Once, AI was seen as a far-off, futuristic technology seen only in movies. But technology has accelerated at an exponential rate over the last decade, and conversational AI has completely changed the way that brands and customers interact every single day. While the many benefits of conversational AI have positioned it as a must-have in most business’ CX strategy, that doesn’t mean that these systems are without their fair share of risks. Enterprises that are serious about effectively implementing conversational AI technology must take these risks seriously and take steps to conduct thorough conversational AI testing and mitigate potential issues before customers are impacted.
Cyara helps businesses optimize and automate their conversational AI development.
From defects that escape into production that cause wide-scale CX issues and downtime, to more serious incidents like a hacker using a chatbot to spread malware and steal sensitive information, there’s certainly more than meets the eye when it comes to including conversational AI into your tech stack. Your customers expect seamless interactions, free of issues that can compromise their privacy or create a disruption.
It’s up to you to ensure your contact center is prepared to perform rigorous chatbot testing or fall victim to security incidents. Below, we’ll discuss how you can shift your mindset and begin testing with confidence.
Shift Left
While your contact center is likely familiar with the challenges that arise when conducting IVR testing, it’s important to acknowledge that conversational AI testing is in a league of its own. Unlike IVR testing, which only required testing a fairly limited number of potential customer interactions, it often feels as though conversation AI is limitless.
Conversational AI-based systems are dynamic, constantly learning new ways of responding to customer inquiries. Whereas IVRs are limited to preset responses, chatbots open the door to countless CX pathways. And, while this immense scale is appealing for its ability to provide your customers with personalized CX that can address a wide range of queries, it makes the task of conversational AI testing feel like Mount Everest.
So, what can you do? Many contact centers have decided to “shift left” with their testing. This means that their teams are integrating frequent and thorough testing throughout the development, as opposed to waiting until the later stages of development. By adopting a shift left mentality when it comes to conversational AI testing, you can identify defects much earlier in the process, before they have the chance to compound and grow into larger issues the longer development continues. In turn, this allows you to eliminate time-consuming and costly rework and backtracking.
Generally, this frame of mind also enables you to expand your testing coverage. While automation makes it possible to test the various pathways of your conversational AI-based tools, starting your testing earlier in the process allows for overall efficiency, accuracy, and timeliness.
End-to-End Chatbot Security Testing
While it’s crucial to begin testing early in the development lifecycle to catch errors before they grow and create significant issues down the time, it should remain a priority throughout every step of the process. As concerns for security and privacy rise in importance, it’s become abundantly clear that your journey of testing your conversational AI’s security doesn’t end after you’ve deployed your chatbot. In fact, it’s only the beginning.
By implementing the shift left mentality into your development, you can proactively eliminate errors and vulnerabilities that might put your customers’ private information at risk. But continuous testing is necessary to ensure that your infrastructure remains secure against emerging vulnerabilities and methods that hackers use to gain access to sensitive data.
Types of Conversational AI Testing for Security
When testing your chatbot, you can use these techniques to verify your chatbot’s security:
- Threat modeling: With the threat modeling technique, you can understand how a malicious actor might target your chatbot’s potential vulnerabilities to steal sensitive information. Threat modeling allows you to proactively identify areas of concern that will need to be addressed, so you can take corrective action and mitigate the threat before a hacker exploits your chatbot.
- Penetration testing: Also called a Pen Test, a penetration test identifies potential flaws in your chatbot’s infrastructure. This type of test provides a safe way to exploit a vulnerability in your chatbot in a controlled environment, so you can gain a better understanding of potential weaknesses.
- Regression testing: Regression tests verify that your chatbot remains functional, even after an update or change to existing code. This test type is necessary to confirm that your chatbot is still performing as designed and hasn’t experienced any changes that could hinder performance or create a new defect.
When you make security testing a priority for your conversational AI development, it highlights that you’re committed to keeping your customers protected against malicious actors. And, in turn, this will promote a stronger relationship with your customers.
Automate Your Conversational AI Testing with Cyara
In today’s landscape, there seems to be a new security threat lurking around every corner. So, there’s no better time to start performing thorough conversational AI testing or improving your existing processes. And leveraging the right tool is key to ensuring successful chatbot development while reducing cost and assuring quality at scale.
Cyara’s comprehensive conversational AI optimization solution is designed to help you automate every stage of your chatbot development. Our end-to-end chatbot testing and monitoring tools are here to help you assure that your chatbot performs exactly as designed, including robust security and privacy testing. Test your conversational AI-powered tools with confidence, so you can eliminate defects, protect your customers against malicious actors, and deliver high-quality interactions.
When it comes to implementing conversational AI-driven technology into your contact center, it’s vital to make sure that you’re protecting your customers’ sensitive information against emerging threats. Discover how Cyara Botium can help you automate your conversational AI testing, training, and optimization today.
