People have different skills and that’s a good thing. Some prefer to do monotonous, repetitive tasks, others more complex tasks. Others talk a lot, others are more introverted. It is impossible to say which people are “right” or “wrong”, but it is easy to say which people are suitable for which activities and situations.

This is very similar with chatbots. There are different types of chatbots and, depending on customer or user requirements, task-oriented chatbots or conversational-oriented chatbots are more suitable.

In the following article, I will discuss the strengths and areas of application of task-oriented chatbots.

This type of chatbot focuses on completing one or more specific tasks or handling processes.

The focus is therefore on tasks and processes that the chatbot should solve as efficiently and error-free as possible.

With task-oriented chatbots, dialog design is less important than solving the desired tasks.

We find task-oriented chatbots primarily in companies or in organizations where the bots support the employees or members of the organization in the form of a digital assistant.

Possible use cases for such chatbots are:

• Employee onboarding
• Knowledge management in the company
• Time recording in the company
• Meeting and room bookings in the company

These chatbots can be integrated into existing messenger systems such as Microsoft Teams or Slack. Alternatively, the chatbots can of course also be published on a website, on the intranet or in an app.

These chatbots are characterized by the following features:

• They support their users in completing a task or executing a process
• You create direct added value
• They are not considered a marketing tool
• They increase the efficiency of their users
• You (usually) need interfaces to other (internal) systems
• Their aim is to process the task as quickly and easily as possible, with the dialog design being of secondary importance
• Their personality and tone is (mostly) secondary and goal-oriented rather than conversation-oriented

It is important to understand that task-oriented chatbots pursue different goals than conversational-oriented chatbots.

With task-oriented chatbots, the focus is usually on increasing efficiency. A good technical implementation with suitable interfaces and many functionalities is therefore much more important than a UX-oriented dialog design. In this case, it doesn’t really matter what the chatbot is called or what tone of voice it uses. It is much more important that it completes the desired processes or tasks without errors.

But beware, please don’t think that task-oriented chatbots are the solution to all “your problems”. These chatbots can help to make certain processes more efficient, but in the end it is us humans who have to make sure that the processes are designed in a timely manner. The chatbot then helps when it comes to carrying out the processes or completing the tasks.

If you would like to learn more about conversational-oriented chatbots, I recommend the following article, which is much more about marketing-oriented chatbots including. Storytelling.