How can you use stakeholder mapping to improve your chatbot experience?

1 Step 1: Define your chatbot's purpose and scope

Before you start mapping your stakeholders, you need to have a clear idea of what your chatbot is trying to achieve and what it can and cannot do. This will help you align your chatbot's functionality and tone with your brand's goals and values. For example, if your chatbot's purpose is to provide customer service, you might want to make it friendly, helpful, and empathetic. If your chatbot's purpose is to generate leads, you might want to make it informative, engaging, and persuasive. You also need to define the scope of your chatbot, such as the topics it can cover, the channels it can use, and the languages it can speak.

2 Step 2: Identify your chatbot's stakeholders

Once you have defined your chatbot's purpose and scope, you need to identify the stakeholders that will interact with or be affected by your chatbot. Stakeholders can be internal, external, primary, secondary, direct, or indirect. For instance, your team, managers, IT department, legal department, customers, prospects, partners, competitors, and regulators are all possible stakeholders. Primary stakeholders are those who directly use or benefit from your chatbot (e.g. customers or prospects). Secondary stakeholders are those who indirectly use or benefit from your chatbot (e.g. partners or regulators). Direct stakeholders have a direct relationship with your brand or chatbot (e.g. customers or partners). Indirect stakeholders have an indirect relationship with your brand or chatbot (e.g. competitors or regulators). You can use various methods to identify your stakeholders such as brainstorming, surveys, interviews, and focus groups.

3 Step 3: Analyze your chatbot's stakeholders

After you have identified your stakeholders, you need to analyze them to understand their needs, expectations, preferences, motivations, challenges, and influences. This will help you tailor your chatbot's experience to each stakeholder group and address any potential issues or risks. To do this, you can use various frameworks such as the power-interest matrix, the influence-impact matrix, the empathy map, and the persona map. For instance, the power-interest matrix can classify your stakeholders into four categories: those with high power and high interest (e.g. loyal customers, key prospects, strategic partners); those with high power but low interest (e.g. regulators, competitors, legal department); those with low power but high interest (e.g. potential customers, advocates, influencers); and those with low power and low interest (e.g. casual customers, indifferent prospects, irrelevant partners). You need to manage closely those with high power and high interest; keep satisfied and informed those with high power but low interest; keep engaged and involved those with low power but high interest; and monitor occasionally those with low power and low interest.

4 Step 4: Plan your chatbot's stakeholder engagement

Finally, based on your stakeholder analysis, you need to plan how to engage with each stakeholder group to create a positive and valuable chatbot experience. You should consider what the value proposition of your chatbot is for each group, as well as the communication strategy, feedback mechanism, and evaluation method for each stakeholder group. To help you plan your engagement, there are various tools available, such as the RACI matrix, stakeholder engagement plan, chatbot script, and chatbot prototype. By doing this, you can ensure that your chatbot is providing a valuable experience for all stakeholders.