Generic bots are out, unique bots are in. Bot personality is the characteristic of a bot. Chatbots are designed for humans and by humans which means they should be able to have Human-like conversations. A bot’s persona includes factors like its name, gender, job, back story, tone, and personality traits. Defining the persona for your bot is an important step as it will drive design decisions by addressing the right end-user needs.

Chatbots are no longer perceived as boring or robotic tools. Brands love giving a personality to chatbots because helps them build a connection with their customers. This increases user engagement and the possibility of retaining potential customers.

An ideal bot persona will resonate well with the brand and optimize the user experience.

Let's answer the question “What’s the Big Deal about Bot Persona?”

• The right bot persona can improve the user experience and solidify the brand’s identity.
• A well-defined bot persona enables the copywriters to create consistent responses.
• Adds value to user interactions by building trust. 
• Promotes user adaptability  by tailoring the dialogues of a chatbot according to the customer base
• Having a good personality will register the bot in the user's mind and create a favorable impression of the brand which ultimately helps with conversions.

How can you design the right bot persona?

1. Identify the end-users needs. 
2. Research about the brand that you are designing a bot for.
3. Define the purpose of the bot.

Best practices for creating a Bot Persona

Following are the best practices that you can use for creating a Bot Persona:

• Check for an existing brand persona/mascot: Check the brand’s existing persona/ mascot and align your chatbot to it.
• Name your bot: Naming things have a great impact. Naming the chatbots and virtual assistants makes them more friendly and relatable. It makes the user experience more vivid and relevant.
• Choose a bot avatar (give your bot a face!): Bot avatar is an important attribute that can multiply the effectiveness of user interactions. It helps foster feelings of trust and empathy towards the chatbot influencing user perceptions of the chat experiences.
• Assign your bot a personality: Bot personality comes in real handy to develop a distinctive identity and create a specific brand image. To choose a personality for your bot on Conversation Studio, you need to navigate to Bot settings > Advanced Options > Personality.
• Greeting messages: The greeting message is a crucial element of a bot’s personality. It sets the tone for the users, reflecting different personalities. It can be used to convey the different services offered.
• Error handling: Get the conversation back on track. Right repair work can help users find answers to their queries.
• Ending well: Ending the conversations well is as important as starting one. Just like real conversations, it is important to not skip the conclusion. As a part of the experience make sure your users feel the chatbot is available if they need further assistance.
• Handling Small Talk/Chit-chat: Users tend to mess around with chatbots. Small talk is a casual conversation that makes the IVAs more chatty, covering common questions that might not be related to your IVA's intents. You can read more about Small Talk here. You can also learn how to configure small talk for your IVA on Conversation Studio here.
• Do not forget to collect feedback: After the users have interacted with the chatbot, always collect their feedback. This gives a voice to the users and allows them to tell us how we can improve the conversation experience. The feedback builds trust by showing that the user’s opinion matters.
• Haptik's bot persona template helps us learn more about the target users and build a bot persona that is aligned with a brand’s voice.