3 Common Chatbot Pitfalls to Avoid

The modern consumer is a tough nut to crack. An accelerated technological evolution has fundamentally redefined the customer experience landscape and the meaning of customer service excellence. Demands have increased (putting it lightly!) and consumers now have unwavering expectations for immediate resolution and immediate support from the brands they engage with – whether it’s their energy supplier, financial services provider, favourite retailer, or travel agent.

And this mandate is forcing change. It’s compelling business leaders today to reevaluate their support methodologies and adopt new tools, technologies, and tactics that cater to this new age of connected, empowered consumer.

One such example?

Chatbots.

The premise of these virtual assistants is simple. A logical maturation of the trigger-based automated marketing systems (think: email journeys) that nurture consumers through a set sequence of communications, they promise to provide instant answers to basic queries and provide relief for frontline support staff. Indeed, by offering an around-the-clock, self-service forum for consumers to access information and work through relatively small-scale issues (without waiting for an email or in a phone queue), brands can start to free up contact centre staff and give them space to process more complex situations. A win-win scenario if ever there was one.

The reality, though, is not so rosy. For there are no two ways about it: building and implementing an effective chatbot is extremely challenging. Getting the user experience right requires a great deal of cross-organisational collaboration and, all too often, businesses get bogged down in the implementation of the technology and pay little heed to the conversational architecture. The result leads to consumer frustration rather than consumer delight.

Here, we break down three of the most common chatbot pitfalls that brands succumb to.

Excessive Use of Jargon

Let’s not sugar-coat it: most consumers are averse to the chatbot experience. And understandably so. There are many virtual assistants today still built upon technical jargon and robotic language that lack any human touch or emotion, making them difficult to “converse” with. Patience levels among consumers are now thin; very thin – they want relevant, accurate, easily comprehensible answers to their queries in the first instance and when they don’t get them from chatbots, they inevitably turn to alternative, offline channels, which creates extra friction in the customer journey.

Lack of Audience Understanding

Crafting a successful chatbot that truly resonates with any given target audience requires extensive research and critical input from a whole host of internal stakeholders. Many businesses fall into the trap of running their chatbot in a silo, typically within a marketing department, and neglect to seek direction, ideas, proposals from design or product or sales teams. The result can be an inauthentic conversational experience completely out of tune with buyer intent or buyer needs. Not a great look.

Setting and Forgetting

Chatbots are founded upon the power of artificial intelligence (AI). And suffice it to say: new innovations in that space are springing up almost constantly – brands must keep a pulse on technological trends and be prepared to tweak and fine-tune their chatbots in line with market developments. AI is getting smarter all the time and a failure to keep pace with change is to risk falling behind the competition. It’s also important to regularly revisit and adjust the content within the chatbot workflow based on support insights, company updates, new product releases, consumer feedback, etc. In essence, introducing this tool is not a set it and forget it job; it needs ongoing attention and iteration.

“Sandy”: A Chatbot Case Study

Of course, not every brand gets caught up in these chatbot snares. There are those who have got the experience absolutely spot on.

Case in point: loveholidays and their aptly named virtual assistant, Sandy.

Indeed, Sandy stands tall in the world of automated conversational tools, in large part owing to its ability to hyper-personalise interactions. This chatbot, which is central to loveholidays’ support ecosystem, has been trained to greet every customer personally by name and tap into data the company holds about them (for example, purchase history) to craft a customised conversation that flows naturally.

The outcomes speak for themselves: a 70% resolution rate made all the more impressive given that loveholidays is the third largest travel agency in the UK, processing literally millions of conversations. Sandy has been proven to outperform human agents across a number of key metrics, including resolution time, time to handle inquiries, and overall customer satisfaction scores. It is also – incredibly – driving increased revenue for loveholidays through the upselling campaign built into its conversational framework. Proof that when executed right, chatbots can deliver a host of positive business outcomes.