A recent article from Forbes entitled “The Truth About Chatbots,” discusses the positives and setbacks associated with the use of chatbots in organizations. Over the past few years, chatbots have become a crucial aspect of digital customer service. This article outlines the five criteria in ensuring the successful implementation of chatbots in your organization.
- Different chatbots, different strategy
Internal and external chatbots are different in many ways and serve different purposes. Internal chatbots are used within organizations to process information as employees typically do, such as human resources, IT, and payroll, to name a few. Unlike internal chatbots, external chatbots are domain-specific, meaning that they are designed to answer questions in a specific category, thus drawing from a modest knowledge base. In this sense, the smaller the domain, the more accurate external chatbots will be.
- Chatbots are not glorified search engines
It is important to understand the difference between utilizing chatbots for their search abilities and their internal “virtual agent” abilities. The simplest way to ensure chatbots are being used to their capacity is to ensure that if the chatbot itself is unable to solve a customer’s problem or question that the organization has a plan to transfer the conversation to and IT ticket to be addressed by a real employee.
- Data governance comes first
Like most artificial intelligence, a chatbot is only as intelligent as its information volume and quality. Thus, data governance is critical. It is important to ensure that information is accurate and relevant and to also appropriately assign responsibility to maintain such data.
- Bring the chatbot to the employee
Internal chatbots need to be available and accessible for employees in need of assistance. Chatbots should exists in all areas of interaction between employees and amoung organizational channels.
- Measure the impact of chatbots
In order to improve the quality of chatbots, it is crucial to track the progress both internally and externally. For employees, track the rates of engagement and adoption. For businesses, track how chatbots self-serve and self-solve issues through automation. An obvious yet important question to continually ask within your organization is, “why is a live person preferred over a chatbot in this situation,” and thus identifying the steps to improve the ability of the chatbot.
