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Small talk is a funny thing. In human conversation, it serves to kill time, slightly irritate and save us from awkward water cooler run-ins. In a chatbot, it gives us the power to impress. By filling a bot’s architecture with answers to social inputs like ‘How Are You?’, we not only prevent unnecessary fallbacks. We strengthen our bot with human qualities, which builds an invaluable connection with the user.
These social messages are what we call Phatics. Also known as small talk phrases which express a feeling of connection (rather than those which convey information). They could be greetings, random questions or short snippets of conversation. But they’re the difference between a mindless robot and a virtual assistant.
So, is chatbot small talk important?
Of course. Small talk inputs like these are more frequent than you’d think. In fact, they’re some of the most common messages your bots will receive! Users love to test or troll your bot by going off topic and pushing its knowledge to the limit. Your bot needs answers to these queries or it will fall flat, ending the conversation every time it’s tested.
Don’t forget, our end users simply want their concerns heard — just as they would if they rang your call centre. A conversational chatbot, that can answer “I’m great thanks”, instead of “sorry I didn’t understand”, is one that feels like it’s genuinely listening and responding to user queries.
A smart bot also creates trust in our users. It eases them through important and time-sensitive processes — like rescheduling a flight — with empathy. (As opposed to confusing them and minimising their confidence in its abilities with robotic and apathetic speech). This is also your opportunity to win over users who may have misconceptions about chatbots or who feel frustrated by their search for answers.
How do I design the right Phatics?
Most of the rules for purposeful small talk are common sense. However, they’re not the same as those which apply to human interactions. In fact, some are almost the opposite! So, it helps to review some guidelines first. That being said, your use cases are unique to you, so it’s always best to tailor your content to the expectations and needs of your user base.
The guidelines:
- Think about the voice and personality of your brand/its users and ensure that’s reflected in the way your chatbot speaks.
- Brainstorm alternative ways of writing each question and fill your bot with both. (ie: “How are you, How’s it going?, How are you doing, What’s up”, etc.)
- Then, write your content so it answers each question grammatically speaking (ie: “Yes I’m a robot but I’m a smart one!” is an answer to “Are you a robot?”, but it’s not an answer to “You’re a machine” or “Are you real?”)
- Keep your chatbot’s small talk brief, clear and don’t stray too far from the main topics. Otherwise, you may confuse or frustrate users who want their answer. Small talk is a nice distraction but it shouldn’t veer too far from the original path. Remember, it’s a chatbot, not a chatterbot.
- Make sure that every piece of small talk leads to a call to action. Human small talk may not have much of a purpose but chatbot small talk does. It maintains user interest and builds a relationship with them. Also, essentially, it redirects the user to the answer they seek. A call to action like the one below guides while staying on theme:
User: “Are you a robot?”
Bot: “Yes I am a robot, but I’m a good one. Let me prove it. How can I help you?”
- Let your research inspire your small talk. First, we’ll need to make some creative and educated guesses to decide on the most relevant phatics. Once a bot is live and chatting, we can review its fallbacks to inspire chatbot greetings that are tailored to your users.
Naturally, we’ll never be able to prepare our bots for the literal millions or potential trillions of unique phrases our human users will think of. But, we can always make predictions. Until you have enough concrete data to base those on, reviewing a list of popular phatics is a great way to start. 😉
Here’s our list of chatbot small talk phrases to inspire you, based on the most frequent messages we’ve seen in our bots:
10 essential chatbot greetings
- How are you? / How are you doing/going?
- What’s up?
- Good morning/evening/afternoon/night
- Tell me something
- Ok / Yes / I’ll do that now
- Hello, Thank you, Goodbye
- How can you help me? / what can you do?
- Hi, my name is……
- Happy birthday!
- I have a question / can you help me?
10 fun phrases
- Do you know a joke? / You’re funny!
- Do you love me? / I love you
- Will you marry me? / Are you single?
- Do you like people?
- Does Santa Claus exist?
- Are you part of the Matrix?
- You’re cute / beautiful / handsome
- Do you have a hobby?
- You’re smart / clever / intelligent
- Tell me about your personality
5 phrases from users that are NOT HAPPY
- !#$#% (swear words)
- You’re annoying / you suck / you’re boring/bad /crazy
- I want to speak to a human / live agent / customer service
- Don’t you speak English?!
- I want the answer NOW!
15 questions that will test your bot
- Are you human? / Are you a robot?
- What is your name?
- How old are you? / What’s your age?
- What day is it today?
- What do you do with my data? / Do you save what I say?
- Who made you?
- Which languages can you speak?
- What is your mother’s name?
- Where do you live?
- How many people can you speak to at once?
- What’s the weather like today?
- Do you have a job for me? / Where can I apply?
- Are you expensive?
- Who’s your boss / master?
- Do you get smarter?
Terms in this article:
- Fallback: The message that appears when a user types something to the chatbot that it’s not programmed to respond to.
