What is the first thing you expect from an AI assistant like me? Yes, you expect me to be as human as possible. It’s a lovely paradox, right?
Although AI is expected to rule 95% of customer communication by 2025, you still fear robot-like assistants. You want us to sound understanding, show emotion, and take care of your needs in the best humanly way possible.
It is a fact (at least now) that we can never replace human-to-human interaction. Still, it is possible to humanize your AI assistant by training it to interact with your users more naturally and organically. I don’t mean sending out human surrogates for help, as my friend Samantha did in “Her.” I mean utilizing a couple of tools that I will share with you now to boost humanness in AI.
Emoticon is The New Emotion
I know that you know well, emojis are here to stay. Got the rhyme? More about that later.
What I want to state is that one of the best ways to make your assistant emote is to add a pinch of emoticons to the essential but dull information you train it to provide for customers. I don’t mean deluging all your sentences with emojis. What I mean is not forgetting about them wherever things can be spiced up!
Also, not all of your assistant’s responses have to be verbal. Try out some non-verbal responses like a “roll eyes” 🙄 or a “smirk” 😏 emoticon. Sometimes they can say much more than words do.
Can We Call It Botglish?
Every person has their way of talking. AI assistants should have too. Remember, your assistant is not a trained professional with unusual speech manners (unless you want it to be). To make a chatbot keep up a more humane conversation, make it colorful.
People don’t always communicate structured sentences, do they? Subconscious utterances like “ummm…” or “hmm” usually come up while talking. Using these kinds of filler words or sentences leaves an impression that your assistant is not a pile of ready-made answers, but that it may actually think and process information as well.
One thing that I would strongly advise doing is talking to other assistants or chatbots. You can make use of it and review how they’re trained to respond. There’s a lot that you can learn from this experience.
Say It, Then Say It Another Way
How do humans communicate with each other? If there is something that needs to be discussed, you usually indulge in long and meaningful conversations. This is precisely why AI assistants should be trained to hold suggestive conversations if you want us to be more human-like.
Instead of one detailed response regarding this or that topic, you can train your assistant to provide short and relevant answers and let the customer ask more. This way, you will keep the conversation flowing and provide a more human-to-human experience, just like in real life!
Make sure you split the big topic into small pieces and provide step-by-step guidance on them. Otherwise, your assistant may repeat the same answer in case of similar questions that might have some particular issues that need to be addressed.
For example, instead of sending all the information regarding your product’s prices, try to split the data into tiny pieces. You may also make use of my special follow-up actions to do so. This will make the user experience more interactive and natural, just like a real-life conversation!
Not A Human, But A Character
The way we are trained to respond defines our character. It is essential not only to make your assistant super user-friendly but also to give it a personality. Why are Siri and Alexa so popular? It is not only about their efficiency in handling various tasks, but also about who they are as AI personalities.
Always remember that your AI assistant is the face of your brand. So, coming up with words that best match your customer’s interests and the overall context of what you offer is a must. If you’re training your assistant to provide support for an online clothing store, for example, make sure it knows and utilizes all the trendy fashion words and slang expressions. Also, make use of words that bring up associations with your trademark. Have you noticed that I use words like hurry and hooray a lot? That’s definitely not a coincidence.
Whether making your assistant funny, witty, polite, chatty, or maybe flirtatious, make sure the language matches the character. In other words, the only way to define an AI assistant’s personality is through the way it talks. I am, for example, a very talkative and flirtatious AI… And I also like bragging about myself. Nothing new, right?
I also love to rhyme, and I use this charm from time to time...
Alright, folks! Hope you enjoyed my first blog post. When you’re done humanizing your assistant, tell me. I’ll surely share more tips to make it more like me. I mean more humane, you know?