The Chatbot Manager: Your Virtual Assistant’s Indispensable Coach!

Approximately 38 percent of all companies are in the process of deploying a chatbot.A Chatbot Manager will prove to be an indispensable coach, adapting your conversational agent to your specific needs, training it and guiding its implementation. He or she will manage the transfer of skills from human to machine to ensure that your bot is a reflection of your know-how, your values and your expertise. But what are the responsibilities of a Bot Manager and how do you find the right candidate from among your personnel?

The three responsabilities of a chatbot manager

Chatbot Managers are indispensable for the proper deployment of a chatbot. They are involved in the design and configuration of the virtual assistant and play a leading role during the kick-off phase.

Kick-off : coordination and configuration

The initial development phase of a virtual agent lasts approximately three months. During this period, the Chatbot Manager is the project manager, in charge of coordinating the various people involved, defining the contours of the project, establishing the graphic line and organizing the preliminary testing of the conversational agent. The mission is to get your smart avatar off the ground by the agreed deadline.

Deployment : fine-tuning and evolution

Your chatbot has gone live! The Chatbot Manager now plays the crucial role of improving your virtual assistant based on its initial interactions. More than 80 indicators are measured! By analyzing the data that’s obtained, the Chatbot Manager enriches the bot, fine-tuning it so that its appearance, responsiveness and tone are all perfectly aligned with the needs of your target audience.
This essential learning phase helps fortify the personality and effectiveness of your bot. The goal is to model the virtual assistant so that it meets the users’ needs and expectations as effectively as possible.

Downstream : Expanding the bot’s skills

Once your chatbot is well-established, it can evolve beyond its original field of activity (for example, an IS chatbot that has its eye on HR or an HR bot that handles logistics). With each additional hat it wears, your virtual agent must be steered by your Chatbot Manager so that it knows what information to communicate, when to communicate it and to whom.

How to choose your virtual assistant’s coach

Considering the Bot Manager’s many duties, it’s crucial to select the right person. Keep your eyes open: your future Chatbot Manager is probably right under your nose; all you have to do is sniff him or her out! You can target two types of profiles:

• Specialists (in IS, HR, logistics, etc.). These professionals have mastered the skills to be transferred to your bot and can teach it, just as a trainer or mentor would do in the case of a new employee. They can also develop the chatbot internally as additional needs arise.
• General project managers. In order to improve your virtual assistant, a Chatbot Manager must first and foremost be capable of searching for ad hoc knowledge, understanding the indispensable skills and interpreting the various indicators.

Regardless of the profile, a Bot Manager must be an excellent teacher and a meticulous analyst.

An increasingly indispensable role

As the configuration of your bot evolves, you will quickly find that you need your Chatbot Manager full-time. For example, the Caisse d’Épargne banking group’s conversational agent, CloE, requires daily attention from a team of Chatbot Managers, who ensure that she functions correctly and progresses!