Conversational tools like chatbots increase user interaction on websites. That’s what makes them an essential tool to keep your site engaging and provide continuous customer service. You can use them for various tasks, including information research, assisting customers with purchases and more. But developing a successful chatbot is only possible when you have a solid strategy.
In this article, we will talk about top 18 chatbot best practices and strategies that can boost and help your business shine. So, without any further delay, let’s jump into the discussion-
Top 18 Chatbot Best Practices and Strategies
To bring a systemic chatbot practice and strategy, we have divided the chatbot utilization process into different stages: planning, designing, testing, and monitoring. Each segment’s strategy is unique, and by implementing these, you can successfully keep your page engaging. So, check the below strategies for chatbots and follow them to build yours-
- Planning Stage Practice & Strategies For Chatbot
Before launching any chatbot in your business, it is important to have proper planning. This planning phase includes identifying your problem, knowing your target audience, what you want, and how to serve the users. Considering all these factors, you must choose the right chatbot for your business. Here are the strategies which you should follow in the planning phase-
- Know Your Problems
Identify what problems you are facing and what you are trying to solve before building your chatbot. You may have several issues with your business; it can be about time management, customer service, team management, etc. Divide the problems into different criteria to find the solution fast. For example- identify the issues with marketing, mark if your customers are getting to know about the latest deals, or if your website is engaging enough. Thus, the first step before you build a chatbot would be to make a list of problems you’re facing.
- Choose Chatbot Launching Platform
The framework of the chatbot differs from the platform you are launching. For example- if you plan to launch your chatbot on Facebook messenger, use a chatbot designed for Facebook marketing. It will connect you to your fans/customers quickly, provide automatic answers to FAQs, and give a personalized touch to your page. Again, a website-based chatbot will guide your customer on the website, offer 24/7 customer service, streamline the purchasing process, and automate the scheduling of sales calls. Besides, it will boost website engagement. Thus, the features and functions of chatbots vary with their platform.
However, if you are willing to use a chatbot across several platforms, a multi-platform chatbot is your ultimate solution. With this, you can access chatbots on multiple platforms without coding. Besides, it allows you to manage all its functions from one place.
- Selecting The Ideal Chatbot Solution
Once you have identified your problems and know where to launch your bot, It’s time to select the chatbot. However, there is a variety of chatbots with unique functions. So, it is essential to know about them before you choose one. Here are different types of chatbots that you can use for your business-
- Menu-Based Chatbot: It is the simplest chatbot. In this system, the user can’t write their question to find a solution. Instead, there are pre-set menus or buttons clicking which users can get information on specific topics. It is the best way to answer basic questions about your page/product. The impact of such a bot is also quick and effective. It guides the user with proper navigation. Besides, setting up these bots is very easy; you don’t require coding for this. Yet, the issue with this chatbot is that it can’t take direct questions from the user ends.
- Keyword Recognition-Based Chatbots: These are more advanced than the menu-based ones as they use Natural Language Processing (NLP). With these bots, you can pre-set specific answers based on the most asked questions. The bot identifies the keywords and answers the question in response to them. So, when a customer or user asks any question, the chatbot instantly identifies the primary keywords and answers the question to the customer/user. Thus, it creates a natural conversation with the user. However, the issue is that if the query from the user end doesn’t match the pre-setted keywords, the bot fails to provide the correct answer. This problem can be minimized using a hybrid model, combining menu-based on keyword-based chatbots to your launching platform.
- Contextual Chatbots: These use Machine Language (ML) & Artificial Intelligence (AI) to remember specific customer orders. Thus it adds a personal touch making the conversation more natural. For instance, if you ordered black coffee earlier, in your next purchase, it would ask you if you want to repeat the same. Thus, it remembers your habits and suggests your product knowing your choice. Contextual chatbot thus helps boost your page engagement. Besides, it answers multiple questions at once, thus saving time and maximizing user experience.
- Voice Chatbots: With voice response, these chatbots add a natural touch to the conversation. One can ask questions to the bot orally, and the bot will respond with its own voice. Voice chatbots use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to figure out the meaning behind the input. It makes the conversation much more accessible, removing typing hassle. You can quickly create your own voice chatbots using voice recognition APIs and text-to-speech (TTS). These tools serve you just like Alexa or Siri. So, with these bots, your customers or users can connect to you anytime and from any place in the most convenient ways possible.
- Social Messaging Chatbots: This chatbot includes platforms integrated with social messaging. Slack, Messenger, Whatsapp, Telegram, etc., fall under these chatbot groups. Chatbots on social media can sell and process orders, monitor order information, and answer frequently asked questions. (FAQs). Thus, these chatbots enable customers to interact immediately with the bot using social media handles, just as they would with friends. Besides, it reduces web business expenses while providing users with instant interaction.
