Set the big picture
- Who is your audience? How will they access your chatbot?
- What is your chatbot value proposition?
- Describe the user experience:
- Is it push or pull or both?
- What is the nature of the content?
- How long is the user experience?
Understand the interactivity plan
There are three types of messages your chatbot can send. We recommend creating a user experience with a mix of these pushed messages. The right mix is designed with the user’s needs and the business case of the chatbot in mind.
- Non-interactive: This is a message sent by the chatbot that does not ask a question. An example of this could be a reminder, a resource, or a motivational message.
- Multiple choice: There are many different ways to ask a multiple choice question (ABC, Likert, True False, Fill in the Blank, etc.). The benefit of asking a multiple-choice question is you know the user’s response. That allows you to create different chatbot answers based on the predicted user responses. These types of questions are also typically easier for users to answer and so see higher response rates.
- Open-ended: With an open-ended question, there is no way to predict a user response. These types of questions require more thought from a user and so often see a lower average response rate. However, having a user reflect and provide a thoughtful answer can be an important part of a chatbot conversation. Since there is no way to predict a user response, your following chatbot answer must be generic and acceptable for any answer. We suggest acknowledging that they responded and then pivoting or providing universally applicable details.
Prepare to onboard users
Joy from Dell put it perfectly when she said: “You can have a great script, great chatbot, but no one knows about it.” Some ways you can incorporate this in your larger chatbot authoring design plans are:
- Pitch the value (Roula from IC Axon shows an example of that here)
- Invite in-person/in-session
- Message in a high-priority channel
- Set expectations for user experience