Technology and good quality human content creation are equally crucial for performance-driven chatbots

As the business world is learning the importance of effective customer engagement, techies are inclined towards “how to build a chatbot?” The ultimate objective behind conceiving, designing, developing and deploying artificial intelligence-based chatbots is to achieve high-quality & sustainable customer experience. It also empowers the service staff for fast-tracking customer query resolution. While people look to learn chatbot development, consistent and tactical content creation is a dire need for successfully building and running a chatbot service. Companies must invest their time material cost in building knowledge banks for the most probable customers. It can be directed from insights achieved from artificial intelligence, analytics, and type of content searched by customers. It makes a lot of sense because statistics suggest that 37% people use chatbots to know answers to questions in case of emergency.

Efficient, sensible content recycling

While looking for how to build a chatbot, you will find that they are equipped with pre-structured content which they keep on throwing when a similar type of queries and questions are put up by different customers. It is important to note that this content majorly finds its source from the content created for emails, telephonic conversations by customer service teams, web chats and online or social media-based customer engagement. It is essential to give a familiar feel for the customers to motivate better customer engagement. It can be quickly done by communicating with them through the content which they have ever read or put up in the form of queries during the past acquaintances.

It is one of the potent ways to understand how a customer thinks and successfully map his brain for predicting the next most valuable piece of content which a brand can post. It should be highly readable and give away much information in the most straightforward manner. This is typically like connecting the dots between the knowledge center resources of every brand or product (and services) with the question marks on the customer’s mind. It has its benefits of being more persistent on the customer’s mind and also builds a better impression by resolving their queries.

Apart from paving better possibilities of customer engagement, quality chatbot projects have also demonstrated instances where they have been great enablers for customer service management and customer care representative teams. Customer care executives find it much easier to understand the queries and overall thought process of the customer for the best possible human intervention.

Three-layer approach for customer engagement-

Customer engagement is quite tricky to conquer, and a lot of the initial success lies with streamlining the customer engagement strategies for higher sales. It can be effectively addressed with a three-layer embedded approach that can help every company at all skills of operation and quantum of customer engagement. Here is a tried & tested approach for helping you learn how to build a chatbot and enhance the customer experience.

1. Capable of providing the customers with fundamental and minimal Information

In the first layer among the three, there are quality driven chatbots which are the first point of access for the customers while they try to connect with any brand. The first layer is capable of providing customers with fundamental and minimal Information. They are helping brands to impress the customers with highly engaging query related information and a warm welcome. The layer also includes a comprehensive contact center solution which must include relevant IVR system that gives options according to the services or products of the company. The next layer of their respective customer engagement model involves customer service managers and representatives.

2. Resolve the queries of their customers in the shortest possible time

The second layer of this model involves cohesively working digital teams which are constantly helping businesses reach out to the customers. They also resolve the queries of their customers in the shortest possible time. This digital customer care representatives are equipped with CRM software and call center solutions alongside web chat and messaging platforms. It is one of the most crucial players where the core customer engagement takes place. The customer care representatives try to take information gained by quality chat boards and more precise information furnished by the customers.

3. Providing full-fledged credible information

It is the third and final layer of your answer to how to build a chatbot? It has a customer engagement model that includes a vast, fertile and knowledgeable bank of content which aims at providing full-fledged credible information. As 55% of users believe that chatbots give answers to simple problems, bank of content should have maximum coverage of topics which a customer is most likely to explore and search. It should serve them at any point in the given time during, before and after availing the service or product.

Drag down the risk of customer bounce off with appropriate and ample human intervention

Even the best of chatbots bring a considerable risk of compromised customer experience. It is not because of the lower efficiency, but there is limited access to only a handful of information which has been provided to them. There are instances when customers need an in-depth approach for resolving their issues. It might not be under the scope of a chatbot capability. It doesn’t prove to be inefficient in any way on a chatbots part. Instead, it is highly advisable to mitigate the risk of customer bounce off or an irritated, dissatisfied customer by involving professional agents and quality testing processes. It should happen under the supervision of customer care specialists and technology pilots. It will help you improve the information gain of a chatbot and also empower them to resolve customer queries for top-notch customer experience.

