IBM notes on Chatbot writing

Go back to [[Building AI-powered Chatbots with Watson]] or the [[Main AI Page]], or consider an alternative take on Chatbot conversation design from the [[Feminist Chatbot course's]] page on [[Conversation Design]]

Tone and personality

Consider the audience and purpose of the chatbot

• Imagine you're training a human agent ^fd84d6
• What is appropriate for humans is appropriate for bots
• Remember to own your bothood

Constraints

• Give your bot a name, anchor it in reality
• Again, own your bothood, never pretend it's a human
• Always be specific in what the bot is able to do
  • Never say "How can I help you?"
  • Always say "I'm here to help you with opening hours, membership queries, and placing orders."
    • You can't even promise to train a human agent in all things that could come from the question, "How can I help you?" Let alone a chatbot.

3 Rules

1. Avoid Yes and NO answers
   1. It's very easy to be wrong
   2. It's much easier to look bottish
2. Incorporate part of your user's question in your response
   1. The user feels more understood
   2. The Chatbot looks more understood
   3. Using emoticons for empathy is allowable
   4. Incorporate user input
3. Provide succinct and accurate answers
   1. Nobody like to read walls of text
   2. Especially if they're wrong
   3. If you need to infodumb, link to a page on your site
   4. You can embed HTML to link

A bot answering with a yes or no response

a bot answering with some empathy and user input