TUTORIAL #7: Creating a split-test driven conversation

Now that we’ve learned how to manage our chatbot flow through Variables and Xenioo’s Natural Language Processing engine, in this lesson we will move forward to learn a different way to manipulate our chatbot conversation: random split-testing.

You can follow our lesson directly from the video below. At the end of the article you will find a Xenioo bot file that simply restores the example bot into your account for playback and testing. Let’s start!

Splitting the conversation path

During marketing or product testing, it is normal to do a split-test.

A split-test is basically a way to randomly redirecting the user to different content, and verifying which content leads to more conversions, contacts or lead generation.

For example, a chatbot conversation can use this kind of approach to check which questions are answered more frequently by a user, which ones are skipped, and which conversation path leads to a better conversions rate.

Using the Random Split Action

By now, you should know that Xenioo always goes beyond the basics to offer you the best possible result and flexibility. The Random Split Action is a typical example.

With any bot, just click on an interaction where you want to create a split, and then click on “Add Action”. On the “Available Actions” dialog, select the Flow tab,  and then “Random Split”.

As you will see, the Random Split data is only a slider where you can set the split threshold: the true power of this action comes from all the operations you can add to alter your chatbot’s behavior, and later analyze the path taken.

Notice how by default, Xenioo will create a Tag Operation that you can use to set a tag based on the activation of the split and a Go To Interaction Operation that will move the conversation to another interaction if you so wish.

These are as always optional: feel free to delete them and build the split test outcome as you please.

Advanced Split-Testing

Each split you add to an interaction is calculated as a single action. This means that you’re not limited to A-B splits, as you can easily create A-B-C splits or even further complicate your scenario to do multiple cascading split testing.

Also, since the Random Split Actions and Operations just trigger a dynamic set of sub-operations, you can create very complex scenarios with random message picking, or multiple casual paths.

In this tutorial we’ve learned how easy it is to setup a split-test enabled chatbot flow using Xenioo.

As with all our lessons, you can find the chatbot sample in your Xenioo account so that you can import it to further experiment and learn.