By finding and fixing the pain points related to your chatbot, it is certain that users will have a smoother experience and you will be more likely to bring them back to your website.
Although accessibility or language is important, it is only half of the success of your chatbot. In the same way having a chatbot " friendly " doesn't mean much if it doesn't actually work. When building your bot, you must take care of essential features such as error response, vocabulary or even the speed with which the robot will respond.
By finding and fixing the biggest pain points your users might encounter, you ensure that they have a good experience with the bot. They will be more likely to return to your site for more information. Here are some tips to optimize your chatbot.
Improve user understanding
The first tip when it comes to optimizing your chatbot is simple: understand what the user is saying. Automatic language processing is essential to help your chatbot understand the meaning and sentiment behind the words a user writes. Your robot must thus develop its vocabulary and understand the sentences that your users will use.
Apart from the actual meaning of terms and groups of words (phrases, sentences, etc.), sentiment analysis is extremely important if your chatbot functionality includes customer service, for example. If a user's anger or frustration is reflected in the way they express themselves, for example, they can prioritize that user over others and make an immediate transfer to an online agent. By understanding users' feelings, a bot can also respond more empathetically, (almost) like a human.
Working on Type Responses " mistake "
Despite your best efforts, there will be times when your bot won't understand what the customer is talking about. There is nothing more annoying for users than encountering this type of error. For users who don't understand why their response wasn't recognized (and sometimes don't understand that a bot is behind the conversation), this may cause them to leave the conversation.
It's up to you to check the answers that are given to your users when your robot does not understand what is being said. Messages used to respond to users when their words have not been understood should keep the conversations on " the right path ". In other words, there is no need to send a message like " I didn't understand " to internet users. The solution is to provide suggestions on how the user can rephrase their query using conversational analysis tools. By providing conversational paths to the user when issues arise. In other words, if the user's sentence is not understood but your robot detects a question, you can offer several choices of the type "you are looking for information on a product, "you want more information on one of your orders", etc By directing the user this way, in the end, you are probably able to answer his request.
Bet on the speed of response
Response speed is a real issue for chatbots. Some chatbot creators intentionally delay the reply in order to make their bots more human-like (potentially showing that someone is writing a reply). However, waiting is a point of frustration for users. In fact, what makes the conversational UI particularly interesting is its immediacy, its instantaneity. If a chatbot is slow to perform a task like responding to a user request, the user may simply stop talking and never come back.
That said, sometimes a wait time is unavoidable. If your bot is going to take the time to properly process a request, it should let the user know upfront that a short wait time is needed. Managing user expectations throughout the conversation is one of the good things about a chatbot, so always be honest about wait times so you don't frustrate the user.
Offer users to edit answers
Have you ever been stuck in a loop when talking to a chatbot? It is a common phenomenon which is a real nightmare for the user. Whether it's the fault of the user or the bot, it's essential that you give the user the option to go back a few steps and revise or start over from the main menu.
You must also provide functionality that allows the user to troubleshoot and fix a problem. They must be able to notify you of a problem and suggest ideas for solving it.
So, ready to launch your first chatbot?
