Technologies related to artificial intelligence, such as chatbots, have increased the level of interaction between a computer and human beings. A natural language processing mechanism is used to operate chatbots for both text and audio conversations. The most important aspect that defines the quality of chatbot is the user experience. Therefore, the user experience is directly proportional to the value of a chatbot. An effective chatbot can be achieved by performing chatbot testing.
Chatbot Applications Market Trends
U.S. Chatbot Market by Vertical, 2014 - 2025 (USD Million)
The graph depicts that all major sectors are following the rising chatbot trend
Reference: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/chatbot-market
Types Of Chatbots Based On Implementations
One Way/Structured
These scripted chatbots trigger predefined responses and are used for B2B applications. These chatbots use the natural language processing for understanding the intent of user input, but always give a predefined response. Therefore, AI is being used only on one side.
Two Way/Unstructured
Chatbots understand the past conversation and draft a customized reply for the user. Two-way chatbots use AI for understanding user's intent as well as for creating appropriate responses as per its learning and understanding.
Why Should You Test Chatbot Applications?
Chatbot testing is conducted to analyze how the bot engages with user inquiries. Ease of interaction and accuracy of responses are the two key factors for a chatbot test. This testing is different from conventional mobile and web testing, as the QA team needs to act as a closer user group for multiple unexpected inputs.
A chatbot testing cycle includes validating the responses as well as the use case scenarios. Incorrect set up cases are narrowed down during these test cycles so that engineering teams can work on the development process for problem areas.
Chatbot Testing Involves
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Fetching the incorrect conversation flow
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Identifying the use cases for potential user inquiries
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Testing multiple requests handling for a session
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Validating the user navigation to corresponding webpage/contact department
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Errors/negative scenario testing
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Authentication, authorization, and encryption of sensitive data
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Measuring bot response time
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Speech recognition for voice chatbots
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Performing localization testing for supported platforms
Example Of Chatbot Test
Why Should You Automate Chatbot Testing?
There are limitless permutations and combinations of test scenarios
There is a need for regression testing for each build
Tool Evaluated For Chatbot Automation Testing - Botium
Just like Selenium is a preferred automated testing tool for testing web applications and Appium is ideal for testing mobile apps, Botium is a recommended tool for the automated testing of Chatbots.
The following are the integral components of Botium, also known as Botium Stack
Botium supports a large number of chatbot technologies like Watson, Dialogflow, FBDirect, WebdriverIO, etc. Apart from the mentioned technologies, custom chatbot technology can also be plugged into Botium.
Key Takeaways
- Conversation flow defines the quality of chatbot flow. For a human-like user experience and efficient usability, chatbot testing is critical
- While performing QA, you should validate the defined functionality, chatbot flow, whether the NLP is working or not, integration, speed, and multiple users messaging at the same time
- Chatbots are all about conversations, so automated tests should be preferred for each build
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