AI Chatbot Requirements: Where to Start and What to Include

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Is your business ready to implement a chatbot to improve workflows, but you’re unsure where to begin or what to consider? This article has you covered.

The benefits of AI chatbots are well known, and for good reason — just look at the impressive chatbot market size, valued at USD 4.57 billion in 2023 with a prediction to grow up to USD 29.66 billion by 2032. However, chatbot implementation and development is a multi-step process that comes with its own set of pitfalls.

As a vetted company that has been providing chatbot development services for over seven years, CHI Software is excited to share practical insights and tips to help your team ease the planning process, understand requirements for AI chatbots, and make the journey smoother for developers and stakeholders alike.

First Steps: Defining Your Chatbot’s Vision and Goals

A solid foundation for your chatbot project guarantees faster development and smoother communication with your engineering team. In the early stages, gathering and analyzing information is important for setting clear goals and identifying limitations.

It’s clear that your desire to develop a chatbot is driven by the needs of your business. The reasons can vary: your support team may be overwhelmed, or you may be eager to use a chatbot to collect insights into customer behavior, preferences, and pain points. Whatever the case, the first step is to think about what your business should achieve with a chatbot.

Thanks to our experience, we understand that the process of defining chatbot project requirements can be trickier than it first appears. That’s why we recommend following these steps:

Following these steps will help you come up with a clear vision of your chatbot before getting to requirements.

Step 1: What Problem Should the Chatbot Solve?

Pinpoint the specific issues that your chatbot will address. For example: reducing response time, increasing lead conversion rates, or improving customer engagement.

Step 2: Who Is the Target Audience?

Identify the target users of the chatbot: are they customers, employees, or partners? Your vendor team needs this information to ensure the chatbot’s language and functionality will align with user needs.

Step 3: What Results Do You Want to Achieve?

Set measurable goals, such as reducing customer wait times by 40%, handling 70% of inquiries without human intervention, or increasing sales requests by 20%.

Step 4: How Will Success Be Measured?

Define your success metrics; for example, accuracy of responses or user satisfaction criteria , so you can track the chatbot’s performance.

Step 5: What Resources Are Available?

Remember: the cost of building a chatbot depends on your goals, timeframe, and desired results. Assess your budget and technical infrastructure early on, as these factors will influence the development approach.

Now you can see why we’ve created this article — building up a chatbot concept isn’t always straightforward, right? But don’t worry; CHI Software works closely with clients from the earliest phases of the project , which greatly simplifies the process of defining chatbot features and requirements for both sides.

Breaking It Down: Elements to Include in Your Chatbot Development Scope

If you’ve already discovered the general features of chatbot requirements , it’s time to dive into the technical details.

We recommend including all these aspects to your chatbot requirements specification.

Technical Aspects

• Platform: Where will your chatbot operate? Think about whether it will be for your website, mobile app, or social platforms.
• Features: What exactly should your chatbot be able to do — answer FAQs, book appointments, or maybe process orders?
• Integrations: Chatbots can integrate with other existing services your business uses, such as a CRM system, payment gateway, or analytics tools. When you work with a developer, your task is to provide a list of all the systems to which the chatbot should connect.
• Technology: If you have preferred tools, frameworks, or programming languages, let your development team know.
• Security: Outline any specific chatbot security and compliance requirements, especially if your chatbot will handle sensitive data.
• Use of natural language processing (NLP): During the phase of developing your chatbot requirements specification, decide if you want your chatbot to include advanced features like natural language processing (NLP) to help your chatbot better understand requests and provide more human-like responses.
• Languages: Does your chatbot need to speak one or more languages? Mention all language options you have in mind.
• Multimedia: Will your chatbot use images, GIFs, or videos in conversations? If so, share your vision with the developers.
• Scalability: How many people will use your chatbot? What is the expected workload now and in the near future?
• Analytics and dashboards: Decide which data points you want to monitor. For example, you may wish to track how many people use the chatbot, the number of questions answered, and user satisfaction levels.
• Hosting: Choose between cloud hosting (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud) or using your own servers.

Non-Technical Aspects

• Market research: Who will use your chatbot? If you define the target audience, it will help you define other elements of chatbot project requirements: the platforms you’ll use, the languages it should support, and the style the chatbot communicates.
• Appearance and tone of voice: If your business has a specific style or branding guidelines, make sure they’re reflected in your chatbot. Define its tone — should it be formal, friendly, or enthusiastic?
• Content strategy: Outline the main topics and types of questions your chatbot will handle. You can even prepare sample dialogues or scripts. Also, define the flow for typical tasks like greeting users, solving problems, or ending a conversation.
• KPIs and metrics: You can use KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and metrics to measure your chatbot’s success. For example, Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) allows users to rate their experience, with a thumbs-up/down or a rating from one to five.

Specalizing on AI chatbot development, we’ve come up with a list of tips that will define your success even before the development starts. Follow the link to learn the details.