Why should people talk to your bot?
For people to engage in an interaction with anyone or anything, the interaction must have meaning for them, on a personal, emotional level. Nobody cares about your technology if it doesn’t touch your user’s deeper motivations.
How do you make interaction meaningful?
The easiest way is to tap into our need authentic connection.
This is true for chatbots no less than for real humans.
Here is how:
1. Never pretend to be human
For people to engage in an interaction with anyone or anything, the interaction must have a meaning for them, on a personal, emotional level. Nobody cares about your technology if it doesn’t touch your users’ deeper motivations.
How do you make interaction meaningful?
The easiest way is to tap into our need for authentic connection.
This is true for chatbots no less than for real humans.
Here is how:
2. Give your bot a personality by crafting a unique language
Most of us will open up to people who are being genuinely themselves, rather than someone who we know is just being polite. How do we know when a person is being genuine? When he or she talks in a unique, non-cliché, way.
Here is a bad example: I’m sure all of you have visited a site with a chat bubble that has a stock image of a pretty woman saying “Hello, I’m Jenny, I’m your personal assistant, how can I help you today?”
Any person with common sense knows this is not a real person, and for the slight chance it is, it’s probably a man from a call center in India. We treat such interaction with automatic suspicion.
Give your bot enough personality so it would feel unique and genuine. Having it pretend to be a cat, a cowboy or a Japanese geisha, will go a long way for you if you do it right and in the correct context.
3. Give people a good reason to talk
Imagine you are a girl at a party and a guy comes up to you and says “Hi, I’m Max” and Just stands there, waiting. Would you continue the conversation? Why would you even talk to this guy without him giving you any reason to communicate? (well, maybe he’s super hot, but in that case, you already know he has something you want.) Most chances you will smile and leave.
Same goes for bots.
Your bot must give a compelling reason to talk to it!
For that, it must convey clearly what value it has for the user.
I’ll give you an example, today I visited an Airbnb-like website and it had a chatbot. It was utterly useless because I had no idea why this chatbot is there and how can it help me. The UI itself was good and clear, so it seemed to me that the chatbot was just an attempt to give the site a more personal feeling.
Now imagine another case:
What if the chatbot asked you what kind of property are you looking for. This site was quite basic, but what if it had more data and filters to look through? Having a bot with a dedicated NLP that can handle this for you would have tremendous value.
Another example might be a bot that does follow up. If some data is not currently available, or there are no options, this bot can update you once there are.
This is how a chat with a bot that has both abilities might look like:
Bot: “Hey dude, I’m way faster than you at filtering hotels! Just tell me what you need.”
Human: “I am looking for a cheap hotel in Barcelona close to the beach for the first week of July.”
Bot: “Oooh you are going to have a wild summer! Here are 3 great options that I found.”
Human: “They are too expensive.”
Bot: “Bummer. Well since I don’t go on vacations I will stay here and keep looking. Once I have better matches I will update you. OK?”
The bot has character, has acknowledged not being human and has given a very compelling reason to talk to him.
Share with me some examples of bots done right!
