Identify customer intents
You can think of user intent as the reason a person is interacting with your conversational experience, or conversational user experience (CUX). Your CUX must identify what the user wants so that it can match them with the most accurate content to help them complete their goal.
Intents vs requests
It can be easy to confuse intents with requests. Intents define the goal of the interaction, while requests are the context-setting words, phrases, or questions that users say or type to begin a conversation. It's important to note that you can't rely on a single request to accurately describe an intent. You might discover that requests that appear similar are different intents that require separate content, or you might find that users describe the same intent in different ways.
Where to start with user intents
Review your key scenarios and any data that shows how users are interacting with your conversational experience or brand. Start with one scenario and think critically about what your user's purpose might be in that scenario. Keep in mind that a single scenario might have multiple intents.
Here's an example of developing user intents:
Conversational experience: Personal shopping assistant for clothing brand
Scenario: Returns and exchanges
User intents:
- Return an item
- Return a defective or damaged item
- Return an item after 90 days
- Exchange an item for a different size
- Exchange an item for a different product
Don't worry if you feel that you aren't capturing all customer intents. In fact, it's better to start with a smaller set of intents and make sure that they can be traced back to the goals and priorities that you defined at the beginning of your CUX design process. Just as you did when you defined your scenarios, keep the scope small and focus your efforts on the most important and high-impact areas. Learn more in Research and prioritize scenarios.
Monitor and iterate your intents over time
Identifying user intents isn't a one-time activity. Like any content that you create for a conversational experience, you need to monitor the success of the content. Let the data that you collect guide how you refine intents, and make sure to map intents back to real user needs with matching requests.