More and more company lies are changing and adopting to use of live chat bots in these times. These bots are amazing, exceptional to use and provide appropriate information like a normal person can. 

A chat bot or a conversational agent software interacts with customers thorough text and voice commands. Live chat bots create conversing fast and really helpful. 

Based on designing principles, consider 10 things given below while designing a Live chat bot- 

Bot’s Purpose

Make a list of the reasons and possibilities why you need a bot for your website. You must be clear enough about your needs to create a desirable and functional live chat bot. A live chat bot is a advance feature to ecommerce websites design, it helps your customers to put their quires quickly!

Think about the main purpose and figure it out. Once you are done with that, then start shaping your bot to fit those purposes. 

Chatbot Platform 

It is easier to create an acceptable bot with a functional platform. So once you are done with Why. Now you need to focus on How. How can you create a live chat bot. For that you need a platform- rule based or NLP platform. 

These platforms differ on the basis of how they interact with the audience. 

Rule Based Platform- In this case, chat is designed in a specific flow chart. If chat contains any specific word or conversation, chat bot is required to answer the way it has been designed to by following the flow chart. 

It is quicker, cheaper and an effective option than the other. It is actually transparent about its function and is preferred by users over NLP. 

NLP ( Natural Language Processing)- This bot has the ability to answer complex questions as well. It basically grows with every use and learns from its mistakes. It improves everytime it interacts with the audience. 

Understand the limitations 

Perfection is a little hard to achieve in this case. Admit that you have limitations and try to make your bot better. 

Taking the platform into account, you need to decide that very carefully. Rule based works on a multiple choice and well laid basis. Conversations are bound to go in a specific direction. 

Plus, it requires data to be entered in a coded form. One who is not a big fan of coding might find bot designing really difficult. It has big and exhausting documentation on tools. 

Give your Bot a personality and tone 

In case you create a bot and it is just a simple and boring one. People would never wish to use it. If your bot does not have a personality, people will not use it more than once. 

You need to shape your bot’s personality by taking in consideration a few elements. 

Moreover, it represents your brand and therefore, language must be well designed and acceptable. Understanding the brand image strategies and adding good features is a good idea for any business. It also improves brand image. 

Bots with human characteristics are preferred by users. Tone of voice and empathy hold a lot of importance while text is the main element. 

Dig the screenwriting principles to a bot more human-like. Focus on its role, specialty, character traits, name etc. 

For instance, Siri is an amazing bot designed by Apple. It is funny and witty and fun to interact with. 

Text like a Human

As stated earlier, you need to add more human-like characteristics in bot. You can define its character and add engaging dialogues. You can also check out phrases used most by your target audience and incorporate them in your designs. 

Invoking positive emotions in the conversations brings benefits to the brand. You can do that by saying the name of the person more often or doing the greetings. Make your bot smart and funny. 

Natural Conversation Flow

Design a flow of conversation beforehand. It must be engaging and at the same time should be able to solve queries quickly. 

Here, the main challenge that arises is to imagine all possible situations. What is bot supposed to do in time of critical or complex queries. You must spend a lot of time and think about this carefully. 

Further, It takes a little time to gather information on questions asked. Rather than creating silence, you can add a news or a fact about the service asked to fill in the gap. You can also add updates about the latest products or services. 

Media Elements

Adding visuals is very useful and important consideration in live chat bot. It has been found that visuals are processed 60000 times faster than text. 

Chat can be created more engaging and fun by adding visuals. For instance, if a person is asking about a destination. You can either map it out or send a picture of the driver to take them to their destination. 

Adding some customize visual like company’s customized logo would be more appealing to the user!

It adds humor to the conversation and makes it more bearable. 

But addition of visuals in a voice based bot is unacceptable. 

Bot Cheats

If bot provides knowledge slowly and in pieces, it becomes hard to deal with for the users. It is time consuming and does not give desired results fast. 

So you need to let your users know what kind of expressions can lead them to desired information in less time. 

Bots should give more information in lesser words as possible. Too much is not too good in this scenario. 

Long paras are unnatural and overwhelming. They make people leave abruptly. So, put time and effort in this one. 

Balance between Proactive and Reactive

So, the proactive approach is that the chat window of your live bot does not appear in an unacceptable position. Bottom right corner is considered the best. Humans do not close in such cases. You can then offer products and services related to the products being viewed by the user. 

While, if a person is searching for something and bot comes up, with much expensive and a little irrelevant option, it causes a negative impact. 

You must create a balance between providing what the person is searching for and the products and services of your own.

Switch from Bot to Human 

It is obvious that there may be cases in which bot might not be able to answer or provide acceptable solutions to the query of the user. 

This happens when a complex or critical query might be asked by a user. So, bot need to ask for human help to satisfy the customers. 

You need to give proper time and efforts to make switching from bot to humans easy.

Conclusion

Live chat feature is an extraordinary support feature to your business website. According to experts chatbot marketing also would be in function soon! Chatbots can do what email marketers and customer support do.