How to design a successful chatbot

From the name to the unique communication style. How do we at Feedyou design chatbots that not only answer questions but also deliver a great user experience?

1. First impressions matter

Right from the start, our main goal is to attract attention and impress users. First impressions don’t just apply to humans, but also to chatbots.

At Feedyou, we believe that a chatbot shouldn’t play at being human, lest it set exaggerated expectations for users. That’s why we are not afraid to reveal right from the start that you are chatting with a chatbot.

Every chatbot should have a name. Why is this important? It gives the virtual assistant its own personality, makes it more interesting and makes it seem more friendly. The name should be original, but also easy to read and remember.

All that’s left is a photo of the chatbot for a perfect introduction. It can be a cartoon avatar or, for example, a portrait of a real or fictional employee of your company. Or just record a short video introduction. There are plenty of ways to grab the attention. Take a look at some from our production:

2. Be clear about who you are building the solution for

The key to a successful chatbot is determining its tone-of-voice, or how it speaks to its target audience. Of course, a chatbot will communicate differently with, for example, young students about choosing sports equipment than it will with millennials applying for a prestigious position.

The difference in communication may be, for example, in addressing them by their first/last name, using colloquial expressions, emojis, gifs or pictures. Emojis and gifs can increase the friendliness of a chatbot, but you should always be able to discern when and which ones are appropriate for messages. Remember that the chatbot should mainly imprint the way your company communicates. See how the tone can vary by target audience:

3. Give the chatbot a personality

If you have already thought of a name and tone of communication for your virtual assistant, you need to breathe life into it, give it its own personality. Write a short introduction of the chatbot for yourself, its name, where it lives, what it is like, what it has studied, where it works, what hobbies it has, if it has any pets.

Keep this in mind when creating your conversation tree, it will help you create a more distinctive and unified communication. A chatbot can be cheerful, serious, enthusiastic or judicious, and its moods can alternate. It can use a catchphrase, joke, or greeting of its own.

4. Conversations must have momentum

If you want to keep your chatbot communicator interested, don’t use overly long messages. If you do need to insert longer text, try interspersing it with emojis or splitting it into multiple messages.

Also, avoid unnecessary dialogue that fills the conversation and leads nowhere. You must always remember that people want to get to the point as quickly as possible, i.e. what they are interested in and why they opened the chatbot.

To keep attention, you can use a few questions that don’t necessarily have practical relevance, but will help create a more interactive experience.

5. Do it differently

There are already a lot of chatbots out there, a lot of them were built using a template. Such a template can definitely come in handy, for example, when creating a simple dialogue leading to obtaining the contact details of a job candidate.

However, as for the rest of the bot, it should always be built from scratch. Try to make each chatbot a little different and be as original as possible. Why ask a question like “Do you speak Czech?” when we can ask the communicator a question directly in Czech.

Why ask if they can cook when we can ask, for example, what ingredient is missing from a particular recipe?

Get creative and people will get excited about your chatbot, talk about it and maybe
even come back to it.