Know all these chatbots in detail, and select the one that suits your purpose/business. However, you can go for free demos and trials to choose your ideal bot.
4. Set Up Key Performance Indicators (KPI) For Chatbots
After choosing the ideal bot for your site, it’s time to set realistic goals for your chatbot. It can be used to enhance lead generation, reduce problem resolution time, and increase customer satisfaction. You can take any measures to assess the effectiveness of your chatbot. It could be the number of accessible sessions, successful conversations, or leads collected- the options are limitless. Here are some suggested goals that you can allot to your chatbot-
- Increasing number of followers
- Boosting website engagement
- Instal answering the FAQs
- Minimizing queue waiting time
- Reducing the number of the spam messages
However, remember that you cannot anticipate your brand-new chatbot to accomplish all your objectives at once. Your new bot may not achieve your original goals but will assist in achieving others. This is why monitoring your chatbot’s performance and assessing its overall impact on your company is critical.
5. Plan Story-telling For Your Chatbot
It can be challenging to create an engaging chatbot story in the first place, and developing one is no easy task either. Therefore, look at a couple of solid examples first if you’ve never composed a script for a chatbot. You can converse with current chatbots to get ideas and learn what interests them. Once you’ve finished your research, outline your chatbot narrative on paper or in a mind-mapping tool. Consider all the actions your user needs to take to accomplish their objectives. While mapping your storyline, always keep in mind that the quicker a client can resolve their problems, the better.
B. Designing Stage Practice & Strategies For Chatbots
Once you have planned the chatbot story, it’s time to design and bring it to life. In designing, your chatbot always remembers your target audience and goes for the UI design accordingly. Chatbot user interface includes the best practices for designing language and graphic components. They aid in streamlining communication between humans and computers.
However, the effectiveness of a chatbot’s UI depends on how well you build it. A chatbot can automate the entire customer experience, but each step has its own script. This means you will need separate chatbot scripts for specific client requirements. For example- the script for answering someone who asks to make appointments won’t be the same as the script for customers wanting to sign up for your newsletter. So, build the UI considering these factors. Here are some strategies to implement in designing the chatbot-
6. Start With Chatbot Greetings
Research says the users who are invited to chat with the bots are six times more likely to become your customer. So, never hesitate to make the first move to start the conversation. Set a warm greeting in your chatbot. This will grab the attention of the customers on your site. However, setting an engaging greeting message is essential to make the user’s first encounter with a chatbot memorable. To contextualize your chatbot experience, you can customize different greetings for various sites and channels.
7. Give The Chatbot A Character
Your chatbot has the potential to be much more than just a supplementary contact method for customers. To take this communication to the next level, give your chatbot a distinctive personality that complements your brand image and website design. By doing this, you can get a clever brand ambassador who can work for you around the clock. Here are some basic guidelines to follow as you create a successful chatbot character-
- Set a figure for your chatbot: Give your chatbot a unique figure that will act as a brand mascot for your business. But remember not to give any human face. The user or the customer must know they are chatting with bots. But if you use human faces, the customer can get irritated finding it a bot. For this reason, the best strategy would be to go to a graphic designer and get your own chatbot icon. In case you don’t have a designer on board or are not willing to invest in it, you can go for free app services.
- Add the word ‘bot’ in naming your chatbot: There is nothing wrong with calling your chatbot. You can name your bot and give a surname to it. But giving a human-like name can create a misconception of taking the bot as a person. This latter can create a bad impression on the customer’s end. That is why you are suggested to use the word ‘bot’ while naming the AI. This will acknowledge your user about conversing with a chatbot.
- Set Chatbot personality considering the target audience: The chatbot’s language, accent, and tone should be selected based on your target audience. Decide where your chatbot will converse formally or informally, whether it is allowed to make jokes or notes, or with what attitude it will serve its customers.
8. Pick A Goal That The Chatbot Can Achieve
Chatbots have many possibilities to enhance the customer experience, from scheduling appointments to providing speedy support. However, to get the most out of your chatbot application, identify the most pressing issue your website visitors face. Your robot will aim to address that particular issue. So, the foremost goal you can go for is-
- Consider automating those queries that are most frequently asked if you observe that your visitors are impatient with lengthy waits and want prompt responses.
- Set ready-made answers to respond to the user’s popular and repetitive questions.
- Provide automated answers and thus reduce wait times. This will improve client satisfaction.
9. Inform The User How The Chatbot Can Help Them
You should always let your customer know about the services, whether you use a chatbot to collect customer emails, provide after-hours assistance, or conduct product surveys. Your chatbot should always tell users how it can assist them right away. However, if your message is too lengthy for a greeting, place it immediately following the welcome message. Make certain that your client understands what they can do with your chatbot.
