The Importance of Conversational Design in chatbots

When we think of chatbots, we are quickly transposed to IT concepts such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning.

They are the terms of the moment and are associated with the bots, of course, but it is important to never look away from the essence of the tool: conversation.

Continuing our chatbots series, it’s time to talk about Conversational Design. If you missed the last post on the topic, it is worth checking it out.

Conversational Design is an indispensable step for you to build a consistent content strategy in a chatbot. This is what will engage and stimulate the user to use it, also increasing adherence to the tool. Follow our post to delve deeper into the subject.

What is and how does Conversational Design work?

Conversational Design is the development of a humanized language for machines, with the aim of making interactions more natural and enjoyable. The process involves from understanding the context of the client’s business to curating the content, which is the improvement phase of the tool.

See the steps just below: 

Immersion in business. 

The content team needs to do a process of immersion in the contracted company to understand their needs, how they operate and serve the end user, their culture, among many other points. This step is very important, as the bot developed must represent the brand very well.

Understanding the end user

Another step worth mentioning is the end user’s understanding. The team needs to gather data on the clientele so that it is possible to define a persona, who is nothing more than a fictional character who represents the ideal client of the company. It is with this persona in mind that we can define bot requirements and specifications.

Strategy Definition

After the previous steps, we set out to define the bot strategy. After all, the solution needs to really fit the needs of the end user, solving real problems. At this point, the Conversational Design team joins the development team to set goals for the bot.

Specification of requirements

This point can be considered as an extension of the previous one. Once the strategy is defined, it is much easier for the teams involved in building the chatbot to set goals, bot features and performance indicators that will be tracked.

Construction of personality

Defining the personality of the bot is fundamental, as we have seen, one of the main focuses of Conversational Design is to humanize the language to establish closer contact with the client. In this sense, it is necessary to develop the visual identity of the bot, its personality, the language used, among others.

Copywriting

After closing all the previous requirements, it is already possible to enter the UX Copywriting step. It is here that the production of content itself starts, that is, the creation of conversational flows, which simulate the interaction between a machine and a human. Tests are conducted to improve ways to respond to the user.

Content guardianship

Finally, with the structure of the bot arranged, we have the content curation. The curator is the professional who will keep the entire knowledge base of the bot constantly updated, as well as follow the interactions with the users to perceive opportunities for improvement, designing new conversational flows to improve the tool.

Good conversations generate more business

Establishing a good conversation with the customer is the new trend. After all, he expects an experience that is ever more natural, authentic, interactive and fast. A good example is the Facebook IQ survey that we show in our first post in the series. There, we saw a bit about the new and growing demand of social networking users for the exchange of messages.

In addition, many studies point out that end users prefer chatbot as the primary means of interacting with business as compared to other forms of communication. It is the example of the State of Chatbots 2018 survey, which showed that 69% of people prefer bots to communicate quickly with companies.

What can we get out of this? All these conversations generate more business opportunities. A bot can be programmed to generate and qualify leads and even conduct sales. If the Conversational Design stage is well developed, the ROI (Return On Investment) for the organization is guaranteed.

Design at the heart of relationships

The designer’s look at the conversation flows is another point that deserves to be highlighted in the creation of a chatbot. Contrary to what many people think, professionals in the field are not only interested in the quality or aesthetic appearance of the products, but mainly in facilitating people’s lives. This is reflected in the conversation!

During the conversation, it is critical to align customer expectations and needs with the company’s solutions and goals. The designer works to make this experience unique and happen in the most natural way possible. By mapping scenarios and thinking like the consumer, the professional can understand their pain and provide the most appropriate solution.

This is how it “fits” the problem that the consumer intends to solve with the solution of the organization. As we said at the beginning of the post, it is critical to understand the importance of this process. Creating a chatbot is not just an IT process but, fundamentally, content and communication.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence

Now that you have understood a bit more about the impacts of Conversational Design in building a chatbot, we can talk about the influence of Artificial Intelligence in this whole process.

Generally, a chatbot should be able to provide information to the user. The big challenge, however, is to develop a machine that can understand the intentions of the customer’s questions, maintaining the context of the dialogue and, in an ideal scenario, passing a precise response, just as a human would.

The subject seems complex, does it not? That is precisely why we decided to address it in more depth in our next post. To continue our series on chatbots, let’s talk a bit more about Machine Learning and the main trends on the subject.

Meanwhile, download our e-book “What is a chatbot?” to learn the basics on this topic!