In this article we will share our personal observations and knowledge gained during the work with chatbots for scaling eCommerce Brands. This will help to make your business better and more established.
Chatbot is your personal guide between business and customer. It is a kind of manager who will prompt, talk, convince and solve the client’s problem.
User assumption about whose hiding behind the face of chatbot look like a Loch Ness monster. We’ve all heard of it, but we haven’t seen it at all.
Despite the fact that the development of chatbots has gone far ahead and now the talks have become more like living people, the problem of poor definition of man remained a key one.
When making an inquiry through a texting-based messaging service for customer support 86% of U.S. consumers preferred interacting with a human over an artificial intelligence (AI)-based system. According to CGS study 10% reported they couldn’t really tell the difference.
According to statistics, people trust chatbots with a folded personality more, even when they are reappointed. This is one of the key rules for the success of chatbots.
Therefore, the conversations that chatbot conducts is a thread that will connect you and your client.
The main rule of chatbot is the focus on human communication. You have to build a personality, but before you do that, here are a few questions.
- What kind of personality does chatbot have?
- What kind of social life does it demonstrate?
- Who is the communication of this chatbot directed at?
Emotions, gestures, character traits are no less important in portraying a person than his or her profession, hobby and appearance. To maximize the interest of a person in communicating with chatbots, it is necessary to develop it taking into account all the characteristics of the client. For effective work, you should understand the difference between a persona and a personality.
Remember how you wrote to esse on “How I spent my summer”. That would be your persona. And how you present it will characterize your personality. Focusing on the tastes of chatbot is not the right thing to do when you’re developing chatbot.
It’s safe to say that the qualities’ chatbot is endowed with are not indicative of its communication with the client. It only matters if it reacts to a message from a client. However, the response of the chat to the elementary question “How are you” can lead to a stupor, if you do not pay attention to his personality. So if you focus on both the persona and the personality, you can get a good result.
And now lets learn more about it.
Before engaging a chatbot to work with customers, define your marketing strategy. Ask yourself these questions.
Who is your target audience?
Identify the interests, social status, gender and lifestyle of the person who can interact with chatbot. Try to segment the audience for better communication. After all, you don’t want your chatbot to talk to a serious lady as a school friend. It’s definitely not gonna lead to a successful sale. Know your demographic and target user personas.
What’s your brand about?
Think about the values and role your brand plays in life. This complements the previous question, because what brand a person chooses often points to personality. It is necessary that there are no ridiculous answers or those that would cause resentment in real life. Bot should create a positive and distinctive impression that’s consistent with your brand.
What kind of customer and business problem will the chatbot solve
Think about what it will bring in your business and the role of your chatbots. Remember that chatbot, which advises where to go to the sea should be different from the bot which helps to solve a difficult problem in business.
To facilitate the work of the chatbot development team, try to create a presentation with full chatbot characteristics. This allows you to create answers that will be of maximum interest to the client and will create an experience of interesting communication between the user and chatbot.
Take a look at this example:
Catch a few of our lifehacks to create a chatbot persona:
- Determine what is a chatbot role in your company before sending the task to the designer and development team.
- Determine the sex of the chatbot. This will increase the efficiency of its work in certain situations. For example, selling women’s clothing or cosmetics is more associated with the salesperson as a woman. But if it has nothing to do with your business then it is better to use sexless chatbot.
Think about what kind of person your brand would be. What qualities and characters it would possess.
The identity of the chatbot. Where do you start?
The personality of a chatbot must be the same as the personality of a person.
Psychologists have long developed a system of evaluation of human personality, which is called Five Factor Model (FFM). The Five Factor Model (FFM) is a theory based on the Big Five personality traits, identified as: openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
Each trait can be broken down into sub-traits, allowing minor variations in personalities to be standardized and tracked. The individual is assessed for each of these factors. This allows for a holistic picture of a person’s personality.
Example:
User: — I want to choose a voyage to the sea.
Travel Agent Chatbot:
| Openness | Conscientiousness | Agreeableness | Extroversion | Neuroticism |
| Where would you like to go? | Let me pick out a tour for you. What’s your favorite country? | I think I can help you. Tell me, when are you planning a trip? | Wow. That’s a cool decision. Summer is a time of fascinating journeys. | I’m sorry, but we’re not working right now. Tell me, can I help you with any other questions? |
| It enjoys trying new things. It is imaginative, curious, and open-minded. | It has a high level of self-discipline. It prefers to follow a plan, rather than act spontaneously | It is usually warm, friendly, and tactful. | IT has a high level of self-discipline. It prefers to follow a plan, rather than act spontaneously | It is moody experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. |
Low scores indicate that a person is the exact opposite of the one who scored high scores. For example, low scores in the extroversion category are typical for introverts. These individuals are unsure of the correctness of their actions, they have no attention to what is going on around them. They often give preference to abstract thoughts and ideas.
Before you develop a chatbot, think about what points your character should gain in which category. This will determine his communication style. Our bot Chris doesn’t like to talk much and in detail. This is determined by her low score in one of the Big Five categories.
Our example shows that the combination of different scores makes chatbot unique. But the answers are still the same. So the experience with each user will be different from the previous one.
WHAT DO WE GET IN THE END
We have already figured out how personality and persona affect the work of chatbot and its communication style. And now how exactly can we make a personality interesting and fascinating?
Let’s think about greeting. How the bot will say hello can beautifully present it. We suggest we come up with different greetings for different segments. For example, for a schoolboy, “Hello” is more appropriate than “Good afternoon.”
What to do if there’s a mistake. There’s no need to be nervous. Mistakes will happen and it’s okay. You have to teach the bot to ask the right question or request a mistake. For example, you can ask a different question in response to a mistake.
Questions that are not answered correctly. People often like to ask nonsense in a fun way. Ask a chatbot a joke answer to such questions. It will show the level of communication and will not give errors in the work.
The right ending to the conversation. As in life, you need to say goodbye nicely. Make sure that the bot has done its job and satisfied the user request. End the conversation on a beautiful note. Make sure that the person you are talking to remembers who you are talking to.
Conclusion
Chatbot is no longer something special in the work of the company, so now you can pay attention to all the key parameters of its work and communication with users. Paying attention to the persona and personality of chatbot can create an interesting and exciting communication with the client by simulating a live conversation. This helps to increase customer involvement.
The main difference between persona and personality can be defined by two questions of WHAT and HOW. Before starting a chat, think about each point of its persona and personality using the Big Five method, which we have analyzed in this article. The bot should match your brand and your customers. This is the key to an interesting and engaging conversation between the bot and the customer.
