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Keep It Short, Simple, and Usable
- Keep the answers short - think about 90 -140 characters.
- Don’t use the long paragraph on your website - use plain language.
Make Your Information Usable
Readers use a chatbot with a very specific question in mind. If your chatbot messages run on you’ll quickly lose the reader’s interest and attention.
They’ve come to complete a task so keep the information concise and make it usable. In other words, just tell them what they need to know so a task can get a task done.
When you do need to provide more information (such as when explaining a process or a solution), keep it step-driven and succinct or provide the link to where the instructions are on your website.
Keep it Clear
Because there are no visual cues, every word your bot uses matters. You need to be confident in what a user would reasonably assume from your bot’s replies and advice.
Ask yourself and your colleagues whether messages make sense before deploying them.
Also avoid overly complicated words and phrasing, and, of course, make sure there are no spelling or grammatical mistakes. If your chatbot communicates with errors, your readers will go elsewhere.
Back to topPersona Not a Person
Readers will expect some personality but don’t get caught up in pretending the chatbot is a real person. Don’t use dialogue that sounds like it’s out of a manual or the response of a faceless institution.
Your bot is representing your agency (essentially as a person). Remember it’s a conversation, the user is talking to our bot.
Back to topBuilding Personas
These presentation is a shared resource that was provided at the monthly content managers meetings to educate about how to build a persona:
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Keep Working on It
The AI behind chatbots will continue to evolve and advance, and so should the content fueling the chatbot. It’s not a case of set it and forget it.
You need to keep improving, tweaking, and revisiting your messaging to make sure you’re creating the best customer experience possible.
Review your bot answers annually not just to make certain the information is accurate but to review the user feedback and revise those answers that were rated with a thumbs down.
Dom DoIT will send the agency contact for the Chatbot the questions and answers in the chatbot in January of each year so the agency can review the information and provide updates.
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