Posted by Avoid fully open-ended conversations
Bots can get confused, and open-ended conversations can lead to a poor experience for the user. If your bot doesn’t have highly-advanced language processing, then an open-ended question like “How can we help you today?” may or may not work. Frankly, it could wind up going in a direction you don’t even predict.
If you take a look at Hello Fresh in Facebook Messenger, you’ll see that among the bot’s first messages to the user is an offering of a menu of choices: “Here are some common questions I can answer” Options include things like:
- How does it work?
- What does it cost?
- Are you gluten-free?
- Are you vegan?
- Give me a discount!
The user chooses any of these statements by tapping on them in the Messenger interface. Then the bot responds with an automated reply.
This method is the safest route to take and removes the guesswork from the bot’s replies since it knows exactly what to say, depending on which message it receives.