How to Humanize Chatbots for Better Customer Engagement - limiw/How-To-Humanize-Chatbots-for-Better-Customer-Engagement GitHub Wiki

What Is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is a messaging application that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to interact with users in a way that simulates live conversation. These applications are commonly used on websites, mobile applications, and social media in place of or as a supplement to human support and assistance.

Chatbots typically work by analyzing a user's input with Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms. This enables the bot to interpret the intent of the user’s words and to select or formulate an appropriate response based on pre-programmed templates and available information.

Top AI Chatbot Use Cases

Chatbots can be a valuable element of any customer engagement strategy. These tools are not limited by time zones and can provide support for users that brands do not have the human resources to provide. Additionally, with translation technologies and personalization algorithms, chatbots can provide engagement that meets a customer’s preferences and language needs.

Some of the most common implementations of chatbots include:

Customer service—you can integrate chatbots in customer service softwareto answer customer questions, provide troubleshooting, collect feedback, and manage orders. These bots are always available and can provide support immediately rather than forcing a customer to wait until someone is available. Bots can also help lighten the load for employees by taking care of routine requests or questions.
Sales—bots can help customers process transactions, request refunds, and check on the status of orders. You can also use bots to monitor inventory and alert customers when products they’ve been waiting for become available.
Personal services—if you offer a service to customers, as opposed to a physical product, chatbots can help you deliver that service. For example, checking in on whether a customer followed their workout routine today. Bots can enable you to collect feedback from customers which can then be applied to AI or used by experts to customize service offerings.
Product recommendations—with chatbots, you can provide real-time recommendations to customers based on immediate feedback. For example, chatbots can ask customers a series of questions and then provide options that meet those needs. Or, if a customer requests help with an item or service, bots can recommend alternatives or add-ons that the customer may be interested in.
User engagement—you can use chatbots to respond to customer comments or brand mentions on forums and social media. This can provide positive feedback for customers and enable reps to address customer complaints faster.

How to Humanize Your Chatbots?

One of the trickiest things about implementing chatbots is finding the right balance between helpful interactions and realistic interactions. Customers are unlikely to continue interacting with a bot that can’t understand casual language. At the same time, they may find a bot that is indistinguishable from a human to be unsettling or untrustworthy.

When creating your chatbots, you should aim for a bot that is easy to interact with without being creepy. Below are a few tips you can use to find this sweet spot.

Create a character

Inventing a character for your bot can add charm to interactions and encourage positive brand feelings. Characterization helps your bot stand out from others and can be a good way of promoting a standardized brand representation.

Characterization can also be a good way to make your bot welcoming while still being transparent about the fact that customers aren’t interacting with a live rep. This helps prevent feelings of betrayal if you need to transition to a live rep and can excuse quirks in interactions.

Make use of emoticons

If you aren’t careful, bot interactions can come off as cold and robotic. To avoid this, you should consider adding emoticons to your bot responses. Emoticons can set the tone for an interaction, help clarify ambiguous responses, and build empathetic connections between customers and bot.

Incorporating emoticons can also be key to accurately respond to users. Many users are used to inserting emojis into their communications and some may even substitute emojis for words. If your bot cannot interpret the meaning of these icons it cannot formulate appropriate or relevant responses.

Incorporate contextual information

A large part of human communication relies on context. A person’s response can mean completely different things depending on time, place, or cultural background. If you don’t attempt to account for context in your bot interactions you may inadvertently harm your customer relationships rather than improving them.

One way of doing this is to apply customer demographic information to filter a bot’s options. For example, restricting idioms based on the region a customer’s IP comes from. This is especially important if you aren’t translating bot responses to match the language of your visitor.

Give your bot a memory

One of the benefits of bots is that they can quickly access customer-specific information. Rather than wasting this opportunity and resetting every interaction with a customer that your chatbot has, give it a “memory”. This can include pulling information from customer profiles, purchase histories, or using response styles that a customer previously responded positively to.

If you apply information from previous interactions your bot can provide more relevant responses and foster ongoing customer relationships. For example, bots can ask if a user wants to resume a conversation that was recently abandoned rather than forcing them to reanswer questions.

Conclusion

Efficient customer experience is the foundation of any successful online business. Humanizing your website AI chatbot can change the way people view your brand and make an overall impact in the industry. The more you add human-like features like contextual information or memory to chatbots, the better it connects with clients.