Whose voice does your bot have?
If you’re like most brands, you’ve probably spent a small fortune developing your brand’s voice. You’ve probably spent endless hours finding the right voice to represent your company’s values. This unique voice is how your customers differentiate you from your competitors. It is this voice your customers trust and the cornerstone of their relationship with your brand.
Don’t be like every other bot
Following all the recent announcements in the messaging world, brands are now rushing to build their own messaging bots. The early stage that I’ve seen is full of interesting bots that are exploring different types of customer engagements. Some help you shop, others try to entertain, but many function in a purely informational format. There is one shared problem across many of these types of bots: they all sound the same. Aside from the name of the bot, it is very difficult to identify any uniqueness in how each bot behaves or communicates. It’s similar to having one dedicated spokesperson for all brands.
Use your Brand voice
Expressing your brand’s voice through a bot is not easy, but it is possible. When ideating the creation of a bot, it is imperative that you include your creative studio to help find and capture your voice. This is something you’ve already done when creating a website, an ad or even an online store.
From a creative standpoint, these are the two challenges I found myself debating while creating bots:
- Translating the brand voice and personality to this new medium and format that was never used by the brand before.
- Defining the right tone of voice. Remember, this is the first time the brand is having a brand-to-one conversation and not brand-to-many, so is the tone different? What is the right brand-to-one tone and voice?
Employing great technology to power your bot is essential, but that only gets you a delivery platform.
What I’ve learned in building our bots is that while technology delivers the voice, creative designs its personality.
