How do you make a chatbot personal?

“A chatbot is not personal” - It is one of the many prejudices about chatbots that we hear. Although technology could never fully replace personal contact, chatbots do not have to be impersonal. In fact, our customers say the chatbot feels like a real colleague, and that website visitors sometimes do not even notice they are talking to a chatbot. How do they manage that? In this blog we give you our golden formula for a personal chatbot.

Where chatbots come into the picture

The consumer who expects a sky-high response speed: that is the problem customers who start with us are wrestling with. Large players in the e-commerce market mean consumer expectations are continuously being adjusted. With ‘live’ chat people expect live chatting, and a customer service agent answering immediately. And that is not strange: research shows that the average waiting time for live chat is 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

Is that expectation not met? Then irritation rises. A chatbot offers the solution: the customer gets an answer immediately. Even so, the ‘personality’ part is what often holds companies back from starting with a chatbot. And that happens to be exactly the part we put a lot of attention into.

Technology with an edge of personality

A chatbot may well be a digital colleague; it can still have a personality. The more ‘human’ the bot comes across, the more familiar and personal the conversation it has with your customers feels.

How do you make a chatbot personal?

What actually makes a chatbot ‘personal’? During the onboarding process we take our customers through various aspects that are crucial to a personal chatbot. Below we explain a few of them.

First of all: who is your chatbot talking to?

That the chatbot has to fit your company, its house style, norms and values, is of course logical. The bot has to be an addition to your company. Perhaps even more important than that: the bot has to be a pleasant conversation partner for your customer. That is why it is important first to map out the customer. Is this a man or a woman? What role does your customer have in their company? What is their level of education? Try to capture as many details of your customer as possible, so that pleasant communication arises between your customer and your future digital colleague.

Make the chatbot a person

What do you think of when you think about someone's personality? You probably think of things like gender, name, age, family or friends, interests or hobbies. Try to determine these things for your chatbot too. We can imagine it feels odd to ‘invent’ these things, and perhaps you are even thinking: nice idea, but not for me. Even so, these points give both your colleagues and your customers a better picture of the chatbot. Think here of your chatbot's avatar as well.

The tone of voice

What tone does your chatbot strike with the customer? Perhaps you have already established a tone of voice within your company. Which aspects of it can you carry through to a chatbot? Think here of questions such as: does the chatbot answer questions with many or few speech bubbles? Does the chatbot give short answers, long answers? Does the chatbot use emoticons or GIFs?

Want to know more about personal chatbots?

With every customer who starts, we fill in a canvas for the chatbot's personality. The three points we mention above are part of it. Are you curious about the rest of the canvas? Then take a look at our whitepaper on how companies use chatbots successfully.