The Elements of Voice First Style

Chapter 19. The Elements of Closing

Dialogues with voicebots end in one of five ways:

• The user explicitly stops the dialogue. (“Hey Google, stop.”)

• The user implicitly ends the dialogue (they just stopped responding to the voicebot).

• The user requests to be directed to a human. (“I want to talk to someone.”)

• The voicebot determines that the user needs to be directed to a human.

• The voicebot determines that the dialogue has reached its end and ends the dialogue. (“This is the end of the survey. Thank you for participating. Goodbye!”)

There is little that the voicebot can do in reaction to the first case. For the other scenarios, the following rules should be observed when closing a dialogue.

Allow the Users to Explicitly End the Dialogue

In a context where a valid user option is for the user to simply abandon the dialogue (e.g., quitting after successfully executing a transfer and are back to the main list of options), let the user know that they can say, “Quit” or “Goodbye,” or that they can simply hang up in the case of a phone call. Users may find it unnatural (or impolite) to end a dialogue by simply hanging up, so telling them that it’s perfectly OK to do so would alleviate that natural hang-up (no pun intended):

VOICEBOT: Here’s what you can do: check your balance, withdraw funds, or transfer funds. If you are done, say “Goodbye” or just hang up.

Allow the User to Request a Human

If connecting the user to a human is an available option, you should let users ...