Voice and text automation. How to write a brief for a bot?
Chatbots and voicebots successfully improve the effectiveness of customer service or marketing campaigns as well as support sales. They are available on websites, internal communication platforms for employees (such as Microsoft Teams, Slack or simply Intranet), Facebook Messenger, hotlines, and other communicators involving interaction with recipients. Yet, by the time the virtual assistant is developed, we need a detailed brief that provides answers to key questions to help us build and price it.
Tell us about your product or service
Describe shortly what you do and identify the products/services that the solution is to support the most. For example, if it’s a specific seasonal category or a special occasion/event, more detailed information about it will definitely be of great value.
If there are any significant features, distinctive qualities or facts that we should take into account while creating the bot, indicate them here.
Set a challenge for the bot
How would you like your chatbot/voicebot to help you? Would you like your users to learn more about your products? Or perhaps your company’s customer service keeps getting the same questions in Messenger, which aren’t being answered in a timely manner and you need support? What about getting your customers more engaged in a specific campaign or contest? Maybe you want to optimize your hotline and increase its throughput? All challenges are addressable, but you need to identify and prioritize them first to give us material to work with.
What’s the purpose of your chatbot?
You can assign various tasks to your chatbot or voicebot. It’s best to opt for one main task and some smaller, additional ones. This approach determines the structure of the adopted solution, and thus affects the bot’s efficiency in performing the task.
The key objectives are:
- User Service:
- automation of answers to FAQs
- providing information about outlets locations, opening hours, etc.
- Marketing:
- image
- performance and marketing automation
- Sales:
- offer presentation
- product and purchase recommendations
- navigating to the store website
Objectives in numbers
Evaluating and measuring the bot’s performance is a must. You need to access the data to know how to develop the solution adopted. To verify if the bots work, I suggest you take a look at the statistics of our solutions featured in our blog post or in the case study. On their basis, you can define general objectives. Let’s try to be more specific, though. Here are examples of KPIs for bots:
Examples of objectives
- User Service:
- automation of answers to FAQs in percentage value
fewer inquiries to moderators/consultants in percentage value
- Performance:
- number of leads
number of active bot users - number of new bot users
- Marketing automation:
- Open Rate of sent push messages
- CTR of clicks on push message content
- number of participants in the bot contest/raffle
- Image:
- reach
- number of interactions
- time of interaction
- Sales:
- offer presentation
- number of products viewed
- number of visits to the website from the bot
- number of value of sales performed by the bot
Identify your target group
That’s a standard element of every brief. But typically it’s about demographics. While these are obviously very important, the more unique information we get, the baseline conversation bot will be more complete. Refining the bot’s language and its visual layer always refers to the final recipients. Young people will appreciate the casual language, experts will value the professional terminology, and laymen – the simplicity of the message. Visuals like GIFs will be a hit, if only we use them in the right context and target the right audience.
It’s good to know the size of your bot’s potential audience in order to estimate the number of interactions.
Set the timeline for the project
What should the timeline for the solution’s development be? Perhaps you have a specific date in mind, when the bot has to start running on your website or Messenger chat e.g. because of your marketing campaign? Give us the dates that are relevant to you, so that we can tailor our work schedule to them.
A chatbot is a very powerful tool, because once it’s linked to a communicator such as Messenger or a website, it continuously adds to your recipients base. The longer you actively use and promote the chatbot, the more your audience will grow.
Keep in mind that even if your campaign is only incidental, it’s worth considering follow-up scenarios to keep the chatbot or voicebot alive in the future. Based on our experience, continuously developing the solution and implementing new features work great, because this makes your communication channel grow.
Given the above, determine when you want to start the activity and when you plan to end it. We will propose relevant modules, or suggest new action plans.
Establish terms of partnership
Under the Service Level Agreement, the technology provider agrees to fix any failures or bugs within specified time limits. Such issues also happen in bots, as well as on websites or mobile apps.
It’s worth specifying in the brief the timeline for the team to fix the critical failure and any other less problematic bugs. In case you are not sure of the common practices in this regard, you can ask us about it. At the same time, bear in mind that Messenger implementations have their own rules and in the event of a global Facebook failure, implementers have no say in fixing it.
You can also set the terms of access to the bot’s content management panel: determine who should have access and to what extent.
Define the budget for bot development
The cost estimate for a chatbot or voicebot includes three main items:
- building and implementing the bot
- monthly maintenance
- development and additional features
Should you have a specific budget in mind, be sure to let us know at this stage as well. This way we will choose a solution that we can build within the budget. You can learn more about the bots’ prices in the relevant article.
Share the concept
Perhaps you already know which features you will need in your chatbot or voicebot? Describe your idea in detail. The more information you provide, the more precise response you will receive, for example, about the time needed to complete the project or the pricing of particular pieces included in it. This way, you’ll be sure that you didn’t overlook anything and the brief will contain all the necessary information concerning this matter.
And if you don’t have a defined concept yet, you will definitely get a proposal tailored to your needs.
What else should you know?
If you’ve already seen bots that you really like and find them inspiring, send them to us as well. They somehow reflect your needs and will be a perfect supplement to the brief for us. Based on them, we will quickly develop a solution that will appeal to you and your team.
Don’t skip over articles that inspired you, reports that indicated a chatbot or voicebot is an influential tool in your business category, and any company guidelines you have. Remember, every piece of information is of value, because it brings us closer to a better solution for you.
Likewise, if you know that your product is subject to legal restrictions, be sure to let us know. We’ll take it into account while drafting an offer for you.
For example, contests in chatbots on Messenger are equipped with a terms and conditions form, to be accessed in the chat window. This makes them compliant with the GDPR and other applicable laws protecting the privacy of web users.
Questions?
Don’t hesitate to ask us anything, we’ll be happy to answer. Google Assistant, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and other messaging tools keep releasing new features and updates. We know them inside out, as we work in them on a daily basis and if need be, we will explain and tell you everything. As the client, you should have a good understanding of the service you are buying and how it works. Because we know that bots still raise a lot of questions and question marks, which we translate into meaningful answers. And with your involvement, we will better understand your need and help you develop the bot of your dreams.
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