Chatbot
“If you are not speaking with your customers, your competitors might be”
Bachelor Project, 2018
Client: Novicell, digital agency.
Focus points of this project:
Lead generation
optimizing communication touchpoints
appearing approachable
increasing interaction on the website
convincing potential clients to initiate the first contact
Target audience: B2B
Introducing: Novie
Problem Statement
“How might we implement a digital concept, which will increase the usability and engagement on Novicell’s online platform and optimize the evaluation process for potential clients?”
Solution
“We can..” optimize the experience and engagement without making any changes on the website,
“.. If we” implement a …
chatbot.
Process
The basic principles of design thinking will be applied throughout this project. The process has not been following linear path, since each project is unique and should be treated such.
Personas (B2B context)
B2B clients often have a bigger focus on service, availability, building relationship. They include more strategic consideration when searching and evaluating potential products and suppliers.
Insights:
Customers have frustrations with traditional online experiences:
websites are difficult to navigate
answers to simple questions are hard to find
wasting time
bad functionality
People are getting accustomed to on-demand, real-time services and want answers without losing valuable time.
If customers will not receive the service they want they might just turn to competitors.
These trends are also apparent in the B2B context.
Concept solution
Novie, the chatbot
Objective: Encourage initial contact
Dialog form: Vertical and goal-oriented (less risk as the bot is limited to certain topics)
Vocabulary: Grammatically correct, business terminology
Tone: Assertive, direct and friendly
Expectations of how AI can contribute to the human world are huge. Humans have always dreamed of creating the “Robot best friend” to interact with. However, technology has a long way to go for this kind of AI experience to be available for the mass society. Still, the future for AI looks bright with many major companies investing passionately in the area.
Most people who have interacted with a chatbot before have experienced the limitations of the software. Human language is extremely complex, and most bots cannot move far beyond responding to basic requests.
Uncanny Valley
Combining technology with human features and life-like language might be seen as desirable but it can result in the negative consequence of entering what is called the “uncanny valley”. This is a phenomenon, which describes the point, where a robot or character goes from being cute and likable and instead becomes creepy to us. It is documented that creating a humanoid object, which appears too life-like, can make us humans very uneasy. This happens when we catch little elements like a dead gaze, stiff movements or conversations without real consciousness behind it, which reminds us that it is all very much not human
To prevent this feeling, I decided to not insert the picture of a real human face in the avatar. Instead the avatar will be designed in a cartoon-like design technique. At no point will the chatbot pretend to be a living human and it will be communicated in the intro message that it is just a virtual assistant. This will also lower the expectations from the user to more realistic levels and hopefully make it easier to forgive potential misunderstandings.
User testing: Card sorting
The aim of the test was to define, improve and validate customer intent and optimal conversation flows of the chatbot. The participant showed the highest preference for “specific employee”, “e-mail”, “address”, and “services” with 4 out of 6 placing them in “must have”.
Chatbot Personality
Brand characters are sometimes seen down upon as something childish, however, it is an area within advertising which is growing continuously successful and deserves to be taken seriously
Visual identity
The first sketches were a mixture between alien, spaceman and a robot. This was based on my stereotypical image of a chatbot.
Insight: Humans relate to humans
Research showed that humans characters are more popular than any other category. We can better relate and empathize with them.
I, therefore, chose to make the chatbot human:
flat, cartoonish style
eye-contact signifies competency and trustworthiness
Naming Novie
Mixing and matching parts of the words related to Novicell´s brand, support and robot technology. Alternative names included “Cella”, “Novi”, “Devicell”, “Jabbot”, “Supbot” or “Servicell”.
Novie is:
gender neutral
not a real-life person name
Split Test Validation
„Which variation would you prefer to engage with?"
A
A: Chatbot implementation
B
B: Original
Results
67% preferred version A over version B
This insight validated the preference of the chatbot
Value Proposition
The square side of the model showcases how the concept solution match with the customer profile. Here customer jobs are linked with “product and services” in the solution which enables the user to fulfill their tasks. Further, is illustrates how the concept helps realizing potential gains by providing “gain creators”, which match the ambitions of the users. Lastly, “pain relivers” responds proactively to the obstacles and frustrations a customer might encounter.
Natural Language Processing
Trial and error and then more trial was applied especially when it came to building the conversation structure of the chatbot. I would have to anticipate every single way a customer might be phrasing a question and write them out. Then I would come up with a response that would fit all the previous questions. This would be repeated for all the essential intent a customer might have. The smart algorithm of natural language processing will help this process a lot but there is a huge workload behind writing out a unique chatbot. Every input created meant testing it to see if the right response would appear.
Training phrases examples
The functioning prototype 1.0 used to be available through the software Dialogflow by Google.
Reflections
When I started this project I had no idea how much work would go into creating a functioning chatbot.
I would therefore have established some more constraints and limitations from the start. This would have ensured that I would have time to dive more into the user research which the company could have employed after my project was done.
I believe the visual identity of Novie could have been designed better and made digital. I would have liked to work more on the expression.
My final hand-in was well aligned with the requirements for my education and I received a 10. however, in retrospect, I would have liked to work more closely with the company and their specific needs. Creating a chatbot was not something they currently had assigned resources for and it was not implemented after I ended my project.
I truly enjoyed my time at the company and greatly appreciated their enthusiasm for my project and allowing me space for my personal exploration and development. I learned a lot from their approach to problem-solving and team spirit. Cheer!