How to create a bot for communication. Chatbot Interface Design Tips: Best Practices. There are four types of chatbots

Chatbots are very popular now, especially in instant messengers and social networks - read, for example, how to create a bot for VKontakte. With the help of bots they order food, buy tickets, choose clothes and do much, much more. You can create your own chatbot even without being a programmer: there are dozens of platforms and tools that automate the process (links to them are at the end of the collection).

However, one of the key factors in the success (or failure) of your product is UX, which means you need to think about the quality of the user experience. We offer you a selection of tips that you should follow when designing bots: both personal and corporate.

Basics

Select your specialization

Don't try to please everyone and collect many different functions, nothing good will come of it. Determine specific functionality, topics and audience - concentrate on them.

Create your own personality

Focus your avatar, vocabulary, set of emoticons, tone of communication and, in general, any components of your bot’s interface on the audience and task you have chosen. At the same time, the user must know that he is communicating with a robot - do not try to deceive and pass off the bot as a person. But for comfortable interaction, the bot must still imitate some human qualities.

Write down a list of required functions

What information is most likely to be needed by anyone who is going to use your bot? What main actions will the bot perform? To display help, it is recommended to use traditional commands for the platform - for example, /help in Telegram.

Ensure safety

Your bot must be protected from possible attacks, especially if it is already integrated with CRM, internal servers or other important systems.

Think over the logic of communication

Create a scenario tree

You need to take everything into account possible options development of dialogue with the user: from the most unsuccessful to the most successful. An example can be found on the Chatbots Magazine website.

Tell me where to start

Chatbots are not yet intuitive for many people. The bot should send the first message without additional requests, immediately after opening the dialog box. It should contain: a brief introduction and a specific call to action, so that questions like “how does it work?” what's to be done?".

Avoid dead ends

Make the interaction as specific as possible: the conversation should be consistent, messages from the chatbot should be concise. There is no need to put the user in situations in which he can “get lost”: for example, even a simple question to which two answers are possible - “yes” or “no”, it is better to design it in the form of buttons.

Add buttons

Making a click is faster and more convenient than typing, especially when running. In addition, the button will tell the user what types of requests can be sent to the bot.

Use images

Now you can add an image on all platforms, including SMS. A picture draws attention to the message and, when combined with a caption, is more effective than just text. But don't overuse it.

Make error messages useful

After the phrase that something didn’t work out for the bot, add some suggestion to the user, at least “return to the main menu.” Don't leave dead ends, this was discussed above.

Specify a communication channel with a real person

There will always be requests that the bot cannot handle, so you need to make sure that at least some of them (which you define yourself) are addressed to a person. In addition, the user should have a command at hand that expresses the intention “I don’t want to communicate with the bot anymore, let me contact a person.” But think through such things carefully :)

Watch the wording

Clarity is more important than grace

Try to use understandable and familiar words.

Clarify with questions, not statements

“Book a ticket for this Monday?” - better than “The ticket will be booked for this Monday.” Because interrogative sentences sound softer, and affirmative sentences seem to shift all responsibility onto the user. If in the situation above the person really wanted to book a ticket for next Monday, and not for this one, the clarifying message in the form of a statement will sound in the subconscious like “Ha ha, I was wrong.”

Make questions clear

Questions from the bot should not cause discrepancies or confuse. You should immediately give a template answer: “Which airport do you usually fly from? For example: “from Sheremetyevo”.

Be honest

Don't try to create the false impression of an all-powerful tool - the user must understand what your bot can do and what limitations it has.

The massive use and popularization of bots on the VK social network will inspire every administrator of any social network to want to use a similar bot program in their public. At the same time, not everyone knows how to install it, and even after reading a lot of materials in order to find explanations for implementing what they want, not everyone will immediately understand the sequence necessary actions, in order to create a VK bot. IN this review all administrators will find ways to create a bot in VK groups and learn to use the appropriate tools.

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How to make a VK bot

If you are involved in VK groups, then you probably know that a VK bot is a program that helps you automate any manipulations. In our case, we will consider a bot connected to the VKontakte community, which will send identical mailings and respond to messages from visitors. In addition, you can play various interactive games with him, he will give recommendations regarding music or video, cheer you up with an anecdote, and so on. In further sections, we will look at how you can create a bot for public pages on various topics in one of the currently popular social networks, Vkontakte.

