Communication is now more important than ever. With customers constantly engaging with business online, there is a demand for more prompt and personalised customer interaction and experience.
That is why chatbots are a true revolution for business communication today. Bots have conversation as their core element. They can handle discussions with different customers simultaneously so that users don’t feel like they are talking to a computer: it provides information, problem-solving and even entertainment to users.
Still, building a chatbot conversation flow is not an easy task. So, if you wish to up your game and deliver a genuinely effective chatbot experience, follow our tips on creating an excellent chatbot conversation.
Keep It Simple
The modern customer journey demands instant solutions, and organisations must be ready to act on the user’s request. Among the many benefits of a chatbot is the capacity to provide almost instantaneous responses to users and the 24/7 availability of customer service support.
Yet, people are constantly being bombarded with online information and this is why one of the secrets of an engaging chatbot is simplicity. You need to make sure your bot is easy and enjoyable to talk to. The key is to find the balance of a natural and interactive conversation that still feels straightforward and easy to understand.
Some tips that can help build your flow are: use clear and simple language, include buttons for quick answers and analyse the keywords in the conversation to act promptly to customers’ requests. Another golden tip is to always test and check your chatbot analytics to understand the right tone of voice and wording for your audience.
Build a Personality
Before building your conversational flow, you need to consider your bot as a persona and consider what characteristics you want it to have. Giving your bot a personality will give authenticity to your bot; it allows the conversation to be more engaging and helps the user connect emotionally with your chatbot.
Don’t forget that your bot is a representation of your business. Therefore, the bot’s personality needs to be aligned to your business values, characteristics and how it wishes to be seen. For example, a serious and formal conversation might not be a good fit for a music shop but probably is suitable for a law firm.
Think about your bot as a team member. A bot should have a consistent personality, tone of voice and a choice of words that works well with your audience.
Initiate and Finish the Conversation
Chatbots are the front door to your business and will set the tone of the communication between you and your customer. That is why your bot must always initiate and finish the conversation the right way.
These are the key moments to show your bot’s personality – real conversations always have some form of “hello” and “goodbye”. Likewise, a human conversation always has a start and an end moment, so a great bot conversation should feel the same way.
Greeting and initiating the conversation is a proactive approach to attending to your customers’ needs. It creates a good first impression that can help build customer’s trust and encourages them to interact with you.
Natural conversations always have “wrap up” moments, so when building your flow, think about how you can end the user conversation without dead ends to avoid confusion. Ending the conversation feels human, and it makes it feel like the topic is solved.
Add Empathy and Emotions
Adding empathy and emotional skills to your chatbot is a great way to improve your bot’s conversation. Customers are loyal to the brands that they have an emotional connection with, making them feel good and cared for.
Sentiment analysis is a chatbot feature that is used to analyse opinions, thoughts or sentiments and respond to customers based on data. It allows the bot to understand the customer’s mood and adapt responses to be in tune with customers emotions.
The sentiment element truly nurtures customer relationships. It helps your bot empathise with your customer’s feelings and provide the proper responses in sensitive situations. For example, if the user is feeling angry or sad, the bot can sense the mood and switch to give an adequate response to their feeling.
The same way works with happy users. Emotions can also help make the conversation more light and fun, so don’t forget to add a small talk to the bot, and even jokes to make it feel more usable, entertaining and enjoyable. Use sentiment as a way to make your bot stand out from the crowd!
Use Other Forms of Communication
Text is probably the most popular form of chatbot conversation. However, chatbots do not need to be limited to text only. Today, Flow XO and other chatbot builders provide other forms of communication to upgrade your bot’s conversational skills.
With Flow XO, chatbots can also send images, gifs, rich content messages and videos. Multimedia communication is not only entertaining to users, but it can also be helpful to make your conversation more engaging.
Studies prove that the human brain retains visual messages better than written and is 95% more likely to remember a piece of information when watched and only 10% when read. Still, be sensitive to the context and make sure to send any visual content at appropriate times.
Find your Chatbot Conversation Flow!
Conversion is the heart of every chatbot and it is what decides if your bot works or not. Therefore, the process of building a chatbot’s conversation flow deserves time and attention. Suppose you wish to have a successful bot performance. In that case, you need to be mindful of the purpose of your communication, how you want your organisation to be perceived, your bot’s persona, and where you want to go with your conversation.
Once you find your flow, the possibilities and benefits of your chatbot are endless. Feature-rich chatbot builders such as FlowXO can guide you through building the perfect conversational bot. Flow XO users have successfully developed a variety of chatbot conversations that are aimed to improve performance and nurture relationships.
If you wish to upgrade your customer experience, you can build your first conversational chatbot for free with Flow XO. If you are already part of the team, feel free to check our support page for more tips on how to improve your bot!