But asking too many clarifying inquiries can hamper the mood of the customer. And doing this, the chatbot has the potential to put your client to sleep and discourage them from chatting. So avoid length questing; instead, use a small amount of copy and eye-catching visuals to hook the customer and persuade them to remain.
10. Include Button Feature In Your Chatbot
Using buttons is an excellent method to lead users through your chatbot’s narrative. They provide choices and enable users to accomplish their objectives without the hassle of typing. This makes them appropriate for users who communicate with chatbots via mobile devices. When users write their response, they may make errors or use phrases that your chatbot may not understand and thus fail to respond. And this might perplex the program and ruin the user’s experience. But with buttons, you can minimize the possibility of misunderstandings. Besides, they increase conversation dynamics and chatbot involvement. Here are some pointers and tricks to make your buttons a hit-
- Add text to your buttons: adding textual buttons is more effective than the ‘Yes/No’ options. This lets the user know what will appear when you click the button. Thus, it ensures transparency and thus enhances user experience.
- Include emojis to seem more like a human: Adding emojis adds a personal touch to your chatbot interactions. Users get attracted and can get a human conversation vibe with chatbots.
- Simplified navigation: Customers should always be given the option to use the menu button to return to the beginning of the discussion. While ordering or purchasing a service, customers may often change their minds, request additional information, or modify their purchase. And with a menu button option at each stage, users can quickly navigate through the story regardless of how they previously responded.
11. Use Conversion Delays
A user can receive knowledge from a chatbot at the speed of light. However, in the case of conversational interfaces, quicker isn’t always better. When a chatbot delivers numerous messages quickly, one after another, the user must scroll back to read them. That ruins the customer experience. But, you prevent this using conversion delays. This feature allows you to choose the interval between each text. You can set how much gap there should be between chatbot texts by setting conversation delays. And with the correct delays, users can learn at their own speed and have a more natural experience.
12. Target Global Audience
Offering content in local languages is the best method to reach audiences all over the world. And so, the use of localization strategies is a growing trend in order to engage with their consumers. Many multinational corporations are using this strategy to boost their reach. Thus, your market reach will increase if your chatbot can communicate in languages other than the one used as the website’s main language. English (if it’s not your first language), French, Spanish, and German are a few popular languages to think about. However, chatbots today can handle over 35 languages when building custom workflows. So, don’t skip this strategy while designing your chatbot.
13. Message Chunking
Long texts can be a cause of irritation for users. It gives them an extreme artificial interaction. To minimize this and make the conversation more natural, keep message chunking features in mind. It is a process in which large blocks of text are preceded into smaller sections. Thus, the user can interact with the bot without being bored. This further increases page engagement and allows the user to participate actively in the conversation rather than just as a reader.
14. Set An Appropriate Fallback Text
To err is human, and so goes for robots. Sometimes your chatbot may not understand the questions or conversation from the user end. In this case, going for an appropriate fallback text is essential to handle the situation. This message is shown when your chatbot cannot match the user’s queries with any available chatbot responses. It allows the bot to recover the conversation if there is a miscommunication. Here are some ideas for setting a good fallback text-
- Go for a creative response: If your bot fails to understand any questioning, sending a direct text like- ‘I don’t understand’ can hamper the brand image. In this case, go for creative responses. For example, you can set fallback buttons and offer options.
- Avoid repetition: Sending the same text back to back can lead to irritation from the user side. So, if the chatbot can’t catch the conversation, set different responses instead of repeating the same repeatedly. This will give more natural touch to the chatbot.
- Throw a lifeline: the most fantastic approach to face this situation would be throwing options to provide a solution to the user. You can show buttons of options or directly pass the conversation to a human agent. Thus, the miscommunication issues will be quickly solved, and the user will not face further issues.
15. Collect Information Using Chatbot
Forms typically redirect you to another home page where users enter their information. This has two effects: First, individuals may leave the page before filling out the form, increasing the bounce rate. Second, less time is spent on the page with the Call-to-Action (CTA).
To minimize these issues, you can retain visitors on the page and collect their information by triggering a message to share information via the chatbot. For example, if you have a product selling page, and the CTA is to purchase a book, the trigger message would be, “Want to purchase this book?”. And if the answer is yes, you can guide the purchasing procedure by asking for an address or informing them about the prices.
C. Testing Stage Practices & Strategies For Chatbots
There is always the possibility of some errors in your chatbot’s story—no matter how many hours you spend preparing and writing it. Thus, the testing process is an essential step once you have developed your chatbot. It will assist you in determining whether your chatbot functions as intended and whether your story performs as expected.