What is a bot in VK

First of all, you should consider what a bot is. This section is dedicated specifically to the characteristics of the bot itself. Working on social networks, including VKontakte, is hard work that requires a serious investment of money, time and effort. Nowadays, almost every entrepreneur goes to social networks without realizing how everything works there, but, after all, it is precisely due to streamlined and well-planned actions in groups that people “peck” at all sorts of offers. Let's figure out how a bot for a VK group will help us in such a difficult task as promoting a community.

In fact, it is very simple to explain what a “Bot” is. In social networks, a bot is a non-existent person who in reality simply does not exist. A bot can be considered a . They are also commonly called “dead souls,” just like in Gogol’s famous story, non-existent people who are listed in some structures. In our case, fakes on the social network VK will be investigated. "Live" display of the "bot"

You can imagine in the form of a questionnaire those citizens who actually do not exist, or these are long-abandoned pages ordinary users VK, and perhaps even real copies, which the real owners don’t even know about. What can a “bot” do? To be honest, it’s practically nothing, it just exists and that’s all. He doesn’t know how to write or read or anything that ordinary VKontakte visitors do. Next, we will consider the question: how to make a bot in VK so that it becomes a real assistant in promoting a group.

How to make a bot on VK for a group

It is important to understand that there are several ways to create bots on VK. The first of the bots about which we'll talk- This is “Robochat”. This bot has fairly easy and understandable functionality, and is also simple and easy to configure. To install it, you need to go to the robochat.io website and click on the “Create a bot” button (if necessary, you need to go through the procedure via your email).

Thus, you will go to the bot settings section, where you will need to connect the bot to the required community. With one click on the “Connect now” button, from the list that appears, you need to select “VKontakte Community” and click on the “Connect” button on the right. As we can see, creating or downloading a VK bot is not at all difficult.

The application will request access to personal account in VK. It is important to know that this account must have administrator rights in the desired VKontakte public). Click on “Allow”

This will take you to the list of adding VKontakte groups in which you are listed as an administrator. Click on “Connect” to the right of the required community” and then click on “Allow” to allow the bot to access the group’s messages, photos and videos. Now return to your account on the Robochat.io website, go to the “Chatbot” section on the left, in which there will be three sub-tabs (“Main”, “VK Messages”, “Keywords”). We are directly interested in the “Basic” subtab, where you will have the opportunity to customize your bot’s responses to various user requests, including using the “Keywords” subtab. To edit a specific option, there is an “Edit” button, which is located next to each item. Once you've completed setting up template responses, your bot is ready to go. In order to activate it, the user needs to click on the “Write messages” button in your community, and the bot will respond to the user in accordance with the settings you specified.

The second way to make a bot for a VK group

The following method can be considered. Bot “BotVK”, which involves automated responses to incoming messages from public users. The installation of such a bot in VK from the site bot-vk.ru is identical in its algorithm to the installation of the previous “Robochat” program. The VK bot script is built into the program itself, which makes it easier to use. At the same time, setting up “BotVK” is also intuitively simple and does not require the user to have any special programming knowledge. To start working with this bot, go to the website bot-vk.ru and click on the “Create a bot” button.

Then you need to click on the “Login or create an account” button and click on “Allow” in the bottom right to grant the application access rights to your account. This way you can go to the control panel of the bot you created. Click on the “Connect group” button to start working with your group, you need to mark your group in the list, and click on “Connect”, and then on “Allow”. On the right will be a menu for managing the created bot.

There you need to go to the “List of Bots” tab, and then click on the name of your bot in the group located on the right. The settings for your VK bot will appear, in which you will have the opportunity to make a fairly extensive list of settings for its functionality, and then click on “Save” below in order to commit the changes.

The third method is Creating Chatbots on the website bots.hsstore.ru

You can safely use paid bots on the website bots.hsstore.ru. Here you can find many paid bots for the VK website, the functionality of which can be activated for a monthly fee of 990 rubles. Among them there is a Wikipedia bot (sends out articles from Wikipedia based on your requests), a bot suitable for communication (has the skills to connect you anonymously with other unknown users), a bot demonstrating horoscopes, and so on.

