Before kicking off your chatbot project, certain administrative tasks need to be considered. Below, we'll address the resources and processes you'll need to carry it out:
- Important contact channels with Certainly
- Initial project setup and plan
- Stakeholder management
- AI
- Launch and hypercare phase
Important contact channels with Certainly
It's important that the various domains of the project and respective tasks are clear on all sides from the start, so communication is key. For questions during onboarding, please reach out.
You can always check if our Help Center has the answers to your questions!
Initial project setup and plan
Before kicking off your chatbot project, certain administrative tasks need to be considered first. Below, we'll address the resources and processes you'll need to carry it out:
Please remember that there will be a learning curve while preparing your bot, so don’t be intimidated by any knowledge you don’t yet have or if things take a little while to learn. It will soon go much faster and smoother, we promise!
It is important for you to draft a project plan before you start. You are going to need at least one person from each of these backgrounds:
- IT
- Marketing
- Law
There is no need for detailed programming, but it is necessary that someone can grasp the syntax of, for example, our Webhook setup. However, it will be a big advantage for someone in the team to be familiar with Jinja2 and/or Python code structure, as they provide the foundation of the code we implement.
Likewise, the strategy for tone-of-voice, testing, and KPI configuration needs to be decided upon ahead of launch, along with an airtight legal basis for privacy and security.
Structuring a project has been proven to be vital to its success. As such, we highly recommend this be carried out by one or more people who are tasked with the responsibility of the project, helping ensure a smooth process. A map of the project milestones and a task management framework will be valuable tools along the way.
Stakeholder management
Once you're sure all required roles are accounted for, we recommend making a thorough plan for stakeholder management:
- Consider whom you need to reach out to for an external opinion/testing.
- Map out those who directly or indirectly influence your project, and determine how closely connected they are to it.
- To get ahead of any potential pitfalls, draft a list of project blockers and damage control strategies.
- Consider resources that are not sufficiently available to you in-house.
AI
Please save time to train your bot’s AI – it's the best tool to make customers feel understood.
You're going to need multiple people who can test the bot’s understanding of customer intentions and who will then keep track of all misunderstood/unknown sentences, thereby training the AI to recognize them with high confidence.
Since many intentions and requests can be expressed in myriad ways, this will require some effort and focus to ensure the bot is thoroughly set up to recognize all the possibilities for how a customer might ask for help.
Launch and hypercare phase
Once you're all set in the areas outlined above, the next step will be launching your bot.
Please make sure that during this phase, all teams are aligned and able to dedicate their resources to a successful post-launch period. This phase will take approximately 2-3 weeks and will set you up for the successful use of your bot going forward in your daily business.
To achieve this state, it is vital that the launch strategy has been shared with all employees and that there have been opportunities for them to ask questions and provide feedback. All tasks must be clearly assigned.
During and after the launch, it is very possible that traffic will increase, and therefore new errors may occur that require quick fixes. Dedicated staff will likely need to be exclusively assigned to improving the bot, responding to customer inquiries when the bot isn't able to help, and keeping track of data that could indicate necessary long-term adjustments for the bot.
You'll be working with Certainly even more closely during this phase, so please make sure that you have the resources to take calls and follow instructions during critical periods.