How Human Do You Want Your Chatbot To Become?

Murray Newlands — May 28, 2017 Follow @murraynewlands

Although many people view chatbots as a direct replacement for humans, the reality is that bots are great tools that marketers and business owners can use to grow a business. Today, chatbot tool allow you to build humanized chatbots that are more likely to engage and interact with your customers.

Chatbots can be humanized in a variety of ways, but you need to choose carefully how human you want your bot to be. I’ve put together a few tips to help you create a quality, humanized chatbot that will help you engage your audience and grow your business effectively.
What Defines a Humanized Chatbot?

A humanized chatbot has the ability to interact with a user the same way a real human would. Humanized chatbots also have the ability to carry out complicated tasks. They can often tell jokes, stories, and show signs of empathy, all of which are very appealing to consumers. Be advised that highly humanized bots can be risky because they can be unpredictable (have you ever heard of Tay?) and also take longer to build.

If you are thinking about making your chatbot more humanized, consider attributes such as:

Behaving according to context
Professionalism
Humor
Empathy
Ability to fulfill tasks
Proactivity
Ability to identify when a problem requires human assistance
Attention to detail
Building a Humanized Chatbot
Selecting the Right Personality

Chatbot tools allow you to build both personality-rich and serious, task-oriented chatbots. Your bot’s personality will depend heavily on the image you want your brand to portray and the features you want them to have. For instance, serious institutions like banks should create straight-to-the-point chatbots that can carry out complex tasks. On the other hand, video game companies need chatbots that are outgoing and funny in order to engage with a younger generation, while being able to fulfill common e-commerce processes.

Before you choose your bot’s personality, you should:

Include your team members in the persona development
Consider your target audience
Keep your industry in mind

Implementing Wit and Humor

The beauty of humor is that it can be adjusted to a specific audience. Moreover, witty chatbots are like charismatic people: they are more memorable than their boring counterparts.

With chatbot tools, you can build chatbots that have the ability to implement humor and wit. In addition to this, you can view how your chatbot interacts with users in order to make changes and appeal to an even broader scope. Analyze your market, find the right tone of voice, and approach them with humor that is suitable for the situation.

Empathy Goes a Long Way

There are certain chatbots that are designed to be sarcastic to create an effect, but on the whole, your bot should show empathy when dealing with customers. In many cases, customers will be frustrated when they interact with your chatbot. Your bot should be able to empathize and ease the user’s concerns by providing solutions to the problem. Chatbot tools enable you to build an AI-powered chatbot that can recognize speech patterns and trigger emotionally-driven responses when necessary.

Be Proactive and Concise

Chatbots have the ability to reduce the amount of time you invest interacting with your clients online. However, a good chatbot must offer solutions to customers proactively. This goes beyond the usual, “How can I help you?” introductory spiel. Chatbot tools help you integrate popular e-commerce solutions, social media platforms, and other great features you can then use to make your chatbot a proactive solutions machine.

Build a Detail-Oriented Chatbot

One of the biggest advantages of chatbot tools is that you can build chatbots with high attention to detail. Chatbots should be human enough to remember details from current and past conversations with users. If users have to go through the same repetitive questions each time they interact with your bot, they will minimize the number of interactions they choose to have with it. Instead, give your bot the ability to remember details and use that to your advantage during interactions with customers.

Identifying When to Escalate an Issue

As I mentioned before, chatbots are not replacements for humans, but rather tools that you need to build and master to perfection before using them effectively. With chatbot tools, you can build a bot with the ability to identify and escalate an issue when necessary. Although bots can already carry out complex tasks, there are still many cases that require human intervention. A great chatbot will be able to identify these situations and escalate the issue to a human representative to find the quickest solution.

Finally…

Chatbots with a high level of human-like behavior tend to be more appealing, but they are also more complicated to build. The more human-like personality you want to give your bot, the more time you will have to invest into working out its glitches. That being said, find a chatbot tool that is your one-stop shop to create a humanized bot. Once you spend a good amount of time fine-tuning your chatbot to perfection, you will have a lean, engagement-enriching, and lead-generating machine.

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