How to Design a Chatbot Personality

As leading chatbot designers have discovered, personality is the number one factor for increasing user engagement.

Click-through rates, sales, and other business KPIs go through the roof when a chatbot is designed correctly, with personality. And last, but certainly not least, chatbots are a heck of a lot of fun to interact with when they have a personality.

But how, exactly, does one design a chatbot personality? After all, there are no Javascript libraries or Github repositories for chatbot personalities that you can access and plug into your design.

A chatbot’s personality is where designers can allow their creativity to come into play. But you don’t need to be William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens in order to add personality to a chatbot.

Does a Chatbot Even Need a Personality?

I get asked that question a lot. Developers, who are usually coming from a tech background, see adding a personality as a lot of difficult, extra work. Clients, on the other hand, are used to thinking in terms of websites and mobile apps and don’t understand the role that a chatbot’s personality plays.

However, asking whether a chatbot needs a personality is looking through the wrong end of a telescope. No matter how basic or simple your chatbot is…