Introducing the Conversational UX-Copywriter 👨‍🏫
The person missing from your team
In most teams, it’s pretty clear who’s responsible for what. There are product managers, designers and developers. Yet when you build a team around Conversational UI, the roles aren’t that well defined. The Conversational UX-Copywriter still has to capture his place.
Since most tech teams just bring in the copywriter when they need to upgrade their hipster ipsum, it’s a bit confusing now that text is at the heart of the product.
But that’s fine for now. Everybody is pretty much just winging it and as long as we keep an open mind about it, I guess we’ll slowly figure it out soon enough.
When we started building our teams around Conversational UI, we actually got a good grasp of what the Conversational UX-Copywriter does.
The who?
Yup, we’re calling this person the Conversational UX-Copywriter. It’s the champion responsible for building an awesome and helpful chatbot. He’s pretty much the person missing from your team.
The tl;dr goes like this:
the Conversational UX-Copywriter is in charge of
- Writing scenarios.
- Prioritising scenarios.
- Delivering dialogues.
- Optimising dialogues.
Let’s dive in and discuss what this person really does.
Let’s go! 🚀
The Conversational UX-Copywriter writes scenarios based on data
The Conversational UX-Copywriter makes sure the chatbot is valuable to your customers. He or she is successful when the chatbot helps customers get the things done that matter most to them.
It’s all about your customers — or users. Let’s start with scenarios. The best way to get started is by looking at different types of data sources.
Web traffic
It tells you how customers manoeuvre over your website and it gives you a good indication of what jobs customers are trying to get done. When you see that a lot of people fail to complete a certain form on your website, then you know that’s a journey that can be improved.
(Conversational UI is perfect for filling in forms. That’s why I’m super excited about Typeform’s focus on Conversational Data Collection. 🕺)
Virtual assistants
Virtual Assistants tell you which questions customers ask and which problems they face. These are the issues that stand in their way of getting jobs done and they’re kind of big deal for a solid customer experience.
So if a large portion of your customers ask questions about upgrading their accounts, then you know you need to make that easier. Write a scenario for it.
History live chat
Historic data from live chat tells you which conversations your live agents have with customers. These customers went to your website with a goal in mind, they couldn’t figure it out via web design and self-service, so they went with the ultimate solution: live conversations.
Don’t get me wrong, live conversations can be a great thing. They often lead to sales and ambassadors. But at the same time there are low value conversations in the history files — conversations about routine questions that can easily be automated by a chatbot.
Data tells you what customers are trying to get done when they interact with your brand. Based on that, you can design a flowchart and write out scenarios.
Flowchart: An overview off all scenarios within a specific conversation.
Scenario: One specific path within an overview of a specific conversation.
The Conversational UX-Copywriter prioritises scenarios based on impact
Each flowchart comes with a bunch of scenarios. It all depends on the complexity of the journey; the more complex, the more scenarios you have. From that collection of scenarios, you have to find a way to prioritise.
The Pareto Principle applies. Go for high impact scenarios that deliver the best results and don’t worry too much about the other scenarios at first. If the objective is to drive sales for an insurance policy, take the best case scenario within your flowchart and go all in on that. 80–20. 💥
An effort value chart is another way of looking at it. There are relatively simple tasks you can automate with a chatbot, that bring in tons of value.
If you notice that people are dropping off while filling in your sales form, then it’s a no-brainer to improve that process with a chatbot. It’s a simple and straightforward journey that directly contributes to your revenue. (This journey would be in the top left quadrant in the above chart.)
At the same time, if thousands of customers reach out to you via phone to ask how they should reset their password, then that’s a simple one to automate as well. Customers don’t like giving you a call for such a silly thing as a password reset, and it’s costing you money each time they do. Use your chatbot to capture value for both you and the customer.
After you have made an overview, look for value to prioritise which scenario to develop first. And remember, value can come from both sides of the balance sheet: money saved buys you just as much as money raised.
The Conversational UX-Copywriter is Editor-in-Chief for all dialogues based on goals
It’s now clear which scenario is going to be turned into an automated dialogue. Perfect. But we still have no idea what that dialogue should look like.
And it can be anything.
The Conversational UX-Copywriter is in charge of delivering good dialogues that help customers advance their journeys and get jobs done.
This step brings out the real writer. The wordsmith that understands how to use language to get things done.
As mentioned, every dialogue has a well defined goal. Let’s say we want the user to fill in a form.
When you write, you want to make sure that you:
- Speak in your brand’s voice.
- Always speak one-to-one.
- Keep it short.
- Keep advice step driven.
- Don’t skip character reaction.
- Go easy on humor.
- Admit defeat gracefully.
But is it just text? Pictures and video? Or a combination? Maybe we even need to use a form to collect information.
A dialogue can be many things. Whatever it is, it needs be the best way to help customers get jobs done. First and foremost, in a perfect chatbot, the interaction is useful to both the business and the customers.
You’re in charge of making it a success. The Conversational UX-Copywriter is the Editor in Chief.
The Conversational UX-Copywriter optimises chatbot dialogues
Ultimately, your goal is to get customers from A-to-B in record speed, in a helpful and engaging way. Once we know what their A and B is, we start looking at ways to make that journey more effective.
Time to experiment. Here’s a few things you can and probably should test within your chatbot dialogues.
- Sentences, words, emoticons.
- The length of your answers.
- The use of pictures, videos and gifs.
- The use of forms and selection buttons.
- When to trigger a proactive dialogue.
What to test first
There’s plenty to test but then it’s again the question of what to test first. Best approach is to take the same angle as above. Scout for spots where you can run isolated tests that are low effort and deliver high value.
Want more users to engage with your chatbot? Run an ab-test on your proactive dialogue trigger.
Version A says hi 👋 as soon as the users lands on the page. Version B says hi 👋 after 5 seconds. The test tells you which version gets more engagement and that’s your winner.
You’ve just increased the number of sessions. Congrats. 👯🏻‍
But does everybody complete the conversation? Try find the spot where people stop interacting with the chatbot and figure out what can be the issue.
Is it the tone of voice? The complexity of your sentence? Or maybe it’s more effective to use a visual to get your point across. Whatever your hypothesis: run an isolated ab-test.
Your job is never done
The point we want to make is that you’re never done. There are always things to improve and more value to unlock. The best way to unlock this value is by using your UX-mindset and running experiments.
We talk about figuring out what to write, how to write, and actually writing it. But that’s just the start. The real work is in running experiments and always working to get closer to your endgoal: to help customers get jobs done via engaging and helpful dialogue.
Final words on the Conversational UX-Copywriter
The Conversational UX-Copywriter is a new type of professional. He has the heart of a poet and takes a data driven approach to writing helpful and engaging dialogue. He understands people, business and data. And he loves to experiment.
In other words: he’s the person currently missing from your team.
