5 Things to Consider When Choosing If a Chatbot Is Right for Your Organization

by dmonzon | Aug 20, 2020 | Strategy | 0 comments

We don’t have to go very far into the virtual world in order to find ourselves interacting with some kind of chat automation tool.

Chat apps subscribers continue to climb higher than social media app subscribers and with that there’s a surge in the need for brands to leverage the use of automated, personalized chat at scale.

I’ve been immersing myself in the micro-niche of chat automation bots since the summer of 2017. Having witnessed the evolution of this space and the perception that people tend to have around chatbots, here are five things to consider when choosing if a chatbot is right for your organization.

1. Know the rules and know your audience

Your organization is unique. It serves a defined audience and it’s governed by different sets of rules. Likewise, your audience may or may not be receptive to automated chat, or the chat application where your bot resides. Last thing you want to do is automate the sound of crickets because no one is interacting with your chatbot, or worst case: jeopardize your organization’s social media accounts due to an honest mistake that could have been easily avoided.

2. Define the functions of your bot

Just like a new hire, define the functions that you would want your chatbot to perform. You should not try to automate your processes from A to Z, but you and your team can define parts of the communication you are having with your members or students and gradually enhance that experience for the end users and for your staff as you expand on the functionality of your bot.

3. Humanize your bot

Understand that a chatbot is an extension to your brand’s voice. Your chatbot needs to represent well those values. It is crucial for your bot developer to immerse into your brand’s voice and code of conduct, if you will. Bot copy shouldn’t sound robotic or repetitive, but rather friendly and short. Get consistent feedback from your team to let developers know they’re on the right track or if they need to make corrections.

4. Strategy

So now you know the rules of engagement, you and your team defined some basic roles for your bot to perform, you gave it a persona that matches your organization’s culture, now what? Chatbots can reside on your website, they can trigger conversations from a Facebook livestream or it can drive webinar registrations, reminders, etc. Define the medium where you want to have your chatbot reside and engage with your tribe. Also have the capacity in-house to be able to respond to incoming queries as conversations are now happening at scale. Be attentive of where the bot-to-human handover occurs within the process.

5. Safeguard your data

When people interact with your chatbot, it generally saves users data that he or she has knowingly made public within the app. It is best practice to migrate and back up your bot subscribers data outside of the platform and be mindful to adhere to all the data privacy rules and entities that govern your organization and your locality.

Author: Danny Monzon, SMS

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