What is a conversational interface?
The chief benefit of conversational interfaces in customer service is that they help create immersive, seamless experiences. Customers can begin a conversation on the web with a chatbot before being handed off to a human, who has visibility into previous interactions and the customer’s profile. Conversations from any channel can be managed in the same agent workspace. A conversation designer makes interactions with chatbots and voice assistants more humanlike.
On a graphical interface, users can follow visual and textual clues and hints to understand a more complex interactive system. However, with a chatbot, the burden of discovering bots’ capabilities is up to the user. You can only know a chatbot can’t do something only after it fails to provide it. If there are no hints or affordances, users are more likely to have unrealistic expectations. Simple questions get answered immediately, and customers with the more complex ones don’t have to wait as long to speak with a human representative. With the growing concerns over the safety of user data, maintaining the privacy and security of personal data becomes one of the major challenges of conversational interfaces on the business side of things.
What’s a conversational interface?
To define the right tone of voice, go through the resources your audience frequently visits — communities on social media, magazines, media outlets, and forums. However, when building a virtual agent for a company, make sure its tone of voice goes in line with corporate policy. To help guide the development of the application, gather and evaluate feedback from a limited audience that is typical of the actual end users of your UI. You can learn a lot from your initial model or prototype of conversational UI.
Everybody was empowered to give their opinion, and we were able to bring focus to what really mattered. Because of the general lack of information and framework around chatbot experience design at the time, I decided to take notes that I could use in future chatbot projects. Although voice user interface (VUI) is often part of chatbot design, this particular project used only text, so in this article, we’ll focus on text-based chatbots. In addition, maintaining privacy, ensuring inclusivity, and meeting ethical considerations can be challenging. For example, messaging applications (like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger) serve as the perfect environment for chatbots and other applications. The role of a conversation designer is like that of an architect, mapping out what users
can do in a space, while considering both the user’s needs and the technological
constraints.
Best practices for implementing a conversational user interface
CUI is usually automated but despite this automation, you can almost believe there is a human at the other end of the screen, responding to you. ChatGPT and Google Bard provide similar services but work in different ways. Learn how to build bots with easy click-to-configure tools, with templates and examples to help you get started.
Define all parameters and leverage conversational user interface to build a platform that encourages customers to speak comfortably with the brand. Based on the cooperation principle by British philosopher Herbert Paul Grice, these rules for making a conversation are equally important both for AI-powered voice assistants and basic Facebook Messenger bots. So, Google Assistant in a Google Home smart speaker is an example of voice UI (or VUI), while Google Assistant in a smartphone that understands both text-based and voice-based commands is conversational UI (CUI). It is excellent for self-service as it provides a range of options from which you can choose.
The evolution of user interfaces
However, with the latest advances in conversational AI, conversational interfaces are becoming more capable. Chatbots understand customer queries in simple, natural language and thus can’t reason with customers or determine context. Compared to conversational AI systems, chatbots are rudimentary but can still support various use cases. Businesses can approach this with a micro-perspective by breaking down a conversation and focusing on intents when building the platform. To design a CUI from the micro-view is extremely pragmatic and useful for businesses whose end-users have clear, distinct needs.
The bot should manage the conversation to guide the user towards their goal. Using closed-ended questions, where users can select either “yes” or “no,” can aid in accomplishing this goal. That way, your conversational interface would make the user feel as if she is chatting with an actual human being. Designing for Conversational Interactions requires a thoughtful approach, prioritising natural language understanding and user engagement.