Improve the flow
Catch-up phrases
Because digital agents do not really understand what humans say, and they can solely analyze the underlying patterns from a technical perspective, we need the dialog to include phrases that mimic the understanding.
Catch-up phrases like “ah ok”, or “aha” make answers to a question for instance feel more natural.
Fallback
Always prepare for the case, the agents doesn't get anything that the user is saying. Create Fallbacks or interesting answers, that leave the interpretation open. Incorporate machanisms to ask the user to repeat, if something has not been interpreted in the right way.
There are a few mistakes that can happen during conversation, be aware of those:
- No speech detected
- Speech detected, but nothing recognized
- Something was recognized correctly, but the system does the wrong thing with it
- Something was recognized incorrectly
Source: Designing Voice User Interfaces: Principles of Conversational Experiences
Keep it short
With visual material users can take a lot of time getting the information. This is not the case with speech. Users need a lot of focus and attention to get the answer by the agent, so keep it short and efficient.