It’s been said before: when you’re setting up Virtual Agent, remember that first impressions matter. Chat bot users tend to be wary of poor bot performance and are quick to abandon the chat if it doesn’t deliver what they need. So it pays to give them a strong performance right from the start of the interaction.
Here are five quick steps you can implement to help make that great first impression.
On the left is an out-of-the-box chat window setup and on the right is the results of some minor customizations.
Let's take a look at the changes and why they're important.
1. Add your branding
Adding your corporate logo, colors, and a custom bot avatar lets the user know who they’re dealing with. Check out the docs on how to configure your branding.
2. Get personal
There’s an OOB personalized greeting topic you can use to greet the user by name.
It pays to make it clear the user is interacting with a bot, and give your bot a name.
Here’s where the docs explain how to change the greeting messages in the greeting setup topic.
3. Set the tone
Start with a clear understanding of the persona of your virtual agent – one that’s aligned with your corporate identity. A good starting point is friendly, efficient and business casual.
In the video linked to in the resources below, Jamal puts it very well when he says: “think of your chat bot as a concierge, whose job it is to lead customers to the content they're looking for”.
4. Promote your most useful topics
With the Rome release, you can now easily and effectively display up to six topics before the ‘Show me everything’ button. There’s a 'promoted topics' tag under Custom Greetings and Setup.
This is a great tool for continuing the concept of setting the tone for the user – right off the bat you’re giving them an idea of what the bot can do for them.
5. Change the ‘show me everything’ button
It can be useful to change the wording on the 'Show me everything' button that lists all active topics. So if tweaking the standard wording on this button helps make your tone a little more authentic, then go for it.
Resources
-
Learn more at the Virtual Agent docs.
-
Check out the excellent tips in this Virtual Agent White paper from Victor Chen.
-
Here’s a fun video from HubSpot where Jamal shares some great chatbots tips.
