Five steps to follow to write your first bot's conversations

Get the basics of conversational design to build a personalized, human and attractive bot.

by Camille Franceschi in Guides

1 MIN READ | September 10, 2020

How to write your first bot conversations

Maybe you think it will take you hours to build a bot and you plan to delay the following week.

Or … Maybe you just need a simple guide to help you get started 🙃.

In this article, I will tell you the steps to fulfill to write your chatbot's conversational scenarios quickly.

1. Define your audience

Ask yourself and answer to those questions:

Who are your customers/users?
How did they land to your website/full-page bot?
What are their problems, needs and goals?
How do they try to solve these problems and achieve their goals?
What kinds of situations trigger these problems, needs and goals?
How do they talk to you?

With your answers, you can define the customer/user journey of your most essential personas.

2. Set a clear goal

Start by listing scenarios (use cases) in which users would find the bot useful.

Will you get the most out of your chatbot when used as a lead qualification tool, shopping assistant or for customer support?

3. Choose your chatbot character

This character is an extension of your brand and has to be capable of connecting with your target audience.

Think about every bullet below:

Representation/Aspect (You, your brand itself? Avoid robot images, it doesn't make it very serious, except if it's the purpose 🙃 )
Tone (confident, joyful, friendly?)
Personality (funny, competent, compassionate?)
Level of politeness

4. Outline dialogue flow

Focus on what your chatbot has to say and ask. You can tune the linguistic and conversational nuances later.

Write down the questions in a logical sequence with all possible answers and follow-ups to those answers.

This way, you are likely to identify missing paths and dead ends and add them to ensure that the conversation sounds natural no matter what path the user takes.

Logic jumps (to create different paths under conditions) and loops (to go back to a previous element of conversation) will give you all flexibility you need.