KL Portfolio

Developing the H&R Bot persona

Project.
I led the development of the strategy and standards for the H&R Block Canada chatbot.

Outcomes.
Increased containment by 38%
Improved topic coverage
Reduced call centre costs
Improved NPS YoY

Skills.
Strategy
Facilitation
Branding
Influence and alignment

Team.
Senior Content Designer (me!)
Product Lead
Operations Lead
Design Director
Marketing Lead

H&R Block Canada launched a chatbot in their DIY tax software, with just 2 conversation topics. It wasn’t really helping. I joined as a content strategist and developed a new chatbot strategy — determining the topic coverage, hand-offs to humans, chatbot persona, and standards for designing conversations.

Discovery.
I audited the chat experience. Fortunately, they had a ton of user sentiment and conversation query data to help me understand the topics users expected the chatbot to support.

I ran my favourite workshop using a framework adapted from Conversations with Things by Diana Deibel and Rebecca Evanhoe. Out of the workshops, I determined the H&R Bot is a concierge:

  • providing the right info quickly
  • suggesting helpful add-ons
  • referring to subject matter experts when needed

Deliver.
I created and socialized the H&R Bot writing guide, outlining the principles for a successful conversation and adapting the brand guidelines to the chatbot context. The guide has standards for tone, grammar, mechanics, and vocabulary, and tips to design effective conversations.

Outcomes.

  • Improved the chatbot’s topic coverage from 2 to over 40
  • Increased containment rate by 38%
  • Reduced calls to the contact centre, saving the agents time and reducing costs
  • Improved NPS over the previous tax season

Want these same outcomes for your chatbot?

Steal this workshop to develop your team’s chatbot persona in 5 steps:

  1. Set interaction goals. What does a successful interaction look like? How does it support business goals?
  2. Decide the level of personification. Is it trying to be human-like? Does it have a name? Is it self-referential? Is it an advisor or a servant?
  3. Define characteristics and key behaviours. What does it do, and how does it act while doing it?
  4. Set the tone. What does it feel like to interact with the bot?
  5. Consider different scenarios. How does it respond when the topic intent is a low confidence match? When it gives wrong information? Does it apologize?
workshop canvas covered in sticky notes
The chatbot personality canvas was adapted from Conversations with Things, Diana Deibel and Rebecca Evanhoe, Rosenfeld 2021.