Content for Chatbots
by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool
The other day I had the “pleasure” to communicate with a chatbot for quizzes. That wasn’t very good. Several times we hit the conversation dead-end. It made me wonder who writes the content for such chatbots and how to make it more efficient and user-friendly. I already wrote about chatbots in technical communication. This time we’ll discuss the content for chatbots.
Bots are a relatively new user interface made to help humans. It’s another type of help desk when you can’t complete a task. Technical writers play a vital role in the development of AI applications, chatbots included. In that aspect, a person who writes the content for bots should understand the “journey” in detail. Finding the right words depends on the competence of a technical writer. One needs to know what they are trying to accomplish and what gets in their way.
To get started, technical writers should begin by answering the following questions to:
- Grasp and outline the customer’s lifecycle. Consider the purpose of the bot and the value it would add to a website;
- Analyze the audience. It is important to consider who you are designing a chatbot for. Is there a typical age, gender, or nationality? What level of education do you expect users to have? Analyze the customer’s needs, emotional state, and tasks along with the information the customer requires to achieve their objective;
- Identify where the customer needs to accomplish an objective;
- Distinguish the sources of content and data and how they will be accessed;
- Find a conversational tone for the chatbot cause a chatbot is a conversation, not a technical document;
- Determine the best channel to that content — a website, a mobile device, etc.;
- Estimate the content and reorganize it to answer specific questions; Keep bot responses brief. Long messages are harder to read and may cause unnecessary scrolling.
- Plan the possible questions the customer may have at each step and structure dialog to prompt the correct question;
- Test on actual customers. Test all possible user paths.
- Gather feedback and implement it.
- Improve.
Creating a Content
The conversation flow is critical in communicating with a chatbot. So plan the conversation. If you want to give users more options, create several flows.
Here are some points in the conversation plan for your chatbot that you might want to add:
- Start with a greeting.
- Inform users that they are chatting to a bot, not a human.
- Describe the bot’s capabilities and limitations.
- Use a maximum of three consecutive bot messages before allowing users to respond.
- Use fallback statements when the bot does not understand the user’s intentions.
- Make it easy for users: for example, clicking buttons is easier than typing responses.
- Avoid dead ends.
Clearly, there’s more to it than I wrote here. It’s all about the resources that you have and willing to spend on your bot. And the role of a technical writer is crucial for this process. Maybe you have something to add. I’m waiting for your comments.
Have a nice day!
Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp.com — best online documentation tool for SaaS vendors