The installation of the bots described above is similar to the installation in the options already discussed, but it is important to know that here you are also required to invest in paid functionality. Considering that the two previous bots “Robochat” and “BotVK” are completely free, installing paid instances of bots looks like a rather dubious decision.

In this section, we looked at several methods to make a bot in a short time to VK groups to send messages to them. Installing this type of bot implies having administrative rights in your account to manage the group, as well as granting the connected bot rights to directly interact with your

community. By setting up the bot correctly, you will have convenient auxiliary functionality that can make it easier for your VK group to work with a large number of subscribers.

How to create a bot on VK via Android

"Android" is operating system created for electronic devices. It runs on the Linux kernel and makes it possible to create applications controlled by the device through Google system libraries. How to create a VK bot via a smartphone? Android fully supports many programs for creating bots using a smartphone. In order to do it yourself, an excellent knowledge of a programming language will help you, including an understanding of what the concept of “bot code” means. If you have difficulties with this, you can also use automatic device or services. Let's say Abot is able to create his own virtual assistant. He will answer messages and all kinds of questions from clients. This is quite a convenient thing to control and conduct business via a smartphone.

VK bot constructor

Before you take on this business, you need to decide what it is needed for. Its creation does not always require programming skills and any super knowledge. Bot designers will help you cope with this task perfectly (Chatfuel is considered one of the most popular). Designers allow you to create a bot using a user-friendly interface. Serious companies and firms are content with such assistants. The following are in demand and popular designers today: Api.ai, Meya, Pandarabots, Manybot. These services are used to design chatbots in various social networks.

How to create a chat bot

For the modern visitor social networks An active assistant is undoubtedly required. The lack of time to carry out full-fledged VK activities is the starting point for creating robots that will respond to messages and perform other tasks. A chatbot is a program through which the user can communicate.

There are four types of chatbots:

· Assistants. They are constantly nearby, find the information the user needs, set an alarm, carry out organizational tasks, such as placing an order for food in the office or at home, booking a hotel room, buying tickets.

· Artificial intelligence. Modern developments lead to the fact that chatbots carry out tasks that require a lot of human time. Robots are able to answer any questions from their interlocutor.

· Business bots. They are provided in order to increase the coefficient useful action and take part in business optimization. Here a bot for a VK group is a necessity. Let's say the SpyCat 2.0 service sends a notification to the user about received comments on the VK network, while having an autoresponder function. Business bots reduce costs and automate all work processes (sending messages to clients and employees).

· Gaming. A program that controls a computer. She imitates partners in an online team game. Such bots are based on artificial intelligence and are fully adapted to the features of a particular game.

How to create a chat bot in VK? – this is a very popular question from those who intend to develop their business by attracting clients through a VK bot. This is quite easy to do. Before starting this business, the following criteria must be met: continuous access to the Internet and availability of free time. You also need to download a free chatbot, launch it and add an account. Next, you need to enter the login and password of your personal page in VK. Then the instructions will open; you need to read them and go to the “Messages” tab. On the community wall of your account you need to write “Bot, hello!” After thirty seconds he must give an answer. In the program tabs “Account” and “Teams” you can change and configure the functions of the VK bot.

Download a ready-made bot for VK

In this section we will look in detail at how and where you can download the VK bot. In fact, downloading a bot is absolutely easy task, which can be handled by absolutely anyone who has the skills to use a PC. You can download the VK Bot on the vk-robot website. or on other sites. They all have one thing in common, namely: the risk of downloading a virus, downloading an outdated program, which not only will not be useful to you, but will contribute to a quick ban and all sorts of other troubles. By downloading programs online, you are at great risk.

All you have left is the right to choose. In order to make the right choice, you need to qualitatively evaluate the bot’s functions that are necessary specifically for your activity. You can easily find a description of the functions on every site that offers bot downloads.

But if common sense tells you that you don’t need to download stuff from the Internet, then there is a reliable service that is not only free, but also won’t get you into trouble, even on your personal page - BossLike.ru

Bosslike has many functions that VKontakte users want: , Subscribers, comments...

How to write a bot for VK yourself

This section will be useful for those who want to get acquainted with the structure of the bot in more detail and create a bot for VK for free and on their own.

