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Writing a Quality Chatbot Script: Detailed Guide

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Writing a Quality Chatbot Script: Detailed Guide

To automate communication with website visitors, you need to create a script for the chatbot that accepts appeals. The quality of the dialogs affects the success of the business – positive impressions increase conversion, while negative ones can discourage potential customers. This ultimate guide will tell you how to write a perfect chatbot script.

How to begin work on a script for a chatbot

The first step is to set a goal. It depends on the characteristics of your company and its product. For an online store, the target action will be a completed purchase, for services – an appointment, for a news website – a subscription to a newsletter.

However, not all chatbots are for commercial purposes. Technologies changed commerce and dictated its rules. Today, chatbots can provide reference information on request, assist in navigating the website, tell you about the terms of service, help new employees get accustomed to their jobs, and perform other tasks.

It is crucial to choose a platform for creating the bot at this stage – the chatbot’s capabilities will depend on it. Or you can hire a front-end development team, and they will help you with creating more detailed chatbot software if you’re not interested in platforms. Some platforms have ready-made templates for dialogs that can be assembled according to the constructor principle and adjusted to the needs of your business.

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Choosing a tone of voice for a chatbot

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A chatbot needs a personality corresponding to the company’s field of activity and target audience. In a cosmetics store, the tone of voice should be friendly and recommendatory. In a video game catalog – lively and direct. If you are responding to personal trainers, be energetic and enthusiastic. And in a car dealership – emphatically businesslike and neutral. If the chatbot’s personality is rather friendly, nonverbal means of communication (emojis, stickers, pictures, and even memes) may appear in the responses.

Understanding whether a chatbot can be integrated with your CRM or Zapier is crucial. If this is feasible, the dialogs should be personalized by adding a personal appeal to the user and recommendations based on browsing history.

Careful handling of erroneous messages should be provided. In many ways, this is where the chatbot’s personality comes into play. Not recognizing the other person’s message, may apologize, make a joke, or suggest that the request be phrased more accurately. Consider which response would be more appropriate. And also, localize your chatbot.

5 steps to write a script for chatbots

1667789106 369 Writing a Quality Chatbot Script Detailed Guide

A chatbot responds to a client according to the script. It doesn’t know how to improvise and rearrange communication if something doesn’t go according to plan. That’s why it’s essential to think out a clear, consistent, and logical communication script for the chatbot:

  • Define your tasks and goals. What do you need the chatbot for? For example, this escape room in SF uses a chatbot to help their visitors make a choice, consult on questions, place an order, or handle customer service requests. Write a greeting. Offer help and ask specific questions. For example: “Hello! What kind of coffee do you like?” And add the answer options: “Grain” or “Ground”. This way, the customer will understand that the chatbot understands the parameters of the product and will reduce the search time.
  • Make a structure for the chatbot. To make a structure, detail the user’s journey from the first visit to your website and analyze what information they will need. For example, they can need an assortment of products with prices and descriptions, help and advice on choosing products, or information on payment and delivery. Be sure to include the ability to quickly contact the manager in case the chatbot can not help.
  • Create the tone of voice of the chatbot—for example, friendly format, humor, compliments, and mood emoji. Make communication easy and natural based on the characteristics of the target audience. This builds trust and sympathy and draws people in.
  • Write parting phrases. End any conversation in such a way that the user is left with a pleasant experience with the chatbot. For example, “Congratulations on your purchase,” “Thank you for your choice,” “I was happy to chat,” “Thank you for your time,” and “Have a great day”.

Following these 5 steps, you will quickly write a job aid for a chatbot.

Tips on how to write scripts for a chatbot

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First, make a list of frequently asked questions. If you have already worked with a call center, you can use its reports as a basis. If not, search for the FAQs of businesses that work in the same field. Run a series of website tests – you can even ask a few people you know to place a test order.

The dialogs for the chatbot should be structured. Combine them by topic. Then enlarge the list again, forming 2 to 5 sections for the main menu. Now you have everything you need to write a script. It should be written as a flowchart, which can be made in your chosen service or even in a text editor.

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1667789107 567 Writing a Quality Chatbot Script Detailed Guide

Creating a structure for chatbots is a complicated and responsible job that requires knowledge of psychology, basic programming principles, and sales techniques. It is desirable to involve a professional who knows how to build the right algorithms. But if your business is gaining momentum, you can start independently. The following tips will help you:

  • Choose a discreet and friendly way to start a dialogue. You usually see a help button when you open the website. A separate chat window opens if the user browses many web pages or takes a long time to take targeted action.
  • Use quick action buttons where possible. Make it easier for the user to type responses. But don’t forbid typing the request in the text – some people find it easier to communicate this way.
  • Put closed questions, which imply a limited number of answers. For example, in the store – “What kind of case do you want: black, white, gray, or a bright shade?” In a beauty salon – “What service are you interested in: a haircut, manicure, or depilation?”
  • Try not to build flowcharts deeper than five levels. If a person has to perform more actions, he or she begins to get tired of the endless clicks and distracted from the dialogue.
  • Be sure to think about the possibility of returning to one level and instantly returning to the main menu. Make sure that any parts of the flowchart coordinate with each other in both directions.
  • Make an algorithm for closing the session. In addition to performing the targeted action, the client can close the window, leave the message unattended, or confirm that the chatbot has answered all his questions.

As for the text content of the dialog, it should be composed using simple words. Do not try to sugarcoat the terms, trying to emphasize your professionalism – such a tone of communication may seem contrived and arrogant. After writing the script, you should reread it several times. Consider whether you can simplify things for the client. Check the length of each message. Ideally, it ranges from 50 to 150 characters without spaces.

How to debug a chatbot on your website

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Even a perfectly scripted dialog can leave a negative impression because of annoying mistakes. Therefore, it is essential to think through “escape routes” for the chatbot. Alternative scripts are needed in the following cases:

  • Suppose the user’s requests go beyond the authority of the chatbot. You can offer him or her to contact an operator or leave a phone number for customer feedback.
  • Suppose the selected action does not work. For example, the data from the CRM won’t load. It is better to see a neutral reference than %USERNAME%.
  • Suppose the operator is unavailable. Instead of keeping the customer in suspense, offer him or her to leave contacts. He or she will be contacted as soon as the service starts working.
  • Suppose the user can’t decide which option is right for him for a long time. After a certain amount of time, the chatbot may provide help or recommendations.
  • Suppose the customer does not respond in a structured manner, e.g., writing every word in a separate message. You can automatically return it to the previous level of dialogue or ask it to clarify the request.

To improve the chatbot, look for successful examples of chatbot dialogs, set up analytics on your website, and test regularly. Once you discover typical errors, don’t leave them in your reports, but adjust the script, keeping the visitor’s attention and improving conversion rates. But if you need a full-scale chatbot, it is better to use an AI chatbot.

Takeaways

Writing scripts for chatbots is complicated and responsible work at the intersection of several professions. If you are just starting in this industry, you should

  • Define your tasks and goals
  • Write a greeting
  • Make a structure for the chatbot
  • Create the tone of voice of the chatbot
  • Write parting phrases

Adhering to our tips, you will write a powerful chatbot script.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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