Creating Personality for your Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Chatbots
The pandemic came, arrived and pushed businesses to think differently especially with how they interact with technology especially in light of marketing.
A McKinsey and Company report found that businesses pushed their technology development by 7 to 10 years due to last year’s biggest issue. With the lack of human interaction due to lockdowns, many faced having to be laid off.
With the lack of workers and face-to-face communication, owners faced a problem on how to deal with customers online. That is when they turned to other channels. There has been a surge of popularity with chatbots as a consultation channel and digital faces within the internet community. Let us find out about them more in-depth!
What Exactly is AI and Chatbots?
The definition of Artificial Intelligence has changed from the past compared to now in the modern-day. Back then, it was simply deemed as a machine being able to do what human intelligence would assume for it to do. That in itself is a highly broad definition. Today, many consider it to be more specific. An intelligence so to speak is about the ability to adapt and improvise under new environments and circumstances. In this definition, AI is about the ability to learn new things just like how we as humans learn and build intelligence.
A Chatbot is something we might have all seen in passing or given us a message that has popped up usually at the bottom right corner of our computer screens on most websites. Some of you may have even used it and they have come a long way from the underwhelming base it had from back in the day as they were merely prototypes that had to be developed. It is simply software that is used to conduct online chats either via text or text-to-speech form. Many of them appear as easy-to-consume small messaging boxes that we are used to due to our instant messaging habits. They have become numerous due to many website builders creating availability for chatbot tools.
What Can They Do?
Chatbots are used to provide human interaction where needed. They can lessen the amounts of queries for real-life operators, help consumers and answer general amounts of questions one may have. They can either be Rules-Based, AI or Live Chat which is operated by real-life consultants (usually utilized by sales companies). Rules-based chatbots are like a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ type of ordeal where you are required to pick a question or ‘path’ and can be understandably pretty rigid. AI chatbots are utilised more often and are capable of interpreting information that comes via the interactor. Live Chats that are operated by real-life inputs are basically just a 2-way instant messaging system between consultant and consumer.
Why Do They Need a Personality?
Well, why do customer service providers need to be polite and kind when interacting with customers? It makes a memorable experience of course! This is the same understanding when it comes to AI and Chatbots. Perhaps it is a waitress’ personality or a sassy story from a host that made the night memorable. Social media techniques also undertake this ‘personality’ for their brand image with a large example being Wendy’s Twitter and the occasional humorous jab here and there.
It can tire people out to be asked the same thing over and over again. Being people never change how a conversation even starts from a chatbot then proceed to slap it on with no editing, things can get stale quickly. It shall become more and more common as well as the generations go on with rising popularities of things like virtual YouTubers were not seeing a real face but still having a real interactive personality comes into motion.
Add some market differentiation to your product and make sure you know how to operate your chatbot. Sometimes simple, intuitive, easy to understand things can go a long way just like how a simple change to an introduction from a chatbot might be that small difference that communicates your brand personality better.
It’s a work from anywhere world and a machine can operate at any time, day or night from anywhere.
Image source: Shutterstock (638342005)
