How Important is Chatbot and Webchat Tone of Voice?

Creating a strong tone of voice for your brand helps you stand out, but how important is it that you implement it into your conversational AI? Let’s delve into it below…

Upgrading your customer communication with chatbot and webchat options is all well and good, but it usually isn’t as simple as slotting them into your site. The tone of voice in the rest of your customer service should extend to conversational AI to ensure you stay consistent.

In this blog, we’ll dive further into the importance of tone of voice, best practices for brands to follow, and how to give your chatbots or webchat services a winning personality.

infographic typing on a mobile

What is tone of voice?

Tone of voice is the thing that carries your brand off toward your customers. Therefore, it’s all about establishing methods of communication that work best for the people you’re aiming to target. You’ll need to carefully choose your language and expressions to do this.

Whether you want to be more or less emotive, add in emojis, or keep things formal – your brand’s tone of voice should be unique to you.

The effectiveness of your branding will all depend on whether you’ve done your research and developed a good understanding of how your customer wants and expects to be interacted with.

Why is tone of voice important in communication?

Your tone of voice has the power to influence the overall customer experience, so it should fit in seamlessly with the rest of your customer service journey.

It can impact customer retention, satisfaction, and ultimately sales and profits. When customers are happy with their interactions, they become more likely to use your services again. But you could push customers away if your tone isn’t quite right.

Chatbot & Webchat tone of voice

It can be simple to implement chatbot and webchat into your site with generic scripts. But this isn’t necessarily the best way to engage your customers.

When you configure your conversational AI, you should consider all the ways you can implement your brand tone of voice. This will make it feel more natural for the customer and increase its popularity, which in turn can take the strain away from your live customer service agents.

Importance of tone of voice for chatbot & webchat

Still need some convincing on why tone of voice is so important for chatbot and webchat? Below, we’ll go into some of the main reasons it can have a big impact…

How to implement tone of voice in your conversational AI

Unsure how to bring your brand’s tone of voice into your conversational AI? Follow these simple steps below…

Identify your values

If you’ve already established brand guidelines, this is a great first step. These can help you implement the ideas you’ve already come up with into your communication strategy.

The process of identifying your values should involve several questions.

These include:

  • What is our aim?
  • Who is our audience?
  • Why do we exist?
  • What makes us unique?

By answering these questions, you should develop a better understanding of the core values within your business. Pay particular attention to your audience since they’re at the heart of everything when it comes to your communication.

Map out your messaging

The bare bones of what you’re trying to say are likely to be the same. You want to greet the customer, ask how you can help, and offer solutions.

However, the tone of voice you’re going for will affect your messaging.

For example, a site with a more excitable tone of voice might greet the customer differently than one with a more formal approach.

The peppy approach:

  • Hi! I’m Penny, how can I help?
  • Hey, my name is Penny! How can I help you today?

The formal approach:

  • Hello, my name is Penny. How can I be of assistance to you?
  • Hello, my name is Penny. What can I do to help?

By mapping out what you want to say first, you can decide on the language, punctuation, and expressions you want to use that best fit with your tone of voice.

Remember, there could be some nuances between chatbots and webchat since these are two different conversational AI services. Click here to delve further into their differences.

Tone of voice guidelines

Need some extra guidance in establishing your tone of voice? Below, we’ll go through some guidelines to help you…

  • Use active voice: The clearer, the better when it comes to customer interactions. Therefore, you should ensure your chatbots or webchat are set up to relay information using active voice rather than passive.
  • Be upfront about capabilities: Sometimes technology can only take you so far. Ensure your conversational AI is configured to know when customers might need to be referred elsewhere and be able to communicate this effectively.
  • Guide users through the journey: You should know who your customers are and understand where their knowledge sits. Use this to script your AI technology and guide users through the journey in as much detail as needed.
  • Consider all the conversational routes: You might think it isn’t worth looking over the tone of voice for every single conversational route. But implementing it across the board can help you remain consistent and clear about your brand, regardless of the query or concern.
  • Make it clear how you expect users to interact: The interaction goes both ways, and it can cause issues if customers aren’t clear on how to respond. Giving options and direction is important for retaining customer engagement.

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