With thanks to major digital advancements, customer service has evolved and there are now more ways than ever to communicate with your audience and customers. AI voice talkbots have become a particular favorite as a means for offering customers immediate, straightforward, yet economical service when it comes to over-the-phone contact. With limited waiting times and an inanimate (but seriously efficient) middle-man, talkbots fulfill both the needs of the customer and the company. This form of AI is advancing at an extraordinary level, quickly developing to approach more diverse and complex tasks with ease and competence, from using the customer’s name to confirming and modifying appointments or setting up product returns.
The optimized user experience is incredibly cost-efficient. A team of bots takes the pressure off the human team, who are then more able to provide customers with the specific assistance they require.
However, producing the right talkbot to fit your business needs can be a little more complicated. In this article, we provide a checklist for whittling the perfect talkbot for your company or brand. So, let’s discuss how to design a talkbot.
Why do you want a talkbot?
As AI technology has become widely acknowledged as part of the customer journey, users are less hesitant to succumb to the talkbot experience. Anything to make the communication quick and painless for the customer is a major attribute. Coincidentally, contact center advisors are relieved of an influx of questions they may not be able to instinctively answer, unlike voice AI. As well as offering an enhanced customer experience, talkbots are also consistent, practical, and agile to customer needs. Through infinite technology and data that make up their fabric, they are experts on every call. Meanwhile, the voice AI component drives the ability to recognize voice cadences, inflections, and feelings, and deliver a refined and dependable service – ensuring the customer always leaves happy.
But what other business goals could a talkbot help you to accomplish? This will be determined by the business needs, aims, and competitive edge. Say you have a call center with 50+ human advisors; talbots reduce the atmosphere of stress and optimize call duration by acknowledging precisely what the caller wants, and taking the appropriate action. So, where will a talkbot cultivate value in the customer journey in the context of your brand? Whether you need a team of bots in the selling department – readily available with detailed product information, or more in the area of post-purchase assistance, it’s important to outline the goal of the talkbot. You may then shape their expertise around the needs of the company.
Will your talkbot be manufactured in-house, or will you be employing a talkbot builder? The creator’s degree of competence will reflect in the features you’re able to access. The stylistic choices you make from the beginning – from its ability to pick up on human utterances to using the customer’s name – will contribute to the concluding product. And the final talkbot design will be a part of how well you accomplish business goals.
Who will the users be, and what are their needs?
You likely have a target consumer. At this point, you should consider the most effective approach for the voice AI talkbot to build a rapport and communicate with them at a personalized level. Concurrently, it should be blended with simplicity; callers want to quickly solve their queries and move on.
Think about your customers such as their age, gender, profession, culture, language (a SWOT analysis would be beneficial here). Consequently, ask yourself where are your customers? Are you going to build your talkbot to encompass a localized or global offering? Therefore, should you apply an NLU (Natural Language Understanding) component to produce a geographical-adaptive service that acknowledges local dialects? In which case, you may require localized language trainers. Perhaps, instead, it will engage with a set conversational path, therefore, maintaining a more general disposition.
Ultimately, it boils down to how comprehensive the talkbot needs to be in identifying and reacting to customer needs; will it answer queries singlehandedly, or will it build a picture and pass this on to a human advisor?
How far will the talkbot be part of the customer journey?
Your devoted talkbot will act as the first impression of your brand’s level of call center assistance, but how long will its provision of service last as part of the journey? Should it simply gather information and send the customer to the next appropriate advisor, or should it take them on a richer, more intuitive path to accomplish their needs? This must all be considered in the design process. The exciting thing is, voice AI has the capability to do both!
The algorithmic driving force of a talkbot allows it the capacity to engage, inform, and to teach (to a certain degree), depending on the topics you decide to map. In the design stage, you should cover how elaborate the talkbot delivery of service will be. Your talkbot may simply retrieve the necessary information, then guide the customer to the right advisor. Alternatively, it may be an intermediary of your brand and will focus on a plethora of likely user questions and queries. Another beauty of talkbot technology is in the ability to recognize the caller’s needs in realtime – it can switch and change the delivery of service, advice, and assistance as it evolves throughout the call.
Design the user flows
Talkbot contact should be as streamlined as your website UX. If you decide to implement an NLU component, an AI voice can identify user semantics and accent. When it comes to AI voice, the offering can be as limited or limitless as you see fit. You can design a more simple or elaborate journey, depending on the implementation of certain technological components. Just keep in mind, your talkbot helps to carve the customer journey from the first point of contact on a call.
Talkbots refine the customer journey, so communication should develop in a direction that is concise and straightforward. Keep the conversation simple and options limited, but create a flow that ensures each query obtains a solution.
How will the talkbot fit in with your company?
The choices that you make throughout the talkbot design process will influence the result. As the talkbot will become a primary member of the service team, you should identify how it will fit in; it needs a persona!
The design of the talkbot should enable it to match the personality of your business while personalizing the customer experience. It should not only speak the same language as your consumers but also the language of your business, with its service approach and tone reflecting your vibe. Is that more formal, or congenial? Serious or lighthearted? Warm, or to-the-point? Consider the ways your talkbot will communicate and enhance the customer experience into one that is unique to your brand.
It’s then a matter of cultivating a personality for the bot. What kind of human utterances will it have? Which gender and accent should it have? How will it apply a conversational flow and emotional connection within the context of its transfer of service? One goal of employing a talkbot is to create a deeper connection with your customers who put their trust and invest their time and money in your brand or business – in turn, you want to award them the best call experience possible.
Using talkbots to humanize the service experience
Ultimately, the final design of the talkbot should balance efficiency with affability, conciseness with attentiveness, and practicality with personality. The all-round customer experience that is shaped by the talkbot will be integral to the impression of your company. This is both in the way it communicates directly with customers, and how it functions ‘under-the-hood’. In conclusion, the time spent on the design process of your talkbot is an investment into the customer experience you aim to give, and this can be either terrible or fantastic.
