10 Common Chatbot Mistakes You Should Avoid
With plenty of chatbot solutions available on the modern market, bots are now more accessible than ever. Today, anyone can make a chatbot in minutes, even non-coders.
However, creating a truly effective chatbot is not a straightforward process. It comes with some challenges and roadblocks you should be aware of. Let’s look at the most common mistakes businesses make when using chatbots:
There is so much buzz around chatbots that sometimes companies overestimate their capabilities, trying to automate as many tasks as possible.
It’s true that chatbots are an effective automation tool. However, there are situations where human participation is indispensable. When the issue is too complicated, customers prefer dealing with an actual person rather than a bot.
Also, it’s not a good idea to use one chatbot for too many tasks at once, even if those tasks are simple.
First of all, by assigning all possible tasks to your chatbot, you risk losing focus. Such an approach lacks structure and generally leads to poor results. Even if your chatbot is AI-based, adding additional functions and complicating the bot’s logic increases the risk of errors and reduces the accuracy of responses.
Secondly, such a chatbot will look messy and disordered from the customer’s perspective. Imagine a bot that offers help with technical questions, promotes the company’s products and services, collects customer feedback, conducts market research, and plays quizzes with visitors — and all this within the same interface. This lack of focus can leave customers feeling confused and disoriented.
At the other extreme, many companies underestimate the capacities of chatbots, assuming that they can only be used for answering customer FAQs. However, chatbots go far beyond just giving responses to standard questions.
Today’s chatbots are multifaceted and multifunctional. Apart from automating customer support processes, they open up wonderful marketing and sales opportunities. For example, chatbots can:
Use these capabilities to take full advantage of chatbots. But don’t try to combine everything in one bot (see mistake #1).
Chatbots are designed to mimic human communication, and with the development of technology, it is getting harder and harder to tell whether you’re talking to a bot or a human.
That’s why it’s especially important to always warn your customers that they’re interacting with a chatbot. Even more importantly, you should never try to pass your bot off as a human agent, no matter how intelligent and sophisticated it is.
Imagine that you think you are talking to a human agent for a while, but then it turns out to be a bot. We guess you would feel tricked and annoyed. So would your customers.
People want openness and honesty from brands. According to studies, 94% of consumers are more likely to be loyal to a company when it commits to full transparency. To maintain good customer relationships and avoid customer frustration, you need to always be honest with them.
Another common mistake is making chatbots that lack personality and tone of voice. Yes, a chatbot is just a program, but it doesn’t mean it should sound robotic. Such a bot will seem dull and won’t engage customers.
To make your chatbot more friendly and appealing, you can:
These tips will help add a human touch to your chatbot. But don’t forget about mistake #3: be transparent and make sure your customers know that your bot is a bot.
If you’re using a chatbot for customer service, it’s important to provide users with an easy way to contact a human agent. Let your chatbot help your customers with simple queries, but always offer an option to connect to a real person for solving complex issues.
According to the numbers provided by Aspect, 86% of users say that a chatbot should always have an option to transfer the chat to a live operator. This is quite understandable. With a human handoff option, customers can rest assured that they will always receive help without having to look for another support channel.
That’s why we strongly recommend using a hybrid approach that combines chatbots with live chat. Thus, you will achieve maximum efficiency, with bots serving as the first line of defense, and live operators coming to help when more serious actions are required.
People like chatbots for their speed and accessibility. To keep these advantages, use a simple and clear bot scenario. Try to be brief yet informative. Here are some tips on how to avoid overcomplicating your chatbot:
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is releasing a buggy and unresponsive chatbot.
Just like any other product, chatbots require testing before launch. You need to ensure that your chatbot scenario is working fine: there shouldn’t be any dead ends, uncompleted actions, or unanswered questions. Your chatbot should “understand” a user’s intent and provide them with the right answer.
If your chatbot uses a keyword recognition system, make sure that it is capable of recognizing the user’s question. Make sure you consider all possible keywords, including typos and slang words.
Another important thing to test is your chatbot’s usability. The interface should be clear, intuitive, and mobile-friendly to make it pleasant for users to chat with your bot.
Even if you conduct full-scale testing before launching your bot, it doesn’t mean you’re done. Chatbots are not a set-it-and-forget-it tool. They require continuous improvement, just like everything else in the customer service world.
It’s important to test chatbots and evaluate their performance even after launching them. To understand what you need to improve, you can perform A/B testing: compare different versions of your chatbot to see which works better.
A/B testing will help you choose the most effective chatbot design, placement on a page, scenario, tone of voice, and more. When analyzing the performance of different chatbots, pay attention to the following metrics:
A chatbot is a great engagement tool that can help you reach your customers and initiate chats with them. However, if misused, chatbots can ruin your customer experience.
It’s okay to send a welcome message to your website visitors or inform your customers about important updates. But if your chatbots terrorize your audience at every turn, they’ll just scare them away.
Try to keep balance. Use the right chatbot triggers to reach your customers only when needed, and don’t bombard your customers with endless unsolicited messages.
Not stating your bot’s functionality is another mistake that will harm its usability. It’s crucial to inform your customers about what your chatbot can do and how it can assist them.
If you use a menu-based chatbot, it will be easy. Your customers will get a clear picture of your bot’s capabilities from the reply options.
If your chatbot relies on a keyword recognition system, open-ended search, or even AI-based technology, it’s important to clarify what types of questions it can answer. It can be frustrating for users to ask the bot questions and not get an answer, especially when the same generic response is repeated over and over again.
Also, an open-ended search can sometimes confuse your customers. If they see just an empty input field, they may struggle to formulate their queries, so in some cases, it can be helpful to provide buttons with reply options to guide users. This will make the interaction more intuitive and user-friendly.
Creating a perfect chatbot on the first try is a difficult task, so don’t worry if you’ve made any of these mistakes. Continue to test your chatbot, make adjustments, and develop it over time.
If you don’t have a chatbot yet but want to create one, sign up for a free trial of Chaport. Here, you will be able to build your own chatbot in minutes!
