10 – Be honest when chatbot doesn’t understand something written by the user. Allow the user to communicate through another means of communication.
Follow these principles to create a chatbot and you will find that the margin of error will be lower.