5 Ways to Clean Your Chatbot This Spring

KaylaMatthews
Chatbots Life
Published in
4 min readApr 10, 2019

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Springtime means warmer temperatures, decluttered houses and more open windows. It also happens to be an excellent time to freshen up your online technologies, specifically chatbots.

For some reason, these online tools tend to be the most neglected parts of web design. Too many webmasters create these bots to assist their business online and launch them too early — before they’ve been adequately tested or had time to develop fully. As a result, customers are unhappy and companies are left trying to redefine their brand and reputation.

You can avoid all these headaches by taking some quick action to ensure your bot is up to speed and primed for performance.

Check out these five intuitive ways to clean up your chatbot this spring.

1. Under-Complicate the Functionality

One of the first ways to freshen up your chatbot is to take a thorough look at how it functions. Does your bot ask a lot of questions, seeming to run in an endless circle? Would it be faster for a user to interact with your chatbot or to find the answer themselves on your website? These are some essential questions to ask yourself as you reassess the performance of your bot.

On a similar note, the main thing you should be considering is the interface and how users engage with it. User experience (UX) is talked about so often because of its importance. If your chatbot is too confusing or complicated to use, no one will want to interact with it, meaning wasted time and money on your part.

Top 4 Most Popular Bot Design Articles:

1. How to Quickly Improve your Chatbot’s Retention & Engagement

2. What 10 Billion Messages can Teach us About Making Chatbots

3. ChatBots — The Rise of Conversational UI

4. Chatbot Conference 2019 in NYC

2. Create User Testing Groups

User testing is a crucial part of any development stage of a product, but you might not realize that you can test your product on user groups at any time. The goal in user testing is to receive feedback or insights you’ve been blind to. Create a group of users to test your product and provide detailed feedback on usability, functionality, performance and more.

3. Take Advantage of Your Platform

Does your website’s platform contain additional features that could enhance your chatbot’s performance? Look for tools such as buttons, forms and location sharing. Instead of requiring a user to hold an entire text conversation with your bot, you can limit the number of questions asked with the support of additional tools. With fewer questions asked and therefore less time engaging with the bot, users will think they’ve quickly received their answer.

4. Utilize Natural Language Processing and AI Technologies

Want to really make an impression on your users? Enhance your bot’s communication skills with natural language processing. More likely than not, your current website visitors probably think your bot has no personality and is too one-dimensional.

By coaching your chatbot with advanced processes and AI technology, you can get it to understand the intent behind a user’s inquiry as opposed to identifying predetermined keyword phrases. You will begin to see a higher engagement level between users and your chatbot once the conversation and exchange of information become more natural and accurate.

5. Diagnose and Troubleshoot Your Bot

Finally, a real quick and easy way to freshen up your chatbot’s performance is to consult technology designed to troubleshoot. The Widget Diagnostic Tool from ManyChat is designed to scan your chatbot and diagnose all possible areas of concern. It even includes troubleshooting instructions, giving you the ability to fix any errors on your own. No longer will you need to request the help from a developer to dissect the issue with an adequate turnaround.

Make it a priority this spring to evaluate your business’s technology — including your website’s chatbot. With updated functionality, beneficial tools from your platform and better communication skills, your chatbot can improve your customers’ online experience and make your business thrive like never before.

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tech and productivity writer. bylines: @venturebeat, @makeuseof, @motherboard, @theweek, @technobuffalo, @inc and others.