How to Improve Customer Perception of AI Chatbots

Chatbots have been around for a long time, but still many consumers prefer live human interaction. Here are some tips on how you can improve customer perception of your AI chatbots, including using natural language processing, adding personality and more.

SwissCognitive Guest Blogger: Zachary Amos – “How to Improve Customer Perception of AI Chatbots”

Chatbots have been around for as long as the internet, but for most of their history, they were more of a gimmick or a source of entertainment than an actual tool. Modern chatbots can offer information and customer support and even hold a conversation, but they are still haunted by the memory of the chatbots of yesteryear.

How can businesses improve customer perception of AI chatbots in 2022 and beyond?

Integrate Them Into Customer Support Positions

One of the best uses for chatbots is in customer support. While they might not be capable of solving all of a customer’s problems, these bots are useful for answering frequently asked questions (FAQs) or giving consumers access to their account information.

These tasks previously fell under the purview of customer service representatives, who are now free to turn their attention to other tasks that chatbots aren’t able to complete.

Utilize Natural Language Processing

Before the technology began to evolve, one of the easiest ways to spot a chatbot was how it spoke. The advent of natural language processing (NLP) – machine learning algorithms that can both mimic and understand how humans communicate – has made it easier to create bots that can hold a conversation without giving themselves away.

It’s not perfect and it can’t carry a conversion as a human customer service representative could, but it can fill in some of the gaps and make it easier to keep up with customer demands.

Give Them Some Personality

No one wants to talk to a customer service representative with the personality of a bucket of sawdust, which also applies to chatbots.

Take the time to give these bots some character. Focus on communication style, language choice, and mood and intonation to better mimic human speech patterns. Ensure these personality traits are carefully controlled and can’t be influenced by customer interactions.

Microsoft released a chatbot on Twitter named Tay in 2016 that was programmed to learn from its conversations. The collective Twitter audience turned Tay into a raging racist in less than 24 hours. There’s a fine line between giving the chatbot some personality and letting angry customers influence that personality.

Take Time to Eliminate Errors

Is there anything more irritating than having to read around typos when trying to get a problem resolved? What about being fed incorrect information that doesn’t fix the problem or only worsen it? There is a potential for error with both human representatives and AI chatbots.

While users can blame the former on human error, the latter is a problem with programming. Take the time to eliminate these errors before the chatbot goes live.

Don’t Make Them the Only Option

Getting questions answered quickly by a chatbot is fantastic, but they can’t do everything with the current state of technology. Don’t make chatbots the only option for customers to get their questions answered and their problems resolved.

Give them the chance to contact a live person by chat, phone, or email without making them hunt for it. AI chatbots are a fantastic tool, but they aren’t the be-all-end-all of customer support.

Utilizing Chatbots Moving Forward

Chatbots might have earned a bad reputation in the past, but pairing them with AI and machine learning turns them from entertaining toys into invaluable tools.

About the Author:

Zachary Amos is the Features Editor at ReHack where he writes about artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and other tech topics.