· In any search engine we find the registration form in “VK”. In the “name” line, enter any name. In the “surname” line, it is best to enter a common surname. Click “register”.

· Then you need to enter your phone number and click “get code”.

· After confirmation of registration, a blank page will be generated that must be filled out. Now let’s move on to the main question, namely “How to create a bot on VK yourself?” In a new user's account, all required fields must be filled in. Namely the following:

Step by step:

1. Basic: first and last name are already filled in. This means you should indicate gender, marital status, birth details, city, language. Then - grandparents, brothers, sisters, parents, children, grandchildren - add as you wish. Click “save”. It is important to understand that the data will reflect the personality, so your VKontakte bot should look real.

2. Contacts: you need to add your country, Skype, and a link to your personal website. The last points may not be added.

3. Interests: It is important to include activities. Indicate a large number of interests (travel, books, humor, etc.). Next, enter your favorite music, then movies, books, TV shows, games, quotes and mark something “about yourself”, and then save.

4. Next is education, mark the school, educational institutions and save.

5. Career: you need to enter the place of study and activity, you can even have several, and also save it.

6. Service: it is necessary to indicate only, as a rule, the male gender.

7. Life position: should be filled in - political preferences, the main thing in life, worldview, the main thing in people, attitude towards smoking and alcohol, sources of inspiration, and save all this as well.

So, now follows the second stage of resolving the question “How to create a VK bot on your own?” Now you need to add an avatar and photo.

1. We search the Internet for a “picture” of a photograph of a person. Download them to your computer and save them.

2. It is advisable to find several photographs of the same person. In this case, the appearance of a “real user” is created.

3. The photo for the avatar should be of medium size; it should clearly reflect the face of our “bot”. You should not take animals or various extravagant photographs. Everything should be

as close to reality as possible. Upload the photo to the VK page and save it.

4. Next, add the rest of the photos, the more there are, the better. They can be varied. “VK bot” can be either in the singular or in a company or with a group of people. You need to upload at least 4-5 photos to your account. Let's move on to the third stage and find out how to create a “bot” in VK.

Next step…

The third stage of solving the problem: How to create a “VKontakte bot for groups”? The next stage should be full of the most active actions. You need to upload several videos and some audio recordings to the new page. And also share your account with friends. How to create a “bot” on VK without programs, so to speak, manually? This method of creating a “manual” bot will require your time. The fact is that you will need to add friends manually. You will have to create and accept friend requests daily. To make the fake user look even more alive, he needs to communicate.

So, in conclusion, we can summarize that you can create a VK 2018 bot in two ways: install special program or daily independently write in the chat and communicate with other users on his behalf. As you can see for yourself, there is nothing complicated. However, it is worth taking into account that in order to create a full-fledged “bot”, you need to spend your free time.

What are chatbots? Why are they such a big opportunity? How do they work? How are they created? How can you meet people interested in chatbots?

We will answer these questions in this post. Ready? Forward!

“~90% of the time we spend on mobile devices, goes to email and messaging in instant messengers. It makes sense to put product development teams where customers hang out!” - Niko Bonastos, CEO of General Catalyst.

What is a chatbot?

A chatbot is a rule-driven and sometimes artificial intelligence-driven service that you interact with through a chat interface. The service can include different features, from functional to entertainment, and it itself can be included in the package of any chat product ( Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, Text Messages, etc.).

“Many businesses have already installed phone trees, and they work, although most users are unhappy with their use. The text response tree is much simpler and faster than the voice one, this was the purpose of the first bots, sometimes with the ability to chat with a live person.” -

If you haven't figured it out yet, don't worry.. Here's an example to help you visualize a chatbot.

Example:

If you wanted to buy shoes online from Nordstrom, you would go to their website, browse through the selection until you found the model you wanted, and then buy it.

If Nordstrom gets a bot, which I have no doubt will happen, you could just connect with Nordstrom on Facebook. The bot would ask what you were looking for and you would just... say it.

Instead of searching the site, you would just need to chat with the store bot, imitating a conversation with a consultant in a regular shoe store.

Examples of chatbots on Facebook

Watch this video from the recent F8 conference(where Facebook announces its latest innovations). At 7:30, David Marcus, vice president of Messaging Products at Facebook, explains what it looks like to buy shoes using the Facebook Messenger bot.

