Does Your Bot Tell a Story?
If It Doesn’t, It Should.
Today, chatbot interactions happen primarily over text. Eventually, we might integrate pictures, graphs and buttons to click, but mostly it’s about reading and typing.
In a world where the conventional interface design based on shapes and colors loose power to words, stories become the main strategy to generate emotions and give rise to user engagement.
Tons of people are saying that bots are overhyped, but if you’re reading this article you know (or want to believe) that they’ll make a lasting impact.
Chatbot creators who take their products seriously probably have writers and a chief-editor in charge of their team by now. If you don’t, I would say that your chances of success are very low.
The good news is that if you’re a small, independent creator like me, I can assure you there are ways to level the playing field with the big firms.
I’ve been enjoying chatbots for the past three years. At the very beginning of 2014, I adopted Slack as my company’s communication tool and was impressed with a simple onboarding conversation conducted by slackbot. At the time, I was trying to create a remote team structure, and a good communication tool was a crucial element towards that.
When I found out we could create bots that ran on Slack, I dove in. Since then, about 10 bots have been created, helping us with sales, marketing expenses, lead generation, etc. So when we decided to create Clara — a virtual mentor for new entrepreneurs — I understood how hard it can be to create and maintain interaction through longer conversations.
It reminded me of the time way back when email started to become an important communication medium, about 20 years ago. It wasn’t uncommon to exchange emails with people who just didn’t get it how to communicate through the written word. My dad was a good example: He didn’t grasp how to choose the words, use punctuation, caps-lock, etc. His replies were mostly confusing since he didn’t capture the nuances of a voice conversation. Was he mad? Was he joking? I don’t think he ever understood that all caps meant he was yelling at me.
Text-based communications are still a big challenge for many of us. Choosing the right words is hard. Expressing emotions is even harder. Thankfully emojis were created to make this easier, but they are still not enough.
We also started to practice it more by using social media and messenger apps. We communicate through text now more than ever before. Being a good communicator and making efficient use of the written word is not an option anymore. It’s critical to the companies we support. Mentoring requires clarity!
I wanted to create a meaningful experience for Clara users and I noticed most of the bots online were doing a poor job. It would be useless to list all the articles I read, but I can list a couple highlights that helped me along this way.
There’s a startup that not only understood but took storytelling to the next level making it it’s core value. Hooked was founded in 2015 and has raised a significant amount of money. They have been featured in Business Insider list of startups to watch in 2017. In Hooked you read stories in conversation format and it’s incredibly addictive.
Another great example is Jessies Story, powered by PullString’s authoring environment and AI engine. It’s quite amazing how a bot can take you through a conversation with the feeling that you are actually interacting with a teenager. Behind Jessie, there’s not only a great technology, there’s a great story being told with very well selected words and phrases.
Just recently, I found a great, must see keynote by Erika Hall entitled designing with words. In her keynote, Erika, argues that at companies there is still silos of Design, Code and Content that are separated through thick concrete walls.
Unfortunately this creates a division between design and content and the intent is quickly lost.
The impact of this partition consequently divides visual and verbal interaction.
She also mentions that even though humans have been conversing for over 150,000 years, we have only started writing about 2,300 years ago (and it was only the elites who could read and write at before the turn of the last century). So less than 2% of our communicating existence has used the written word. And that’s why we still suck at writing.
She ends the keynote by saying that “Language is a social phenomenal. The only way to design conversational interactions is through talking to other people”. Well, I may not agree with that because I’ve read many great books with incredible conversations, there are excellent examples of literature and poetry published by great writers. And, in the end, Talking and Typing are different.
Fine then, you’re convinced that your bot should be a storyteller. Now what? How do you level the playing field with the tech titans? There are so many important decisions when building a chatbot: male, female or no gender? What will be the name? How it will greet you? Will it use formal or informal language? Jokes? Cold or warm?
Creating a bot persona and telling stories are a totally new challenge. Our team never had writers or storytellers. Like you, we have world-class developers, designers, etc. We don’t know how to create characters and define their personas.
So the first step to tackle this main issue was to talk to those who know how to do this: writers. Big tech companies are doing it, so should you.
I got in touch with literary writers, screenwriters, editors, content creators and all sorts of storytellers to understand how they worked. And I gotta say that was one of the most interesting set of conversations I ever had. Their profiles were so different, so many good insights were shared. I learned a lot. The conversations allowed me to better understand how their minds worked, how they perceive Clara, what they thought could be improved, etc.
My biggest lesson and a lesson you should learn too: go to the writers. Don’t go for the social media content creators. You need to talk to people who write novels, understand about characters, narrative arch, cliff hangers, etc.
My second step towards hiring someone was even more interesting. I asked the best candidates to perform a little test and re-write a little piece of Clara’s content and interactions. So much fun and cool stuff came from those tests. Some very weird stuff too.
But one candidate stood out and we hired him with the feeling that we should have done this a long time ago. Do it now if you haven’t already. It will improve every bit of your user experience. It will make your chatbot stand out for sure. One person with drive and persona can have a major impact when paired with world-class designers and developers.
If you read a lot about the startup world, you probably know that there is a spotlight on design oriented startups. My guess is that if chatbots and voice assistants really become the new gold mine, we will experience a new trend of writing oriented startups.
Having a full time writer didn’t strike me as a necessity from the beginning, but once I realized that I needed one, I went for it and I’m glad I did.
Remember, writing well takes time. The writing form is much harder than the vocal form because it works like a photograph of a moment: the imperfections stand out. As a famous quote usually attributed to Mark Twain says: “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”
