For many business and contact center leaders, the decision to leverage conversational and generative AI-based CX technology seems like a no-brainer. In recent years, AI usage has skyrocketed within many industries, and recent studies predict that chatbots will become the primary CX channel for about a quarter of organizations.
Cyara’s conversational AI optimization platform empowers businesses to test and monitor chatbot and voicebot performance throughout the entire development lifecycle.
However, while chatbots and other AI-based systems are attractive for their ability to provide 24/7 service, bolster team productivity, and deliver cost-effective customer interactions, it’s critical to ensure that your organization’s AI usage is meeting customer expectations. While business leaders are ramping up their investments in chatbots, a customer survey found that 64% of respondents would prefer that companies not use AI for customer service, and the vast majority of customers (88%) have “major concerns” about AI.
What’s the reason for this clear disparity? To find the answer, it’s important to consider how customers are actually experiencing chatbots, and whether these systems are optimized to deliver excellent service that meets their needs. Businesses that leverage AI, but fail to deliver exceptional interactions, are at risk of losing customers.
The Importance of the Customer Perspective
Today, the majority of customers expect fast and seamless service, so they can receive answers to their problems and queries quickly and efficiently. While well-functioning chatbots have the capacity to deliver accordingly, simple defects and issues that emerge during the development lifecycle or in the live environment can create significant outages or other errors in your system, leading to increased frustration and dissatisfaction.
For example, a customer initiates an interaction with a retailer’s chatbot with the goal of requesting a return for an item. However, while the customer believes that this interaction should be quick, they become frustrated when the chatbot experiences significant delays due to a high-volume of traffic. Additionally, whenever the customer requests to speak with a human agent to handle the interaction instead, the chatbot is unable to escalate the issue. As a result of these issues, instead of feeling satisfied with their experience, the customer feels annoyed at the inconvenience, and may not have even been able to initiate the return.
From the retailer’s perspective, their team may be entirely unaware that an issue is occurring at all. If the retailer isn’t monitoring their chatbot from the customer perspective, they won’t know that their chatbot is malfunctioning until it’s too late and they’ve already lost their customers’ trust and their brand’s reputation has been damaged.
Chatbot testing and monitoring is essential for any business that’s serious about implementing AI-based systems into their CX strategy. Without proper testing that allows your team to understand the customer perspective and identify issues ahead of customer impact, your chatbots will be rendered ineffective if they experience issues and drive your customers away.
5 Tips for Effective Chatbot Testing
As business leaders continue to invest in AI-led CX channels, it’s essential to optimize your pathways and assure performance at scale. By testing, monitoring, and optimizing your chatbots, you can make the most of your business’ investment and deliver quality interactions that will meet your customers’ specific needs, without any errors interfering.
Here are five ways you can improve your chatbot testing strategy:
- Conduct Thorough User Tests: From the earliest stages of the chatbot development lifecycle, you should ensure your chatbot is performing as intended. By conducting user tests, you can effectively pinpoint issues and begin to mitigate performance risks.
- Test Your Chatbot Before Deployment: It’s never too early to begin testing your CX journeys and waiting until after you’ve deployed your chatbot means that you’re exposing your customers to potential risks. Regain confidence in your chatbot’s ability to deliver exceptional CX by testing your infrastructure prior to deployment.
- Continuously Monitor Your Infrastructure: There’s no telling when a CX defect will occur. That’s why it’s critical to monitor your chatbots from both the agent and customer perspectives. In the case an error does occur, you can begin troubleshooting right away, as opposed to waiting until you receive customer complaints and have already lost business.
- Leverage Data-Driven Insights: With each test, you can identify areas for improvement or pinpoint gaps that are negatively impacting your customers. Use insights from your tests to improve your chatbot and delight your customers.
- Use Automated Chatbot Testing Solutions: Manual chatbot testing processes are time-consuming, resource-intensive, and costly. With an automated chatbot testing solution, you can improve your team’s productivity, receive alerts when issues occur, and assure performance in a fraction of the time.
Optimize Your Chatbots with Cyara
As recent studies show, many customers lack faith in a chatbot’s ability to meet their expectations and deliver satisfying interactions. By optimizing your chatbots for success, you can make the most of your AI investment and design exceptional CX.
Cyara’s AI-Led CX Transformation Platform includes automated chatbot testing and monitoring solutions, helping leading global brands conducing NLP testing, performance testing, security testing, and more. Don’t wait for your chatbots to experience issues and drive your customers away, contact us to request a demo or visit cyara.com to learn more.
