Content formatting

Text formatting: Bold, Italic, Underline

Your user should be able to skim through your answer and understand the response.

Considerations:

1. For long FAQs, always make sure that the most important aspect of the answer is bold.
2. Always make sure that any direct questions to the user are made bold. Example: Thank you for providing your details. Would you like to receive a call from our agents?

Emoji

Emojis are one of the easiest ways to ensure that your bot is engaging but you should definitely use them carefully.

Considerations:

1. Always have emoji at the beginning or end of a message. Avoid showing them in the middle.
2. Emoji ≠ Punctuation. Leave a space before or after emoji.
   

Line breaks and lists

Conversational content should be easy to read. Messages are usually short. The same rule is applicable to bots. Break options into lists and bullet points where possible.

Messages and information sent at once

In the same vein, limit the number of messages sent at the same time. You hate it when your friend spams you with too much information in separate message bubbles. The KISS (Keep it short & simple) rule works here too!

Length

Every platform has different character limits for bot replies (for example, Facebook supports 500 characters in each answer.)

However, we recommend that your answers range between 200-300 characters for optimal readability. More than this will overwhelm the user and consume too much space in the chat window. Ensure that your answer will succinctly and clearly provide a response to the user. Use short, chat-friendly words. Nobody likes it when a bot is too verbose!

Proofreading

While not all of us are writers, there's one way to make sure that your copies don't suffer from terrible grammar, bad sentence structure, and incorrect spelling.

Call the grammar 'COPS'

Basics to take care of:

1. Capitalization - Ensuring that you follow a standard set of rules for capitalization throughout your bot. It is a reflection of the quality of the brand and the personality of the IVA too!
   Here are some places where a capital letter is mandatory:
   • The first letter of the first word that starts a sentence
   • The letter 'I'
   • Proper nouns
     CTAs should be capitalized uniformly:
   • Option 1: Use Sentence Case throughout the bot for both messages and CTAs.
   • Option 2: Use Sentence Case for all messages and use Title Case for CTAs, titles, and header text.

     https://capitalizemytitle.com/ is a great tool for this.

2. Organization - Does the message content make sense? Check if it follows the structure mentioned below.
   Affirmation {Message} Question/Conclusion
   Example: Sure! I can help you with your e-ticket. Please type your 6-character confirmation code below 👇
3. Punctuation-
   • Check all periods, exclamation marks, question marks, commas.
   • Standardize Bullet Points a.k.a list items.
   • Use a period (full stop) after every bullet point that is a sentence.
   • Don’t use any punctuation after bullet points that are not sentences.
4. Spelling — Make sure that you’ve spelled all your words correctly! You may use either British or American spellings and words depending on the geography of the audience. Read the sentence backward to easily spot a spelling mistake!