3 Questions You Need To Answer Before Building Your Chatbot

The emerging buzzword for 2017 in the digital marketing world is undoubtedly ‘Chatbots’. Over the last quarter, we have witnessed many ways businesses are using Chatbots to interact with their audience in the most effective way. However, for brands that are new to the idea of Chatbots the whole situation may be quite overwhelming.

Here are 3 questions you need to ask before adopting a Chatbot model for your digital space.

1. What role will the Chabot adopt for your business ?

Before answering this question it is important to know about the different types of Chatbot your business can adopt on the various social channels.

– The Assistant: This Chatbot acts as the user’s personal assistant providing crtitical information and answers queries that are usually pre-programmed. For example a restaurant could adopt a Chatbot to automate its reservation system or a travel agency can host a Chatbot for users to book their travel in the comfort of their favourite Messenger Application. This is one of the most popular types of Chabots in the market.

– The Conversational Bot: The sole purpose of this Chatbot is to strike a conversation with its audience. There are no pre-set tasks. However, this is not a recommended model unless a lot of time and money is invested in educating the Chatbot on every possible conversational topic.

– The Search Bot: This Chabot helps users find a particular set of information. For example, the Chatbot for a mall can help the user find exactly what they are looking by interacting with the Chatbot. Users can find a particular product or a particular article from a shopping or news website and more. The purpose of this Chatbot is to act like a search engine for specific topics related to the brand.

– The Complex Bot: This Chatbot is able to perform all the tasks specified above and more. This Chatbot is well versed in multiple topics and is able to provide a personalized experience to the user that interacts with this Chatbot.

It is always important to have a clear idea of what the Chatbot will help the business to achieve before developing your own. It is crucial to define which process can be simplified with this automation to build a better relationship with your audience.

2. What will be the personality of the Chatbot?

Establishing a relationship between a Chatbot and the user plays a great role in the success of a Chatbot. Therefore, it is important to ascertain what personality will the Chatbot adopt to make it more likeable and trustworthy among the users. The Chatbot must be injected with the values and persona of the brand itself and speaking with the Chatbot must make users believe they are interacting with the brand itself. This is what will help the user ultimately build a lasting relationship with the Chatbot.

3. Who will develop the Chatbot?

Let’s say the business has internally analysed the objectives of the Chatbot and how it will impact the goals of the organization. If someone is new to the Chatbot world, they may be unaware of who to approach to create a Chatbot. Should you opt to have a software company build your Chatbot or a dedicated Chatbot Agency? It is always recommended to go with the latter because the Chatbot Agency will be well equipped with the digital strategies needed to market the Chatbot, creating a personality for the Chatbot that matches the brand, even designing the the phrases it will use; as well as provide the technical assistance to develop and host a Chabot on the instant messaging applications.

With the numerous industry leaders using it to leverage their business in the digital space, Chatbots are undeniably the future in conversational user interfaces.