16. Go For Beta Testing
Once you have planned and developed the chatbot, testing the bot before launching it is crucial. And in this case, beta testing is the most effective option. Ask your friends and family, near and the dearest ones, to operate the chatbot as a user. This will allow you to identify the user’s problems while conversing. You will be astonished to know tons of helpful feedback and facts you haven’t considered while designing the bot. Thus, testing will help you improve the bot’s performance and provide a smooth user experience.
D. Monitoring Stage Practices & Strategies For Chatbots
Building the chatbot and launching it isn’t the end of the game. In fact, the real game begins after you set the chatbot to real-life cases. From time to time, you will find several issues that have to be solved appropriately, thus improving your chatbot performance.
17. Monitoring and Enhancing Chatbot Efficiency
To keep your chatbot updated and improve its performance, you need to monitor its function regularly. Here are the ways in which you can effectively enhance the chatbot performance-
- Identify popular topics: Check the number of inquiries your chatbot has and note the most well-liked interactions. Users might only be interested in one particular subject. Identify that and make a chatbot storyline based on that. Besides, add more information about popular subjects removing elements that aren’t intriguing.
- Respond to changing user requirements: Look through the records of your chatbot to see what kinds of queries and phrasings your users use. You can better define user requirements using actual user language samples. Map out user questions as many as possible to teach your chatbot how to identify them later in the future. And thus, set a natural interaction tone for your bot.
- Learn about your customers: Examine the specific data about your customers. Find out more about their hobbies and demographics. And using these, you can effectively build a strong chatbot persona. For instance, if you discover that your chatbot primarily assists youthful users, go for attractive GIFs or other appealing visuals to grab their attention. Thus, it will ensure that the discussion sticks by using appropriate language and tone for that group.
- Keep updated: It will be preferable to keep your chatbot updated unless you want to keep the same vibe all year. So, regularly revise and edit your scenario, mainly if your chatbot’s narrative includes references to popular culture or addresses current affairs.
18. Use Analytics Smartly
You can come up with creative ways to engage customers using the support of analytics. This will allow you to view the complete client journey and give you an idea about their experience. This will thus improve our knowledge of consumer behavior, with which you can further develop your chatbot. But how can a chatbot assist you in visualizing the client journey?
Analytics help you to know the number of customers and their engagement rates on your page. Thus, you can learn where consumers spend their time and the level of participation by using analytics. So these adaptable instruments currently represent the most successful brand touchpoint!
Thus, following these practices and strategies, you can successfully boost your reach and maximize your ROI.
Why Should You Follow Chatbot Practices & Strategies?
The true purpose of AI chatbots is to expand conversation automation, giving users the impression of functional interactions. And to deliver a seamless client experience, you must utilize conversational bot solutions. But launching any bot will not give you the expected results. For this reason, you need to follow the strategy and practices discussed in the article above section. And following those, you will get the following benefits-
- Easily scalable: Chatbot offers 24/7 services. Doesn’t matter how busy you are; this AI will quickly respond to your customer even during peak business hours. Thus, it is easily scalable, reducing additional costs for human resources.
- Reduce operating expenses: By developing a chatbot strategy, companies can avoid paying for resources that require additional expenses like salaries, training, and other facilities. With bots, you need not have an office and employ staff to provide continuous customer service all day. Chatbot can easily do that at the quickest time possible. Thus, it minimizes the operational expenses of your business.
- Simplify client interaction: Chatbots provide continuous responses to the customers, thus holding the client’s attention to the site. It further recalls the previous interaction of the client and suggests services based on that. That is, chatbots learn the customers’ habits and provide offers accordingly. And this eventually increases the engagement on the page.
- Save you time: Your page/site may have thousands of inquiries daily. And responding to them all on time is not possible at all. In this case, a chatbot helps you to attend to all the customers effectively. Thus, it doesn’t let your customer wait longer to receive the information they seek. This way, the chatbot saves time for both the business and the user/customer.
- Maximizing ROI: Research says that a business using a chatbot for conversation can transfer 37% more visitors to its customers. It lets visitors know about the current offers or deals and encourages them to take the service or purchase the product. Thus it helps boost the business, maximizing return on investment.
The Bottom Line
Having a planned layout not only aids in successful chatbot creation but also enhances consumer metrics. However, a chatbot strategy cannot be implemented without identifying your target customer. So, first, know your client, their requirements, and what services they are expecting from you.
Implementing a chatbot plan is simple, but over time, a strategy that will give your company access to a new channel and opportunities will emerge. It’s crucial to remember that Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology offers amazing insights into the customer experience when creating an effective chatbot plan. So, before landing to launch the chatbot, have a strategic plan and practice them to bring maximum output.