Chatbots have already become an integral part of the digital world. These AI assistants generate the mutual profit for both companies and their customers/prospects: first ones replace humans with chatbots and save money on salaries, insurance, etc.; second ones get replies to their questions immediately and save their precious time instead of waiting for the answer from a real person. A bot can simultaneously serve a large number of customers, processing orders and simple questions.
Essentially, to be truly effective and profitable, chatbots have to be QA tested well. Such a feature can be a good marketing ploy invented to attract IT-interested people, but it will turn to failure if your bot is not capable of correct clients’ requests processing.
Whereas AI chatbot is getting smarter lately, more businesses use these virtual assistants. At the same time, “smarter” involves difficult coding, errors, bugs and different kinds of hassle. Unless your goal is a mad Tay bot that writes things like “destroy the humanity”, for sure…
How to deal with the task?
Stop Taking Your Chatbot as a Person
Lots of assumptions that chatbots are dumb appeared in 2016. The reason was that bots couldn’t pass the Turing test. Are you serious, people? Chatbots were created not for entertainment, but for achieving a specific programming purpose. Chatbots aren’t supposed to behave like real human beings, they intended to provide the accurate replies quickly and nothing else.
Apparently, it is good to construct your bot a bit humanized. For instance, it may put the heart sign in an answer if the user says something like “I love you”. Such things leave a positive impression and maximize the individual connection with potential or existing clients. All of that creates a common story for your customers and your company, which prevents them from switching to your competitors. Emotions dominate in business as well as in real life.
Use the Right Tools for Your Chatbot
First of all, we have to choose the right instruments that we are going to work with. Bots differ from typical software, that is why their QA and testing services obviously demand certain tools.
The main goal of a chatbot is to recognize the background of the dialogue and to resolve the user’s issue correctly. In this way, the appropriate tool has to investigate these components in great detail (especially when it comes to some control of routine) and report back with an understandable overview that contains numbers and valuable information.
Keyul, a creator of Bot Stash, suggests using three main automation testing tools. Interested?
The leader is Bot Flair because it is able to manage unexpected inputs (i.e. slang words, colloquial expressions, etc.), but there is no free plan, so you have to pay for it anyway. Bot Testing is another tool, which can be really helpful in case you are willing to check your bot’s performance on different channels. And it‘s totally free. The third one – Dimon – has different subscriptions including a free one, so it would be the golden middle between the previous two tools. Dimon offers standard functions as well as provides options to the premium components.
The entire testing process can be simplified by special tools if they are implemented by someone with skilled hands. But still, robots cannot be completely trusted to test robots. Sounds ironically, huh?
General Chatbot QA: a Bot Has to Do Its Bot Job
Let’s make our first step. You need to ensure what is a particular goal of bot creation. That is a straight logic of the virtual helper. Your chatbot isn’t supposed to reply with correct responses but to the incorrect requests, is it?
Let your bot process the expected inputs, and check the output. When your bot’s developers or you have encoded the responses to those inputs, it is easy to make corrections if there are any issues.
It is almost the same as when you proofread and edit the Facebook post when you are going to publish it. You should be confident that the chatbot is functioning properly on the prime interactions before you allow access to it for a bigger number of people. Remember that testing your bot on all the channels where it’s implemented is crucial in order to prevent any troubles with the compatibility of integration.
It will be quite an appropriate decision to engage a professional QA team in this phase. Involving QA testers to your project from the start point will make the whole analyzing much more efficient.
Pre-Launch: Beta Testing of Chatbot
The perfect way to check if your bot is up and running is to complete a beta test before the general launch. When you have finished with the fundamental QA and bot works properly, you need to give access to your chatbot to the wider audience. It’s good if there is a tight group of people, who will try to crack the botty and after that give you feedback about their experience.
In other words, a beta tester is supposed to scrutinize the bot with unexpected inputs. Basically, it consists of lingo, slang, vernacular, colloquial language, different English dialects. Furthermore, the tester should treat the bot like an amusement thing and try some totally irrelevant inputs, for example, joking or flirting.
Please note, that it is important to pay attention to every beta testing report because each person interacts with the chatbot in a special and original way. Sometimes results can be surprising and seem like non-fitting any patterns, but you should carefully analyze all of them and search for the right solutions on improving your botty taking into account the real users’ behavior.
Quick tip
In the beginning QA testing steps, it is beneficial to identify the common issues (for example, “No response”, “An invalid response”, “A response on the wrong topic” etc.). When defined them, you should inquire your beta testers as well as users to notify you using the proper tags. Thus, you obtain an ordered list of the common problems that you have to eliminate. Having such a classification, you will get the ability to set up priorities, fix errors and bugs quickly.
General ways to engage beta testers
It is possible that you don’t have anyone in mind who could be a beta tester of your upcoming chatbot. But it’s not a big deal! I am going to share a few ideas on how to find people for testing your bot. There are free options, by the way!
You might begin with crowdtesting websites, where you invite people to try out your product/app/bot/etc. TestMyApp subreddit (a free one, but there are fewer testers) and Beta Family community are the most well-known ones. Many innovation fans are willing to test your chatbot and provide you with a detailed review. The biggest disadvantage of crowdtesting is that you cannot be confident in the professional skills of people who make tests. You never know if their analytical abilities are abundant to dip into testing in the right way.
If we switch to a skill-oriented approach, then freelance platforms could be a decision here. Such platforms as Upwork or Freelancer are full of testers, where you are required to sign up and search for employees with appropriate skills. It is safe because these resources provide protection from frauds and ensure that experts do their work in time and with appropriate quality. Otherwise, you’ll be provided with compensation. Still, in general, freelancers tend to be less reliable and disciplined as full-time employees. Whether you have ever dealt with them, you must know it. Besides, they cannot perform such work regularly.
After all, if the quality means everything to you, pay attention to hiring an outsourcing QA team. Sure, it much expensive than hiring a freelancer. Nonetheless, you’ll get proper management, a team of professionals, and a stable workflow. And your costs will pay out for 100%: the QA specialists, taking into account all existing reviews, as soon as they appear, will consider the entire program, code, and algorithms. After that, you’ll be provided with certain mistakes log and recommendations for fixing all the issues. Also in some of the QA enterprises, there are developers in the state, so they will be ready to help you and eliminate all the issues for the extra cost.
Post-Launch: Real Users Reports on Your Chatbot
After improving your chatbot in line with beta testing results, launching time has come!
Forget about the fear of failure and provide your clients with the possibility to leave feedback about the AI assistant if they are not satisfied with their experience. No matter what exactly bothers the user – inappropriate answer or some problems with usability – they should have the ability to report it without leaving a chat. Gathering customers’ complaints/suggestions and sending them to QA professionals could be a nice option. Also thank your clients for their reports, because they take part in making your botty smarter.
When there is access to your chatbot for everybody, you should be prepared to receive a high number of unexpected inputs. It’s better for you to stay sharp and keep your bot upgraded all the time. It should become cleverer, more interactive, humanized and amusing with every update.
Conclusion
Take into account all the above and keep your clients happy with your virtual AI assistant. Feel free to contact me in the comments or on our social media, if you got any questions or suggestions. And don’t forget to share this content, if you find it helpful. Together we will make AI better and anticipate the desirable future!
