The Science of Chatbot Addiction — How to Make Your Bot Interesting to Humans
In the quickly expanding world of artificial intelligence, chatbots are the next “big thing.” At their core, these programs simulate a two-way conversation with users. Depending on the purpose of the bot, these could range from the weather to scheduling.
At present, most engineers can program chatbots well enough to fulfill their purpose. Some even have a touch of sass! But they’re far from perfect.
Give It A Personality
Perhaps one of the most effective ways of hooking people on your bot is to give it a personality. This trick harkens back to the days when ActiveBuddy’s chatbot SmarterChild, part of AOL’s Instant Messenger, was everyone’s favorite digital buddy. SmarterChild was designed to answer user questions and hold simple conversations.
Although SmarterChild really is a child — in terms of functionality — when compared to bots like Alexa, Siri and Cortana, what really made it lovable was its personality. Insult today’s chatbots, and they’ll still talk to you. Insult SmarterChild, and it would refuse to budge until you apologized, much like a human would.
It’s subtle elements like these that make a bot more than just text on a screen. Defining your bot’s personality and giving it correct language to express itself are key to humanizing it.
For example, when it came time for the company x.ai to write the dialogue for their Amy and Andrew assistants, they added special wording for rescheduling events to reflect increasing regret for the inconvenience. Integrate touches like these into your bot and its humanity will make it more endearing.
Make It Functional
To keep users engaged, your chatbot should serve a purpose other than just conversation. Take, for example, eBay’s chatbot, in development for use with Google Home assistants. After introducing itself, the bot prompts users to ask it what an item is worth. Typically, it will then ask a few additional questions. Theses can range from the model of the item to its age and wear and tear.
After the question and answer session, the bot will give you its best estimation of what the item is worth. Although the bot is still in early development, it has several other planned features to help users search eBay’s marketplace.
Your chatbot should allow your users to interact with your brand in a personal manor. If the chatbot feels gimmicky or pushes endless product suggestions, it will quickly turn users off. When designing your chatbot, take a page from eBay’s playbook, and make it friendly yet functional.
With the enormous amount of data being uploaded every second, the bot has a lot of information to sort through, yet it’s able to filter through that to get to the information needed, without pushing additional products.
Tailor It To Your Core Users
So, your bot is useful and is bursting with personality, but you’re still struggling with conversion rates. Perhaps most of your users don’t make it past the first few messages. How do you turn new visitors into longtime customers?
Take a page from Poncho, the chatbot developed by Kuan Huang. Poncho could relay the weather and tell jokes, but its users just weren’t coming back. To find their “core” feature, the Poncho team analyzed the users who kept coming back to find what motivated them. After that, they tweaked their app to optimize those features and focused on converting new users into the same group as their core base.
Following these steps and applying a few other techniques, such as a more integrated onboarding process, the Poncho team raised engagement rates by 300%. Apply this process to your chatbot, and your core audience will respond in kind.
Thanks to the prevalence of computers and smartphones, chatbots are the next big thing for busy people on the go. Follow these tips, and your chatbot will be more engaging to your audience.
