Giving AI Guidance: Writing for Chatbots

AI in the workplace: writing for chatbots

If you haven’t found yourself writing for a chatbot yet, brace yourself because generative AI chatbots are about to level-up the chatbot game. Chatbots have arrived on the scene and marketing and customer support teams are widely adopting them. Today, you can use them to do everything from booking a flight to finding yourself a date to getting legal advice.

Forget clunky messaging and repetitive phrases. Today’s chatbots are increasingly dynamic and able to engage in more human-like conversation. It’s this conversational tone and the quick, responsive interaction that appeals to your target audience. They like to feel that they’re dealing with a real person, even though they know they aren’t.

Companies like KLM, H&M, and 1-800-Flowers know this approach works. They’ve found that chatbots create better customer satisfaction and higher conversion rates. Using them means that service times are faster. Plus, there are significant cost-savings when parts of customer service are automated. Given these and other benefits, it’s not surprising that 58 percent of companies in the B2B sector and 42 percent of B2C companies actively use chatbots.

Regardless if humans or generative AI is creating your chatbot script, messaging and dialogue has to be accurate, personable, useful, and as close to human as possible. Here’s a quick guide for writing chatbot conversations.

Provide the AI guidance in persona and brand voice

Your bot is an extension of your company’s identity. Just like your organization has a carefully crafted persona and brand voice, your bot needs to have a distinct personality. And that personality needs to come through in its messaging.

Think of your bot as an ambassador for your brand and create dialogue and responses that best reflect your company’s values and mission. They can be humorous, cheerful, professional, friendly — whatever fits best with your brand. Millennial and Gen Z consumers, in particular, have grown up with advancements like Siri, and are very used to chatting with bots.

Once you’ve determined your chatbot’s character and personality, the words should flow much more easily in the bot’s own voice. It’s fine to be creative, but don’t dial up the humor too far. Conversational UI is meant to be helpful and fulfill a specific goal. Don’t let jokes distract your customer or turn your bot into a gimmick rather than a tool.

Keep content short, simple, and grammatically correct

Chatbot users generally don’t like reading long blocks of text and prefer quick replies. If your messages run on, you’ll quickly lose their interest and attention. It’s supposed to be a conversation, so allow users to talk and ask questions, rather than firing lots of text at them.

Like a real conversation, you should use short sentences and break up your answers into different messages. When you do need to provide more information (such as when explaining a process or a solution), keep it clear and concise.

Because there are no visual cues, every word your bot uses matters. You need to be confident in what a user would reasonably assume from your bot’s replies, advice, and conversation flow. Ask yourself and your colleagues whether the bot script makes sense before deploying it. Also avoid overly complicated words and phrasing, and, of course, make sure there are no spelling or grammatical mistakes. Just like content on websites and marketing material, customers hate seeing typos and poorly written content. If your chatbot communicates with errors, your customers will go elsewhere.

AI content personalization

Don’t think you can just copy and paste existing content from your website or marketing material and recycle it into chatbot dialogue. Customers will see through this immediately. Instead, start by using the person’s name and any personal information they’ve shared and always speak in a one-to-one manner. It’s also best practice to use inclusive language.

Your bot is a character with a personality.  So don’t use dialogue that sounds like it’s out of a manual or the response of a faceless corporation. Your bot is representing your company (essentially as a person), not communicating as the company. Remember it’s a conversation, the user is talking to your bot, not reading your website or using your app. Try to create a personal connection to the person engaging with your bot.

AI chatbots can also make interactions feel more personal by using information from past chats and customer profiles. They look at things like previous conversations, purchase history, social media activity, and preferences to customize their responses. This helps them recommend products, answer questions, and have more natural, personalized conversations. As they interact more with customers, they keep learning and improving, making each experience better and more tailored.

Keep working on it

The AI behind chatbots will continue to evolve and advance, and so should the content fueling your chatbot. It’s not a case of “set it and forget it.” You need to keep improving, tweaking, and revisiting your messaging to make sure you’re creating the best customer and user experience possible. As chatbots become more popular, customer expectations will continue to rise. Think of your bot as a living personality that has more to say and bring it to life with your content. If you can do that, you’ll be well ahead of the curve.

And for extra help developing or refining your brand voice, check out our comprehensive guide Watch Your Tone. It’s chock-full of practical advice from some of the world’s most noted tone of voice experts.