Five chatbot mistakes eCommerce website make - How to get them right

By this time every one of us must have had an encounter with a chatbot, it could be a voice taking request for your credit card statement, or a friendly chat logging a service request for a faulty product or assisting you in rescheduling your flight tickets, etc. Chatbots are everywhere, and they've reformed customer service in particular and improved a lot more things in general for businesses. By 2020, nearly 85% of all customer interactions will be through chatbots. A part of their success comes from their ability to bring this great degree of humanity in the conversations.

80% of the eCommerce stores will have chatbots enabled by the end of 2020. But most of the time, businesses do not realize the mistakes they make while designing a chatbot. In this article, we intend to highlight the five most common mistakes eCommerce stores make with their chatbots and how they can avoid them.

Read also: Why Chatbots will be critical for the future of Business Intelligence

5 Most Common Chatbot Mistakes 

Pretending to be a Human

It may seem like a good idea to give your chatbot a profile picture and a name, assuming that the customer may prefer to chat with a human rather than a bot. However, this may fail the whole purpose of having the chatbot. For example, if the customer is expecting to speak with a human, and they realize from the conversation that they are talking with a bot, they will feel misled, and it may backfire.

It's always best to open about telling your customers that they are chatting with a bot. Knowing who they are dealing with helps them in setting the right expectation from the conversation. Customers expect a conversation that is prompt and precise, and if the problem is too complicated, allow your chatbot to contact a human agent. 

Download our eBook for FREE: “Global Software Development Rates – an Overview”.

Not having the Right Personality and Tone

Your chatbot must have a personality and voice that matches your brand image. The right voice and tone help your customer to have an engaging conversation where he feels comfortable. It comes from knowing who your customers are, where do they come from, and what is the language they use. 

For example, if your customers are young, give your chatbot a slang that a young person will identify with, or if your customers are enterprise owners, provide your chatbot with corporate jargon. Setting the right tone helps in giving a personalized experience to your customers.

Not having a strategy

Chatbots can do a lot of stuff for your business. It can be your customer support executive, helping customers with their queries. It can also be your virtual salesman assisting customers in choosing the right product. It all depends on your expectations and knowing how you want your bot programmed.

It is all about setting the right goals from the beginning and ensuring that it does what is expected from it. If you want your chatbot to multi-task, be clear about what are the tasks you want it to do. Rather than trying to make your chatbot do too many things, design it to do one job precisely.

Read also: 5 ways Artificial Intelligence can help small businesses

Not Testing Your Chatbot Enough

Test your chatbot thoroughly before you launch it on your eCommerce website or anywhere else. Without detecting and clearing all the errors and bugs will affect the end-user experience, and in the worst case, it can harm your customer relationship. 

It's best to release an early beta version to a selected group of customers to use and test. It will help you in garnering valuable feedback about the bot and give you a window to improve upon its functioning before its release. You must ensure that it is performing as per your expectations.

Looking for web or mobile app development services? Get in touch for a free consultation

Making your bot too assertive

Customers don't like a pushy salesman, and the same goes for a chatbot. Being pushy is the last thing you want your chatbot to be. Refrain your chatbot from making random and voluntary messages, and most of the time, it turns out to be more discouraging than engaging the customer.

Avoid spamming your customer, at best keep the prompt message simple, such as "Can I help You?". Make your chatbot icon obvious, and visible for the customers to click it naturally if he wants.

Bottomline

Chatbots can make your operations highly efficient, and they can function 24/7. Customers expect a conversation that's quick, accurate, and empathetic. Knowing your customers well is the first step to building the right chatbot, and wary yourself of the above mentioned are the most frequent pitfalls that businesses make while designing a chatbot. 

 Looking to build a chatbot for your business, get in touch for a FREE consultation.