5 Common Chatbot Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (Insights from 100+ Customer Cases)

The rise of AI-powered tools like ChatGPT and ERNIE Bot has driven a surge in the adoption of conversational AI. Businesses are increasingly integrating chatbots into their websites and products to streamline operations and improve customer engagement.

At SaleSmartly, we connected to ChatGPT in February and have since developed an advanced chatbot feature that enhances automation and service efficiency. While chatbots offer undeniable advantages—such as reducing labor costs and boosting service speed—our analysis of over 100 customer cases reveals several common misconceptions about chatbot design. These mistakes not only undermine the chatbot’s effectiveness but may also frustrate customers.

In this article, we’ll explore five frequent chatbot design errors and provide practical solutions to help you create more effective and user-friendly conversational AI experiences.

Continue reading below👇

Regardless of whether you set up the robot for sales or to answer customer questions, be careful not to put your customers in a conversation situation where they have no choice!

Although robots can save a lot of trouble for real people, scripts that only "ask questions" to customers without providing "reference options" can easily cause fans to interrupt the conversation and make the robot lose its purpose of solving basic problems. While open-ended questions can gather valuable insights, a lack of predefined choices often leaves users unsure of how to proceed, leading to disengagement.

 

Solution: The robot script design must have a “button” to guide customers!

To enhance the shopping experience for customers using a robot, it's beneficial to streamline the product search process by categorizing items based on gender-specific needs. You can design buttons for men's and women's fashion to help customers find the products they need step by step. Here's how to implement this: 

 

The response is long and boring, which makes it hard for the customer to read. When designing dialogue, please pay attention. Do not have too many words!

In order to shorten the conversation process, some users often reply with hundreds of words, which makes it difficult for customers to quickly grasp the key points. Customers have to manually scroll to the beginning of the message to know what the topic is.

As shown below, the user uses a lot of words to answer the question "What is SaleSmartly?". The overly long message may make it difficult for customers to find the topic and cause visual fatigue.

 

Solution: Appropriate segmentation, good use of buttons, pictures, and external links

Solution: Design the conversation script first, then set up the robot!

Before building your chatbot, draft a well-structured conversation script. Start by listing essential processes, categorize main and subtopics, and plan how they connect logically. Avoid duplicate content and ensure every dialogue branch ends with options to return to the main menu or navigate back.

Allow the conversation to develop naturally. Explain what is happening and where the customer is going. Make suggestions for what they might do next and gradually reveal features and elements they can take advantage of.

◎Pro tip:

At the end of each branch conversation, remember to let the customer return to the main trunk or the previous level of content, otherwise the conversation will be interrupted and cannot continue!

In addition to the script content and structure, if you want to create a better customer experience, you should pay attention to the following: Be careful when letting robots pretend to be real people to have conversations!

While a friendly, human-like tone can enhance user engagement, over-personification often confuses users, leading them to mistake the chatbot for a human. This can result in dissatisfaction when the chatbot fails to meet expectations.

Solution: Avoid over-personification and provide an option to switch to “real customer service”

Ensure users can easily identify whether they’re interacting with a bot or a real person. Include an option to escalate the conversation to a human agent when needed. Transparency builds trust and helps manage user expectations.

 

While chatbots can effectively handle a variety of common and repetitive inquiries, it's important to recognize that they are not a one-size-fits-all solution. Expecting chatbots to replace all customer service personnel entirely is unrealistic. 

The most effective way to utilize chatbots is by integrating them as a part of a broader customer service strategy. Chatbots can be programmed to manage and filter initial inquiries, providing quick responses to standard questions. This setup not only speeds up the resolution process for customers but also allows human customer service representatives to focus on more complex issues that require a personal touch.

This approach benefits both the service team and customers. By offloading routine queries to chatbots, customer service agents are spared from the monotony of repetitive tasks, potentially leading to higher job satisfaction and efficiency. For businesses, this can translate into reduced labor costs and improved customer service quality. Therefore, when used judiciously, chatbots can enhance the overall effectiveness of customer service operations without completely replacing the human element that remains crucial for certain interactions.

The above are just some tips, but any conversational apps you build need to be based on user research during their initial definition and scope. They also need to be tested repeatedly to ensure they work in a beneficial way rather than simply being annoying, repetitive, or a hindrance.

I hope that through the organization of this article, everyone can have a better understanding of content construction, and after referring to the suggestions in this article, you can immediately start building your own chatbot!

If you’re interested in learning more about designing chatbot conversations, sign up for a free trial of SaleSmartly!