You Log On, see a post from your fave creator, and leave a comment. Seconds later, you get a reply — dopamine hit achieved! — but then you read the reply and see it’s just a stream of emojis that don’t quite make sense.
It’s a soulless, automated reply. And it’s not a good look.
Automated responses can feel impersonal and generic straight out of the box — but they don’t have to! With a bit of finesse (and Manychat magic), you can make your chatbot sound like you — engaging, on-brand, and totally human.
It takes extra effort upfront (plus some regular maintenance to keep things fresh), but it’s completely worth it. Buckle up as we break down how to make your automated chatbot responses authentic, engaging, and totally on-brand.
The Power of Personalized Chatbot Responses
Why put in the effort? Consumers increasingly expect a round-the-clock response from brands, and the 24/7 dopamine casino of social media seems unlikely to be an exception, even if you’re a different kind of brand.
Why it’s important
A faster response time builds stronger relationships with your audience. They feel seen and like you care enough to be on top of your community’s efforts to engage with them. Fans and followers are savvy enough to know that you can’t possibly respond immediately to every message, but they still want to feel a personal connection with you or your brand.
That’s where personalized automation comes in: you can set everything up to sound like you, letting the robots take care of the FAQs that roll in so you can save your energy for content creation and a deeper conversation.
This approach strikes the perfect balance between speed and authenticity. Your followers get the faster response times they want while still feeling like they’re hearing from you instead of a corporate-sounding bot (because, let’s be honest, nobody loves getting stuck in that frustrating conversational loop).
Setting up personalized automated replies also differentiates you from anyone else (cough, cough, your biggest competitors) who makes the mistake of setting up automation out of the box and forgetting it — or failing to refresh their responses regularly.
Don’t make these common mistakes
It bears repeating one more time: don’t use the default responses. These are meant to be a starting point for you to tweak with your own personal pieces of rhetorical, on-brand flair. Don’t over-rely on generative AI chatbots to come up with responses for you, even if you’ve trained them on your brand voice.
You always want to take a final review and tweak everything to make it sound human. Your fans and followers stick around, engage, and share your content with their networks because of your unique brand.
Don’t dilute it with unimaginative responses.
Best Practices for Personalizing Your Automated Replies
1. Define your brand voice (and stick to it!)
If you already have an established brand voice, use that as your guideline to set up your automated responses. Consider any tweaks you want for this particular format; social media typically allows brands to be looser and have a little more fun. How can you allow that to shine through without sounding off-brand?
If you don’t have an established brand voice, here’s an exercise to jumpstart development.
Feel the burn
Ask yourself these questions to get a feel for the direction you want to go in:
- If your brand were a person, how would they talk?
- Are they playful, quirky, professional, or edgy?
- Do they use contractions, slang, or emojis?
- If so, what proportion is it to a more professional or neutral tone?
- What about sarcasm?
Think about the balance you want to strike when communicating with your audience. You can be funny without being mean, for example. (Not every brand needs to roast their followers on social media like Wendy’s circa 2017.)
Play with audience expectations without alienating them. A fashion influencer might use more fun, emoji-filled replies than a creator with a brand focused on financial literacy. That brand voice might be outlined as clear, professional, and reassuring — but still leave room for witty replies and the occasional relevant emoji.
2. Inject personality into every message
The most straightforward communications can be tweaked to include some personality that sets your brand apart from the competition.
Take standard messaging and make it your own. Instead of “Your request has been received,” try:
- Casual: “The robots have received your request! 🤖Beep boop 🤖We’ll get back to you ASAP.”
- Playful: “A moment please — the three raccoons in a trenchcoat running this place will get back to you as soon as they’ve finished their snack run!”
- Luxury Brand: “You have exquisite taste. Our team is preparing your order with gloved hands.”
3. Avoid sounding too scripted
Beyond tweaking standard responses, you want to have a rotating batch ready to go that your team also checks and updates regularly so they don’t get stale. You’ll want to refresh more often if your brand has a playful tone that riffs off recent news events and popular memes.
Variety is the spice of life. Instead of the same “Thanks for reaching out!” every time a follower messages you, consider cycling through:
- “Hey there! We see you 👀 — a real live human will reply soon!”
- “Good to see you in our inbox! We’re excited to chat soon.”
- “Get in here, friend! We’re happy to hear from you, and we’ll get you back ASAP.”
- “Message received! ✉️We’re currently out touching grass 🌱but we’ll get back to you as soon as we wash our hands (wouldn’t want your stuff to get grass stains on it).”
These examples are geared more toward brands, but creators can take a similar approach. When you don’t have to keep more stringent brand standards in mind, you can have more fun with it and incorporate catchphrases from your content, nicknames for your fans and followers, and more.
How to Customize Responses to Sound More Human
Choose an automation tool that makes it easy to be you at scale. Here are the common features you can tweak to sound like your brand instead of an out-of-the-box response.
1. Use dynamic fields
You’ve seen these in every email newsletter that’s ever hit your inbox — especially if someone forgot to fill in the field or it glitched.
- Insert the user’s first name for instant personalization.
- Example:
- Generic: “Thanks for your message.”
- Personalized: “Hey there [First Name], great to hear from you! How can we help?”
2. Add emojis and formatting (where it fits!)
Have a little fun with it while also making messages easier to read.
- Lighten up responses with emojis (but don’t overdo it). 👁️👄👁️
- Use formatting tools (bold, italics, line breaks) to improve readability.
3. Match response style to the platform
Be sure to meet audience expectations for interaction with your brand and the platform they’re reaching out on.
- Instagram DM replies: Keep things short, to the point, and fun where you can.
- Facebook Messenger: There’s more room for detail, but keep it conversational.
- TikTok: It’s also best to keep things short and punchy here; there’s even more room to play with brand voice and tone.
The Data Behind Quick, Personalized Responses
Customer expectations have evolved as rapidly as the web. Fast, personalized replies earn you more engagement, a better overall brand perception, and happier fans and followers. The latter easily translates into customer satisfaction — satisfied customers stick around longer and recommend you to their networks.
How fast is fast?
According to Hubspot’s 2024 marketing stats, 40% of consumers expect a brand to respond within an hour. That doesn’t mean they expect their issue to be resolved entirely that quickly, but it does mean they at least want an acknowledgment that their message got received. Getting a generic response is the bare minimum here; a personalized one is a sign that you put more effort into your relationships with fans, followers, and customers.
Faster response times also juice the algorithms. The social media gods yearn for sacrifices of time and attention, and bless you with an increased engagement rate.
Make Your Bot Work for You (Not Against You)
Building better chatbots means building them with intention. Your chatbot should feel like an extension of your brand, not a sad placeholder. Personalization doesn’t mean you have to create your robot from scratch either; you can make minor tweaks that have a big impact. Done right, it boosts engagement and trust.
There’s plenty of room to have fun with it — leave space for experimentation! Test different responses regularly, see what resonates with your audience, and keep tweaking.
💡 Pro Tip: Not sure how to start? Manychat makes it stupid-easy to customize your bot’s responses, so your audience never feels like they’re talking to a robot.
Ready to create personalized chatbot responses that sound just like you? Start your free Manychat account today and build a better relationship with your fans and followers! 🚀
