The importance of conversational user experience design (CxD) has been discussed so often in recent years as it can lead to an exceptional customer experience. However, understanding that conversation design entails more than merely producing text in a conversational style is crucial. In reality, conversation design is a synthesis of several fields, including copywriting, UX design, interface design, graphic design, motion design, and, where appropriate, voice and audio design.

User Interface (UI) design is moving toward more natural types of interactivity. Looking back, we can see that the inventions like keyboard and the mouse were the interface people used to interact with computers. Fast forward to 1992 when IBM introduced the first touchscreen phone that served as the version of today’s commonly used smartphones. At last, Apple released Siri in 2010 which is known as the first modern digital virtual assistant. This more natural interface uses voice queries, gesture-based control, focus-tracking and a natural-language user interface to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions.

What is Conversational UX?

A Conversational User Experience uses voice and/or chat to simulate organic human communication. In essence, it involves two-way dialogue between humans and robots. The dialogue that the user has with the computer-generated partner is known as Conversation Design. It may occur on a voice-only device, such as a smart speaker for the house, or on a variety of touch-enabled devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and smart displays. It basically entails training a machine, such as a chatbot or voice assistant, to interact with a person as naturally as possible.

What advantages does conversational UX offer your organization?

While creating a conversational user interface it is crucial to focus on the user experience – this in turn comes with the following benefits:

- Faster response times

A conversational user interface (UI) may be used to swiftly redesign customer service. That’s because it can act as an automated customer service agent who can quickly answer your clients’ questions through text or speech. This eliminates the need for those clients to wait for a human assistant to respond, and allows for quick replies.

- Increased Engagement

People appreciate interacting with a conversational UI for its ease of use, simplicity, and convenience. For these reasons, customers continue to use it, which will enhance engagement.

- Increased Accessibility

Conversational user interfaces are more than mere ease of use. People with impairments, particularly those whose vision is impaired, can also easily access them. That implies that you will increase the number of customers you can serve and enhance the user experience for a large number of individuals.

- Cost savings

Customer service agents will get fewer questions since chatbots and speech-based assistants automate and handle numerous user requests, allowing them to focus their time on more productive duties. This lowers the expense of running the customer support department.

Best Practices

When creating a conversation for a Conversational User Interface, it is crucial to focus on a customer-centred solution. For a great user experience, the following main design actions should be considered:

- Define Your Audience

Part of user research is defining your audience. Hereby, you must identify the possible users with whom your bot will engage right from the start. For this, you should begin with creating user personas of your customers – the most common factors include age, gender, language and culture, career, interests, and geography. To prevent having to make significant changes when your bot is operational, you must perform rigorous research before developing.

- Dialogue Flow Outline

After designing your user personas, you must have a user flow that addresses all of the major problems that your target audience may be experiencing as well as any critical information they may be seeking. This plan will act as the basis for your bot - a useful, applicable version of what has to be conveyed. Many user flows can be drawn from contact analytics – as an example, an organization chooses five user flows based on the five most frequently asked questions.

- Writing the Script

The script of any text-based or voice-based assistant should be clear and succinct, providing plenty of information in the fewest feasible phrases. Hereby, the focus should also be on the tone of voice – depending on whether your organization rather wants to communicate more informal or formal.

- Improve, improve, improve

Even though it is often overlooked, analyzing the performance of the virtual agent and adjusting accordingly is crucial to a virtual agent’s success. The performance should be documented within a dashboard as it can also be made accessible to other stakeholders. Before developing, you should define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can be implemented in the dashboard. As an example, KPIs can include:

- Number of users per day/week/month

- Most used keywords

- Resolution Rate

- Abandon Rate

- Conversational UX Design Can Improve Customer Experience

By utilizing conversational UX design you may lay the foundation for a more interesting, educational, and significant customer experience. Whether you like conversational user interfaces or not, natural conversations are becoming common in digital encounters. To participate in the conversation shift that is already taking place, think about expanding your investment in conversational UX design.

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