Why Do Chatbots Disappoint? — Tips to Make Them Better
The use of chatbots is now more and more widespread. According to Gartner, nearly 40% of mobile interactions in 2020 were through automated conversations. Although chatbots are well-received by customers, they do disappoint a number of times. If a customer has a negative interaction with the chatbot, almost 73% won’t use that chatbot again.
If you already have a chatbot, but it doesn’t work as much as you hope or plan to build one, keep an eye on the following mistakes. Also, in this blog, we will tell you how to resolve them.
- Not Anticipating Weird Customer Queries & Multiple Questions
Users are unpredictable. They can ask the same question in several ways and can ask several questions in just one message.
It can be difficult for the chatbot to understand, and you should be prepared for this to offer a good customer experience. You can do this via NPL (Natural Language Processing); it is a subfield of Artificial Intelligence. By this, your bot will be able to understand what your user is asking and can redirect them to the appropriate answer.
You can also make your chatbot rephrase user questions and ask them to confirm. By this, you can ensure that your customer queries are answered correctly and make your customers satisfied and cared for.
- Not Having a Message When the Chatbot Doesn’t Understand Something
As we said earlier, users are unpredictable; they can ask questions that bots don’t understand. A chatbot has AI, but it’s not an all-knowing genie, so don’t overestimate its capabilities. Users know they are interacting with a robot and don’t expect to get an answer to all of their questions.
When the chatbot is stuck, you can ask the user to reformulate their query, but the bot might not be able to answer, no matter what. When it’s the case, you can offer an alternative. You can make your chatbot pass that conversation to a human support agent. A human can take over in this case and answer your customer directly using the same channel.
- Not Integrating Chatbot into Your Business’s Overall Marketing Strategy
Whether you have an eCommerce store or a SaaS company, your chatbot will not have the same purpose. For an eCommerce store, your bot can help you in upselling your products. But in the case of SaaS companies, it is used as a lead acquisition tool asking prospects’ contact information. In simple words, you can say that a chatbot serves different functions depending on the platform you deploy it to.
While interacting with your business, the users can be on different steps of their customer journey, and you need to adapt your marketing strategy and chatbot accordingly. If the prospect is on your Facebook page, they might only be looking for information regarding your business. But if it is already on your website, it means they’re ready to go to the next step of the funnel.
So, to make your chatbot better, you need to plan why you want a bot and what is its purpose. Before creating a chatbot, you need to define a clear purpose for it. Whether you want it to upsell a product, it will be a sales assistant or just to answer customer questions.
Define the issues of the client at every step of the funnel and ask yourself whether the chatbot is the best way to solve them. If your answer is yes, then go ahead and start creating your chatbot.
- Don’t Make the Conversation Too Stiff
One of the advantages you get from chatbots is that they make users’ experiences engaging and more fun. For instance, instead of having a boring and long FAQs page, you can make your chatbot answer those questions.
But there are different ways to ask one question, and your bot must be able to understand that. You can use an AI-based chatbot for that. AI-based bots have the capability to analyze users’ input and respond accordingly. Using NPL (Natural Language Processing), they can understand the variations of the questions and improve the quality of their answers for better use of AI in business transformation.
- Setting Up Chatbot Without Testing
Nothing harms your brand image worse than a bad and uncompleted chatbot. You need to deploy your bot when it is fully usable and can continue improving it along the way. It’s a better idea to start with a simple chatbot instead of going for a complex and unfinished one. Moreover, you can tell users that the bot is still under improvement and ask them for their recommendations.
You need to test your chatbot first before it goes online. It helps you highlight any potential errors and allow you to correct those errors before the prospects or customers stumble on any of those errors. By this, you can prevent frustration or disappointment and can get the expected ROI.
- Making Too Long Answers
Nobody wants to read an answer in the form of a paragraph, particularly when it comes from a robot. Most people use the chatbot on their phone, and they don’t want to scroll to read your message. It offers a poor user experience, and they usually stop using your chatbot.
It’s a general recommendation to keep your texts under 80 characters. Use quick answers and ask questions between texts not to bore your clients and keep the interaction going. The chatbot is not human, but you need to keep the interaction as human-like as possible. Try to add pictures, emojis, GIFs, and more to illustrate what you’re talking about in a more appealing way.
Conclusion
It is nearly impossible to avoid errors on your chatbot fully. However, you can reduce the number of errors with proper testing and planning. It is also a good practice to ask your customers their opinions about your chatbot. This feedbacks play a crucial role in helping you improve your chatbot. Moreover, it shows that you’re a pro-user and proactive business, and your audience will trust you more.
If you already have a chatbot and don’t know why its performance is disappointing or plan to create one, you’ll need to consult experts like Xavor corporation. Our technical experts not only help you create a bot according to your business needs but also help you fix issues with your chatbot and make it better.
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