It would be easy to get lost in the details of how to implement the chatbot, and temporarily
forget the bigger picture.
In this quick video, I wanted to briefly touch on a few subjects that are worth considering
when designing a chatbot.
The first question we should ask is in regards the positioning of our chatbot.
Let’s start with its role.
Is it going to act as an information kiosk, a customer support agent, a marketer, or a
sale representative?
Our flower shop bot example will not really look into customer orders or provide post-sale
support.
It will however provide information and in the process, also help us sell some flowers.
Keep the role in mind when designing chatbots for your own business.
Next, let’s consider its purpose.
In our case, we want to help our customers in making the right choices when buying flowers,
and reassure them that the flowers will be delivered on time.
In the process, perhaps selling more flowers and cutting down on a few calls to our hypothetical
shop.
Another element worth considering is proactivity.
How proactive or reactive do we want our chatbot to be?
A more proactive chatbot will tend to solicit information from the user, engaging and guiding
them rather than passively waiting for a question to come along.
Depending on the type of chatbot you build, one approach might be more favorable than
the other.
In many cases, a combination of the two may be the best of both worlds.
Asking questions and guiding, when it’s relevant, and sitting back waiting for the
user when it's more appropriate.
Tone and personality are also important.
Do we want our chatbot to sound more formal or more friendly?
Just adjusting a few words in a sentence can lead to our chatbot sounding a lot nicer/inviting
or, conversely, to come across as completely distant.
This matters because chatbots with a friendly tone and a bit of personality to them tend
to be perceived more favorably.
We start thinking that the chatbot might be more useful, even intelligent, than it actually
is.
There are no universally right or wrong answers here, but thinking about what we want our
chatbot to accomplish and how we want it to come across will go a long way as we approach
building the chatbot.
It will enable us to choose the right dialog flow, words, and tone, as well as deciding
what to leave in and what to exclude from the scope of our chatbot.
In a previous video I mentioned that our scope is common questions and not all possible questions.
When you define the positioning, so the role, purpose, and proactivity, for a chatbot, you’ll
quickly find out that the scope is even narrower than that.
Which is a good thing.
You don’t want a chatbot that is a jack-of-all-trades.
It’s better to have the chatbot handle fewer types of questions but do a great job with
those.
What we implement should reflect the positioning, tone, and personality we set out to provide
to our users.
In terms of good chatbot design, there are three fundamental rules that you should follow.
First rule: Avoid using yes or no in your replies.
If your chatbot fails to interpret the question correctly, a yes or no answer can be misleading
or provide the wrong information.
For example, you might be tempted to set the response for “Is delivery free?” to “Yes,
it is”.
But what happens when the user asks the bot, “Is delivery free or do I have to pay?”
Watson will pick up the right intent, but the “Yes, it is” answer won’t work here.
There are situations, perhaps because of negatives introduced in the input, where the chatbot
will respond yes, when a human would correctly respond no.
It’s far better to provide an answer that covers the topic of delivery price, without
including an absolute yes or no element within it.
So “Deliveries are free.” is definitely a much better option than “Yes, it is”.
This brings us to our second rule.
When possible, incorporate part of the user’s question in your response.
For example, say “I understand that you’re looking for help with an order.
Unfortunately, I’m unable to look into orders that have already been placed.”
And then perhaps we would have the chatbot refer the customer to our phone number or
email address, in order to help them perhaps speak with a live person about their concern.
This will further cement, in our user’s mind, the relative intelligence of our chatbot,
even though it technically failed to directly provide what the customer was hoping to find
out.
The third rule is in regards to the length of the chatbot answers.
Succinct and accurate answers are best.
We want to be informative, but not reply with a wall of text.
When a wall of text is an absolute must, to convey the information, then deflecting by
sending the user to an informative page is a better approach.
In the next video, we’ll finally get to build our flower shop chatbot from scratch.