Chatbots have emerged as a potent communication channel for businesses. According to the State of Conversational Marketing report by Drift, usage of chatbots as a brand communication channel has increased by 92% since 2019. That’s because chatbots power instant communication and enhance user experience. That’s why the professionals at any mobile app or website development company recommend chatbot integration.
If you are yet to develop a chatbot for your business, check out this blog to learn the importance of chatbots. However, you must remember that businesses can get affected by chatbot mistakes. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Here are a few mistakes you must avoid while integrating a chatbot into your website.
Chatbot Mistakes You Must Avoid
Unclear Purpose
Building a chatbot can only be successful if it has a clear purpose right from the beginning. For instance, your website (let’s assume that you are planning to integrate a chatbot into your business website) already has ample information. What more facilities can the chatbot offer?
This strategy lies at the heart of chatbot development. Before integrating a chatbot, determine what benefits it can offer to the users.
Vague Information
Even if you have a clear purpose, executing it is a different story.
When the users interact with a chatbot, it means they want to get more information than what is already presented on the website or missing on the site. Therefore, you need to offer specific information to potential customers.
Your chatbot should be equipped with relevant details to potential queries of the customers so that they are satisfied with the answer.
Now, chatbots often receive queries regarding pricing if your website doesn’t feature the pricing of your service. Sometimes, this pricing may vary depending on the requirement of the customers. In such a scenario, you may ask the customer to leave his/her contact details so that you can contact the person and discuss custom pricing.
Excessive Information Required
Do you know the reason behind the popularity of chatbots? These are easy to use. If you demand the users to fill a lengthy form with profuse details, they will simply bounce.
Instead, the chatbot should be easy to use and enable the users to instantly find answers to their queries. These days, many chatbots feature multiple options and let the users click on relevant questions to find an answer. As you can understand, this greatly enhances convenience by reducing the efforts required for typing the entire query.
No Personality
This may seem to be irrelevant but let us tell you, imposing a character or personality to the chatbot significantly increases user engagement. That’s because people instantly connect with the chatbot if it has a name and a distinct personality.
Depending on your brand, you may give a custom name and personality to the chatbot. It may have a humorous, sarcastic, casual, or formal approach to conversation. You can seek assistance from the experts of corporate brand identity design services to develop a personality of your chatbot that best aligns with your brand.
However, make sure that the chatbot’s tone is not harsh or insulting as it will affect your brand persona.
Not Enough Testing
Make sure to test the chatbot frequently so as to ensure that it is ready for the consumers. Check how long it takes to respond to the queries, how much load it can handle at a time, and so on. Also, test a few queries that are not registered into the system because you cannot predict all the queries of the customers.
Before launching it to the market, let your acquaintances use the chatbot and minutely listen to their feedback. Depending on it, you may need to modify the chatbot.
A/B testing is yet another option to check the efficacy and engagement rate of the chatbot. It will give you real-time feedback about how the chatbot is driving user engagement.
No Improvement
Set and forget is not the right approach when it comes to chatbot development. You need to constantly monitor the performance and engagement of the chatbot and improve it.
Here are two ways to improve the chatbot:
Firstly, monitor your competitors’ sites or sites from other niches. Check how they have equipped their chatbots. These insights will inspire you to drive something new to your existing chatbot.
Secondly, take your users’ feedback into account. Which is the most common query you are receiving from the users? Are they satisfied with the chatbot communication? Improve your chatbot on the basis of these insights.
Following the above-mentioned steps will help you to get a chatbot that supports a seamless business operation. Make sure to build a glitch-free chatbot and enhance user engagement.