Chatbot examples

Buying shoes is not the only possible purpose of chatbots. Here are some other examples:

Do you see? With bots the possibilities are endless. You can realize everything that is born in your imagination, and I will help with it.

But why create a bot? Sure, it looks cool, uses some super advanced technology, but why would anyone waste their time and effort on it?

This is a huge opportunity. HUGE. I'll explain this further.

Why are chatbots so promising?

You're probably wondering, “Why is anyone even interested in chatbots? They look like simple texting services... what's the secret?

Great question. I'll tell you why people are interested in them.

Because for the first time people use instant messengers more than social networks.

Let that hang there for a second.

People use messenger apps more actively than social networks.

“Now people spend more time on messengers than on social networks, and this is a very important change. Messengers are the platforms of the future, and with the help of bots, their users will be able to access different types of services.” - Peter Rojas, entrepreneur at Residence at Betaworks

So, logically, if you want to build a business online, you want to build it where the people are. This is now a place inside messaging apps.

This is why there is so much buzz around chatbots. This is potentially a very large business opportunity for anyone who wants to quickly grow their business and create something that people want.

But how do these bots work? How do they know how to talk to people and answer questions? This is some kind of artificial intelligence, isn’t it hellishly difficult to implement?

Yes, you're right, it's artificial intelligence, and you can easily do something similar yourself.

I'll explain.

How chatbots work

There are two types of chatbots - one has rules-based features, and the other, more advanced type, uses machine learning.

What does it mean?

Rules-based chatbots:

• They are very limited and can only respond to certain commands. If you say something wrong, he won't understand what you mean.
• The bot is only as smart as its programmed capabilities allow.

Chatbots powered by machine learning:

• They have an artificial brain (artificial intelligence). You don't have to be ridiculously precise when talking to a bot like this. He understands the language, not just commands.
• This bot constantly gets smarter as it learns from conversations with people.

“We need to remember that bots have the illusion of simplicity on the front end, but behind this simplicity there are many technical complexities that need to be overcome to create a convenient, complete functionality. A huge amount of work needs to be done. Analytics, optimization of scenarios, accounting for all updates and changes to platforms in the absence of a uniform format. For deeper interactions and real business value, such as Assist, you will need an error analyzer, API integrations, routing and escalation to live human understanding, NLP, no back and home buttons, etc. We need to unlearn everything we've learned over the past 20 years to create an amazing user experience in this new direction.” - Shane Mack, CEO Assist

Bots are created for a specific purpose. A store will need to create a bot to help with shopping, while a service like Comcast will likely create a bot that can answer tech support questions.

“Messaging is something we spend a lot of time on and rely on to communicate. It’s really funny that we still have to contact most companies by phone.” - Josh Elman, partner at Greylock

You begin interacting with the bot by sending it a message. Click here to message CNN's Facebook chatbot.

If these bots use artificial intelligence to work well... is it really that hard to implement? Do I have to be an expert in artificial intelligence to create something that uses it?

Brief answer? No, you don't need to be an AI expert to create an advanced AI chatbot. You just shouldn’t make unrealistic promises to future users when describing the capabilities of your future application. If at the moment you cannot make a good product based on artificial intelligence, it is better not to develop it yet.

“Anyone trying to use artificial intelligence at this level seems a little ahead of its time. Communicating with a computer that simply doesn't understand much of what you say can be very annoying. Be careful when making promises and provide users with guardrails against disappointment” - Josh Elman, partner at Greylock

Although over the last ten years there has been some progress in the field of artificial intelligence, so significant that everyone who knows how to code can implement a certain amount of artificial intelligence into their product.

How will you build artificial intelligence into your bot? Don't worry, I'll tell you everything in the next part of this post.

How to create chatbots

Developing a chatbot may seem incomprehensible, but in reality everything is quite doable. You will be building a chat machine driven by artificial intelligence (or, of course, you can always develop a chatbot with basic functionality, without a sophisticated artificial brain that follows strict rules).

“The difficulty in developing chatbots is not so much technical as it is UX. The most successful bots will be those that users want to return to regularly and provide ongoing value to them.” -