7 Common Mistakes When Implementing Chatbots

It is not enough just to create a chatbot, it is very important to do it right. Mistakes made during development process can become the reason why the bot turns out to be useless, or even harmful.

Content:
1. Lack of strategy
2. Wrong communication style
3. Lack of hints
4. Lack of operator support
5. Lack of testing
6. Trying to pass off a chatbot as a real person
7. Low bot activity
8. Everything is solved

Chatbots for websites, social media and instant messengers have long been one of the key tools of Internet marketing. They help customers decide on the choice of goods or services they need, talk about the benefits of products, describe the functions of the site and perform a number of other useful functions of a virtual consultant. Well-designed chatbot for online store or online service can reduce the workload of employees and increase sales. However, not all chatbots are effective by default, because mistakes are often made during their development. In this article, we will describe the most common mistakes when implementing chatbots and tell you how to avoid them.

Before you create a chatbot, be sure to think over its functionality and clearly define its purpose. Sometimes too much information is far worse than not enough information, and an overly complex chatbot is more likely to confuse visitors than solve their problems. For example, if you are going to implement a bot-adviser on the sections and features of the site, then there is no need to upload detailed information on the technical nuances of your products or services to it.

When writing a chatbot script, it is very important to choose the right communication style. It should not be too dry and soulless, but at the same time not overly familiar. It is important that the bot answers the questions of visitors with capacious, concise and understandable phrases without unnecessary details, maintaining the conversation in the way that people usually conduct it.

The most dry style of chatbot communication can scare off those users who do not want to communicate with a "soulless machine", so they are more likely to choose another store with a live consultant. However, a too ornate writing style with flat jokes and inappropriate comments is also not the best solution for a consultant bot. When preparing a script for a bot, you should stick to the "golden mean", taking into account the theme of your store or service.

Many people find it difficult to express their thoughts in writing. Therefore, they often have problems when searching for an answer to a chatbot question: they don’t understand what exactly they need, or they don’t know how to write it correctly. A human consultants can guess about the client's problem even with a vague formulation of the question, in extreme cases, they will clarify. The chatbot, on the other hand, is devoid of intuition, so it is unlikely to be able to help the client if he does not formulate his thoughts clearly and understandably.

To avoid such situations, a system of hints for the visitor, presented in the form of buttons with answer options, will help. With their help, a person does not have to formulate and write their own lines, which will greatly speed up and simplify the process of communication. In addition, the presence of hint buttons will not allow the dialogue to deviate from the original line. Having 2-3 replica options for each bot question or answer is a great option that you should definitely equip your chat bot with. Also, do not forget about the possibility of writing replicas on your own in the case when none of the ready-made options suits the user.

You should not shift all the functions of the support service exclusively to the chatbot, even if you spent a lot of money on its development and provided this software with the most useful information. In this case, you can be sure that a powerful chatbot is able to 100% replace live operator consultants. This opinion is very deceptive and can scare away many potential customers from your store or service.

After successfully implementing and testing a chatbot, be sure to think about its safety net, leaving at least one consultant for these purposes. Also, when writing a script for a bot, it is worth registering triggers under which the bot will automatically switch the client to a live operator. You can also allow the visitor to initially select the interlocutor: for example, instantly connect to the chat bot or wait for the operator for 5-10 minutes. This safety net is an important factor in the effectiveness of chatbots and will help you not to miss a large number of potential customers.

In some cases, even chatbots with a perfectly thought-out strategy, a carefully crafted script, and a detailed hint system show very low efficiency and scare away a lot of visitors. The reason for this is insufficiently thorough testing of the chatbot, which would help to identify critical bugs when it was tested in "combat" conditions. For example, sometimes a bot may misunderstand a visitor's question and run the wrong script branch.

It is especially worth testing the triggers for switching the dialogue to the support operator. It is important that they are set up as accurately as possible and only work when none of the leading hints helped or the client's question turned out to be too complicated for the algorithms. After all, if a chatbot will direct each visitor to a consultant, then why does your store need it at all?

We do not recommend trying to deceive visitors by passing off a chatbot as a real consultant. After all, even the most professional scenario is not able to endow the software algorithm with the manner of communication of a living person. Of course, most people prefer to be assisted by an experienced operator, rather than a "soulless program", but they will definitely not like the attempt to fool them. If visitors discover that your chatbot is just pretending to be human, then it is very likely that this will encourage them to leave your site and never return there.

Solving this problem is very simple - you need to directly explain to visitors that you have a modern chatbot on your site that will answer their questions and solve their problems much faster and no less efficiently than a live consultant. You can also give the bot certain human qualities, for example, come up with an original and lively name for it (how can you not remember the famous Siri from Apple or Alice from Yandex here). In addition, it is worth considering the history of your chatbot and certain traits of its character: some branded phrases, jokes, etc.

An insufficiently active chatbot is unlikely to be effective, since most site visitors are not yet aware that you have a new technology and how it can be useful to them. Therefore, when developing a bot, be sure to think about how to give it initiative. For example, a good solution would be to script the bot so that it first starts a dialogue with visitors who have opened the main page of your site. At the same time, it can send them a welcome message with an offer to get acquainted with the main sections/opportunities of the store or service.

It is also worth thinking about stub messages for each of the key sections of the site. If the users needs help on any page, they will click on the chatbot and it will offer them answers to frequently asked questions/problems specifically for this section. But at the same time, in no case should you make the bot unnecessarily intrusive and put automatic chat pop-ups on every page of your site!

As you can see, there are a number of common problems website owners face when implementing chatbots. They reduce the effectiveness of this technology, but these "pitfalls" are easy to avoid if you follow the recommendations and common sense. Using the tips from our article, you will make your chatbot much more productive.

For those who want to achieve maximum efficiency when using a chatbot, we will suggest another possibility. To do this, you need to use the ApiX-Drive online connector. Using this service, you can quickly and easily automate the process of interaction of the bot with other solutions that you already use in your business. For example, it will be possible to transfer information on users and chats to other systems, save all data in one place convenient for you. It is important that setting up any links takes a minimum of time and does not require the involvement of programmers.