How to go about a chatbot development process with a chatbot development company?

The first important step on your transformation of how to build a chatbot is to filter, choose and hire the best Chatbot development company. Numerous competitors in the Indian startup ecosystem are providing a platter of services. We advise you to be highly vigilant, informed and familiar with their past track record by reaching out to their clients. For reaching a reasonable decision of choosing the right chatbot company, it is essential to assess their portfolio with presently deployed chatbots and related resources.

It is always better to go with a leading chatbot development company. As a customer, it is your right to get your Chatbot developed with the latest Chatbot development tools and a highly customer friendly development process. A typical chatbot development project should be attributed to outright collaboration among client and Co., transparency in communication and operations, and delivery of best possible customer value.

How should you go about a critical chatbot development project?

1. Chatbot inception

It is the first and foundational step in the chatbot development process. It involves in-depth requirement analysis, gauging the mind map of a majority of customers and also choosing the right development and messaging platform for your customers. This is a critical choice which must be made solely based on the statistics that indicate a high majority of user base coinciding with your most probable customers.

2. Customer engagement modeling and detailed planning

Before we directly jump into the development phase of our chatbot development project, it is essential that different possible user journeys are curated to avoid losing track on different paths of queries which a customer might want to choose. The possible paths of query resolution are nothing but user journeys or a set of interrelated questions which the users are most probable to ask. Indeed, there are numerous such sets of questions or user journeys which a chatbot needs you to know.  

How to create user journeys or query paths for chatbots?

A query path can be meticulously curated if we know:

• The ultimate end goal query which needs to be solved for the customer
• What all information is required for the chatbot
• What information needs to be provided by the user as an input.

Pro-tip: Despite of having a plethora of techniques for designing chatbots, one should rely on human interaction with the chatbot. The exchange of information between chatbot and human should form the basis of all possible user journeys.

3. Chatbot development

Quality driven chatbot development companies generally take an iterative approach while developing the user-generated paths and interaction mechanism into a final finished product. It typically means that slowly the foundation of the chatbot will be built and there will be numerous sprints. Each sprint comes with a validity of 2 to 4 weeks where all the planning will be done to incorporate higher level and complex functionalities; one by one. It is a process involving simultaneous development of the chatbot personality and the bot scripts which are to be hardcoded for a cumulative approach. The process involves using a natural language processor for making the chatbot context sensitive and helping it improve the customer experience whenever a new or an existing customer pings to the chatbot.  

4. Chatbot testing

Testing of chatbot generally happens in two parts. Firstly, it is done through performance testing and regression testing. While moving on from one front to another sprint. In this, all the functionalities are made to ensure that they are highly compatible and wholly integrated with the newly built features and do not cause any problem to work. The second part of testing includes a user acceptance test or UAT. It is an exciting process where, and they are tested against humans, and the responses are recorded. It is done to ensure that all the user journeys are hundred percent implemented by the programmer and a chatbot can deliver what it is asked.

5. Special & Third Party Features

The technology industry is continuously cruising towards sustainable chatbot offerings and has focused on solutions that meet the needs of cross-domain customers. Additionally, clients are advised to look for:

• 100 % messenger apps and SMS support
• A robust engine that allows for multifaceted conversation workflows
• NLP integration
• RESTful API for swift integration with any of the required web services
• Comprehensive chatbot solution that self-sustains and manages for you.

Conclusion

A chatbot is an immensely powerful tool which can help you unlock gateways to unlimited possibilities of customer experience. The finely crafted customer experience chatbot is a help to all the companies as customers turn up with sky-high expectations of service and have a low tolerance for slack in performance or user experience. It is apparent from the fact that 95% of consumers believe that chatbots are primary contributors to customer engagement.

Chatbots are very similar to any other tech solution, they have numerous backend functionalities that should be backed with complete integration. A good chatbot is the one loaded with highly informative content as it is one of the most important points of brand access for the company. To increase the overall effectiveness, the chatbot should be made highly context sensitive. It should be able to successfully gauge the importance of a particular piece of information at all points of time during a conversation.