9 Best Tips for the Optimal Chatbot Design

We are living in an artificially intelligent world where chatbots have taken over roles that were for centuries performed by humans. These AI-powered technologies allow us to provide around the clock advanced customer care services. Chatbots initiate conversation, provide solutions, connect customers to relevant personnel, answer basic and even complex enquiries, and sometimes even close deals.

You need a chatbot if you are looking for an effective, cheap way of automating some of your daily routine tasks. This leaves you to concentrate on other critical aspects of your business. Besides, you can integrate chatbots into social media platforms for an even more sophisticated marketing strategy.

In order for this technology to be utilized to its full potential, the chatbot design must be created in a way that endears them to users. Here are the nine best tips on how to create the optimal chatbot design:

1. Use a Chatbot Creation Platform

There are several platforms in the market for chatbot design. These are easy to use and can help you create a nifty chatbot within a short time. Fortunately, you won’t need skills in programming to use these intuitive platforms.

It’s important to distinguish between these chatbot building platforms. Some are catered for businesses and entrepreneurs, while others are geared more towards individual use.

2. Go for a Quality Chatbot Design

One of the key aspects in the chatbot design is simplicity. Too many features on a chatbot and you’re setting yourself up for failure. What’s the point in creating a chatbot that masters tasks you don’t actually need? Create a chatbot that can master one task exhaustively instead of a jack-of-all-trades that can’t master a single task. When designing a chatbot quality trumps quantity.

3. Give it a Unique Name

The chatbot marketplace is so crowded your new chatbot is likely to get lost in it. To avoid this potential sojourn into irrelevance, come up with a unique name that speaks directly and passionately to your market segment. Chances are, if the name is not unique, it will be buried under the rubble of many others that fell to the same fate.

4. Initiate Conversation with Customers

To increase conversions, your chatbot design should be able to initiate a conversation with your clients. The key is to leave them with a positive, if possible, immersive experience so they can remember you for a long time. It should have an engaging greetings message and clearly display the “Get Started” link.

From the get-go, a professionally designed chatbot should have a welcome message that leaves your customers with no doubt as to what to do next. You can use chatbot buttons on your website or Facebook page.

5. Let the Conversation Flow Naturally

One of the reasons chatbots have gained popularity is the fact that they imitate human behaviour. Some chatbot designs are so good you won’t tell the difference between them and a real human. The secret is in the fact that they are designed to engage in natural conversation (as natural as a bot can get).

Conversational chatbots prompt the customers to be open and forthcoming with information, allowing you to understand their needs better. This leaves you with valuable intel.

6. Keep it Small and Simple

Besides making sure your chatbot design features limited functionalities, the communications interface should be as understandable and concise as possible. Avoid technical jargon that makes conversations with customers difficult. A bot represents your products and your brand. If it uses a difficult-to-understand language, it will fail in this noble task.

Make sure your chatbot is what it says it is and does what it says it and does. To achieve this, start small and build progressively. As your customers engage with it, tweak it along the way in response to how they interact with it. Make sure every version comes closer to meeting your customers’ needs better than previous versions.

7. Optimize and Evaluate Regularly

Your last chatbot design should not be the final design. Newer versions extend the functionality of your chatbot. Since it is a compelling digital marketing tool, a chatbot should be regularly optimized and evaluated to make newer versions more responsive to the needs of customers. This is critical since the chatbot technology is still in its infancy. More features are being introduced as A.I. technology evolves.

However, avoid upgrading a chatbot just for the sake of it. After evaluating a previous version, find out what needs to be optimized, and for what. The key is to optimize a chatbot based on your goals. You do this by working on features that will nudge your customers towards the desired outcome.

8. Roll out One feature at a Time

Every feature of a chatbot must be perfected before introducing it to the world. Besides, you should role out one feature at a time to avoid overwhelming your clients. Let the audience engage with one feature at the point they need it.

9. Decide which Data you want to Harvest

A key benefit of a chatbot is its enormous data gathering ability. From the get-go, determine what data you want your chatbot to gather and then design it accordingly. Every feature of your chatbot should be designed with your data gathering goal in mind, which means you should ask the right questions to get the right answers.

For instance, if knowing the location of your users is critical, get them to supply their zip code. Every bit of data you gather should help you promote relevant products and services in the next phase of engagement with your audience.