The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Chatbots
By: Ron Fisher
Tags: Bots, Chatbots, Messaging, Conversational UI, Conversational Commerce

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Chatbots

At Bowtie we work hand in hand with small businesses to help them unlock the power of the all-mighty chatbot.

Meet Bo, our friendly mascot.

Having gotten our hands dirty with multiple businesses and having deployed a dozen bots across SMS, Facebook Messenger and Slack, a few salient points have emerged as critical learnings for bot adoption. For those who are less connected to the chatbot trend, chatbots are a new (?) way for customers to interact with their favorite businesses using an automated chat assistant that can exist on multiple messaging platforms. Without further ado our findings are below:

1. There is no one size fits all.

While the core functionality of a bot can be used across multiple businesses, don’t think that you can take the chat dialogue you have written for one business and drop it off for another. SMB’s, like their larger enterprise counterparts, take pride in the voice they have developed for their brand and want their new chatbot to reflect that voice. Make it easy for the business to adjust the bots accordingly and let them cherry pick what works for them.

Cookie cutter bots won’t cut it across businesses… even an army of them.

2. A lifeless bot is a useless bot...

If your chatbot sounds too robotic — users will not see it as engaging and will quickly abandon it. Now, this does not mean you should trick your users into thinking your bot is human, rather it means that your bot should arouse an emotional response from the user at the outset of the conversation. Whether that’s through humor, excitement or a response that is more profound, that is up to you. However, leaving out such a component could spell the end of the conversation between your bot and a human.

With punchy dialogue, ordering coffee ain’t no chore.

3. But nobody likes a chatty kathybot.

On the flip side, too much personality in a bot can get in the way. Imagine if you were trying to buy a coffee at a coffee shop in Williamsburg and your barista couldn’t stop chatting about the virtues of artisanal beans or upselling you on a mocafrappamachiatto — cute for a second and then highly annoying thereafter.

It’s critical that chatbot developers balance out the pleasure of interacting with the bot and the utility the bot is offering to the user. This tightrope act is the key to users coming back to your bot over and over again, and spreading your bot to their own networks as well.

4. Sorry, I didn’t quite get that.

No matter how clear your flow is and how easy you think your bot is to use, humans will run into issues with your bot. Whether that’s through the user deliberately trying to “break” your bot or simply through trying to do things in a way you did not expect, your bot needs to be ready to respond to the user with something other than a generic sorry message.

How your user will feel after two “Sorry I didn’t quite get that’s”

If your bot continues to repeat “sorry i didn’t quite get that” providing no information on an alternate course of action then you will lose that user. Try playing with multiple types of error messages to see what gets the best response from your users by focusing on a more humorous or satirical approach to the problem.

Most importantly, have different error messages for specific errors that occur in a conversation.

If an error is occurring when the user is being asked his address you could say “Sorry, I’m still new to human geography try formatting your address 231 Cedar St, NY, NY 11211” or if a user encounters an error while asking for in item the bot could say “Hey! Not sure we have that on the menu. You can see everything we offer here: LINK.” This way you don’t lose users due to interaction frustration.

5. Put up or shut up.

Part of the intrinsic value of the bot is the frictionless way in which your users are able to dive into an experience with your chatbot. With zero downloading required, a user can message your bot and immediately draw value from it. While points 2 and 3 stressed the value of a personality (but not too much!), here we emphasize the need to immediately relay the value of your bot to your users.

Brittany does a great job explaining the point of talking with her in a friendly way.

Don’t assume that the user will understand why they are chatting with your bot or why it’s better than a website or an app. It is your bot’s job to explain or show this effectively and efficiently to your user.

6. The one use case to rule them all.

At Bowtie, we’ve developed a bot for beauty salons that can do a lot for the user. Whether that is booking an appointment, giving feedback to the stylist or buying products from the salon, our chatbot makes engaging with the salon a seamless experience. However, trying to educate the user on everything our bot can do at once is not only impossible — it could potentially be fatal.

Even if your bot can do 4 tasks very well — the user doesn’t care.

Start with one utility and slowly layer on additional features for the user to learn.

Your bot’s skills are mighty, but your users attention span is not.

7. A picture is worth a thousand characters.

While the word chatbot implies that a bot is confined to text based interactions with a user, this new wave of bots is about so much more than simple text interactions. In fact, solely having text based messages for your users is one sure fire way to turn them off.

Picking a stylist is a blast when you can actually see him or her!

When appropriate, incorporating images, GIF’s and the right emoji will transform your bot into a delightful experience. Especially with platforms like Facebook Messenger and Kik, pills, images and carousels can all be employed effectively to deepen engagement with your users.

Remember: if users see a wall of text they will be out faster than your friends will be at the end of an open bar.

In short- Keep it short, keep it fun and keep it clear.

8. BONUS TIP: Just because you can botify it… doesn’t mean you should.

Surprise! It’s not over yet!

While a conversational experience can be an efficient and pleasurable way to pick a lunch spot amongst friends, get inspirational affirmations or order a coffee, not every part of your experience needs to be in the thread of your conversation.

For instance, if a user wants to know what a restaurant serves, a wall of text detailing the menu will drive your user far far away. In these instances push them to a browser to view a menu and save them the trouble of combing through a text heavy screen. While this simple, lightweight and powerful technology has the potential to transform engagement, it’s important to focus on converting the right part of your customer’s interaction with your business.

***

Bowtie is a plug and play chatbot solution for any business, on any platform.

To see how we’ve applied these learnings check our salon booking bot on Facebook here and our food & drink order ahead bots here.

Ron Fisher — CEO & Co-Founder, Bowtie

Want to learn more? Email ron@bowtie.ai