A few years back, Chatbots were only used in customer-oriented environments or companies to enhance customer service. However, today, from retail, education, healthcare, insurance to every software company have its own chatbots on their website, which they are using to perform a wide variety of roles, improve business efficiency and their CXs (Customer Experiences). A chatbot is a computer program that supports humans to interact with technologies using various input methods such as text, voice, 24/7 365, gesture & touch, etc. Moreover, Chatbot is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) feature that can be used and embedded through any major messenger apps. Also, there are numerous synonyms used for Chatbots, including IM bot, Artificial Conversation Entity, Talbot, Interactive Agent, Bot, Chatterbots, and many more.
Two major categories or types of chatbots are as follow:
Rule-based Chatbots are defined as decision-tree bots. As the name implies, they use a set of rules, flows, and triggers to respond to the user's specific commands. In Rule-based Chatbots, the conversation is based in a scripted manner, and chatbots follow predefined rules to respond to particular questions of your users, which means whatever the training or scenarios are given to chatbots, based on them, they will perform and deliver solutions. In addition, in this process, no artificial intelligence is used. Thus, an open conversation with this type of bot is very limited or not possible.
AI-based Chatbots are built with an Artificial Intelligence technique to understand the human language with emotions that don’t rely on the scripted language. Additionally, this type of Chatbot can accept any kind of input and give a response to users as per the existing domain language with self-learning abilities and maturity.
Several tools and platforms are available for testing the chatbot development. Still, some tools lack a standardized approach for Chatbot Testing, and this type of testing is very different from the traditional approach for a website. This is because of the uncertainty and randomness in the conversation. Due to this, it is possible to consider every situation that may happen while chatting with chatbots.
Apart from that, Chatbots interact with different platforms, cloud services, and numerous multi-channels that may help you experience some limitations while testing with tools. Similarly, users are allowed to add any kind of detail to the chatbot. Thus, testing should be done correctly. That means, if you are the person who is planning to take AI testing services for Chatbots, then you need to understand the significance of your chatbots’ functionality, performance, security, integration, user-interface, and exception handling because all should factor should be robust to make the conversational AI solution successful. Now, the point is how chatbot testing should be done. So, it should begin with manual testing, followed by as a Software Testing Service Provider, you should perform testing with a closed group of people to get real-time feedback. And, if you are a business owner, you should keep these factors in your mind.
For Chatbot Testing, the Chatbot testing Service Provider should collect the data to understand the unexpected user behavior and invalid data responses. Moreover, the automation testing should be done as per the functional aspect because there is no magic or shortcuts made for testing the conversational flow. Besides, performing Regression Testing, End-to-End Testing, Voice Testing, Security Testing, and Performance Testing are some of the crucial software testing types that you should perform to obtain the accuracy of results and help your users engaged in chatbots’ conversational flow. Furthermore, different types of chatbot testing are performed based on the chatbots’ purpose and target user profile. Nonetheless, there are some more testing types that one can consider for chatbots and get the testing done in the right way. However, before going your chatbot live to the market, you need to check the scope of testing chatbots below:
Personality: Does the tone of the chatbot change each time when users start conversations with it or does it remain the same? Does a chatbot have a unique personality and its name relates to its service offerings?
Onboarding: Does a chatbot greet and welcome the user when she/he starts the conversation? Do chatbots help users know its goals and capabilities?
Understanding: Is a chatbot can understand emojis, small talk, idioms, etc.? Does the chatbot understand the question being asked during conversations?
Accuracy: Does the chatbot respond in multiple steps? Does a chatbot give valid answers to users?
Navigation: Does a chatbot support users to go back and change the context of the conversation?
Intelligence: Does a chatbot remember the things that have been questioned by users? What makes a chatbot intelligent? Are all chatbots based on AI? Does a chatbot remember the context of the conversation?
Speed: How much time does the Chatbot take to provide a response to the user's questions or queries? Does a chatbot take more time to respond?
Error-Management: Does a chatbot can handle a difficult situation alone? What questions do chatbots ask? What answers can chatbots give?
Read More: Chatbot Testing Types
