How to customize your AI chatbot's personality

There is something you should know: Your AI chatbot’s personality influences how people perceive your brand. Customers are more likely to remember and engage with a chatbot that converses like a real person than one that sounds like a robot.

According to Master of Code, recent research found that 62 percent of survey respondents would rather talk with customer service chatbots than human agents. Only 9 percent of consumers oppose companies using digital assistants, and 73 percent expect websites to offer chatbots for their convenience. 

We’ll show you how to create a chatbot personality that clicks with your users, reflects your brand values, and keeps folks coming back for more. We’ll also guide you through how to build a voice, what makes a chatbot’s personality work, and how Jotform’s tools can help you do it with zero headaches.

Understanding AI chatbot personality

First, what is a chatbot? It’s a type of digital assistant that can interact with customers and perform certain specific tasks. By taking repetitive work off your human team’s hands, AI chatbots simplify your business workflows and take your customer service to the next level. 

An AI chatbot’s personality includes language style, behaviors, sense of humor (or lack thereof), and the overall vibe users get while engaging with it. It might seem on the surface like a cutesy marketing gimmick, but it’s really about making your chatbot feel natural, approachable, and on brand, whether that means casual and funny, polished and professional, or somewhere in between.

Like humans, chatbot personalities have several layers:

• Tone of voice: Is the chatbot warm, formal, playful, or dry and to-the-point?
• Communication style: How does it phrase things? Does it use contractions, emojis, or slang?
• Behavioral traits: Is it bubbly and eager to help, more reserved, or even a little cheeky?
• Conversational patterns: How long are its replies? Does it crack jokes or ask follow-up questions?

These choices define how people respond to your chatbot and your brand. When a chatbot reads like a script, users get in and out as quickly as possible. But when it feels like a friendly guide, people tend to relax, interact more, and maybe even enjoy the experience. A functional chatbot handles tasks, but a personality-driven one builds relationships.

This is where the line between basic types of chatbots and conversational AI agents becomes apparent. A basic chatbot follows set commands, predetermined workflows, or FAQ trees. A conversational AI Agent can adapt, respond with nuance, and reflect your brand voice.

But what are AI Agents? They are an AI tool designed to perform specific functions. An AI Agent takes the concept of a basic chatbot up a few notches with its ability to make independent decisions, perform actions, and mimic human-like logic and problem-solving skills. And like humans, their personality matters.

The benefits of AI chatbot personality customization

A chatbot doesn’t strictly need to be witty or charming to work, but it certainly helps if your goal is to engage customers. Personality isn’t fluff. It frames the way people feel during the interaction and how they remember it afterward. Giving your chatbot a defined personality can turn a generic (read: forgettable) tool into something people enjoy using.

These are a few benefits of chatbots with character.

1. Enhanced user engagement 

Remember Terminator 2: Judgment Day? Young John Connor grew a strong attachment to the Terminator after the machine began responding to him in a more human-like way. That may seem like a far-fetched example, but the bottom line is the same. People don’t engage with machines; they engage with personalities. 

If your chatbot sounds robotic, users will treat it like a vending machine: hit a button, get what they came for, and go. However, if your chatbot has a recognizable tone and distinct style, users tend to engage longer, click through more, and interact in deeper ways. Rather than feeling like they’re typing at something, they feel like they’re talking to someone.

2. Stronger brand identity

First impressions matter, and that’s true of AI Agents, too. Your chatbot might be the first point of contact someone has with your brand, which can be either a golden opportunity or a missed one. A chatbot with a consistent personality helps reinforce your brand voice. It should sound like someone who belongs to (and with) your company, not a boilerplate chat solution from a generic software vendor.

3. Improved customer satisfaction

When a chatbot responds in a tone that matches the user’s expectations, the whole experience feels smoother, and people are more likely to feel heard, understood, and helped. When that happens, they’re less likely to bounce and more likely to convert.

4. Emotional connection

Your chatbot doesn’t need to go full therapist mode, but personality taps into our innate human empathy. A friendly tone, a moment of humor, or even a well-timed emoji can make an interaction feel more natural. When users feel even a little emotionally connected, they’re much more likely to remember the experience positively.

5. Higher user retention

If your chatbot sounds the same as every other one out there, there’s no reason to come back. If you give it a personality that users like, now you’ve got something sticky. When interactions feel personal and enjoyable, people return. They’re also more likely to recommend the experience to others.

Key elements of effective AI chatbot personality design

A chatbot doesn’t develop its own personality. Every interaction, word choice, and emoji (or lack thereof) should reflect your deliberate design. If your bot waffles between buttoned-up and overly casual, it gives users mixed signals. That’s why it’s so important to nail down its personality design.

Let’s go over a few things to think through while building your chatbot’s identity.

Tone and voice

Your chatbot’s tone should match your brand’s communication style across all platforms. If your company writes like a friendly neighbor, your bot shouldn’t sound like a corporate attorney. If your brand voice leans formal, your chatbot probably shouldn’t throw around GIFs and slang.

Based on the rest of your brand’s messaging, decide whether the voice should be

• Warm and casual
• Direct and professional
• Energetic and playful
• Reassuring and calm

Once you’ve locked in that tone, stick with it. Consistency builds trust. It also makes users feel like the bot is a part of your team, not just some perfunctory script on your website.

Response length and chattiness

Your chatbot needs to say just enough to sound human without rambling. One-word answers usually won’t cut it, but walls of text don’t help either. Striking that balance requires testing and some intentional personality shaping.

Some users like punchy answers, while others want a conversation. Depending on your audience, you might adjust how “chatty” your bot feels:

• Minimalist: Short, efficient replies that get to the point (great for FAQs or support)
• Conversational: Slightly longer responses that keep the tone friendly without overexplaining
• Chatty: Longer, more expressive replies that add flavor, humor, empathy, or a bit of storytelling

You want to match the mood your users expect and meet them where they are.

Cultural sensitivity and adaptability

People from all over the world may interact with your chatbot. Keeping this in mind, personality design should avoid cultural clichés or idioms that might confuse or alienate certain users.

If your bot says, “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back,” that might land well with one user and make zero sense to another. Humor, slang, and tone can all be tricky across cultures. The more adaptable and context-aware your chatbot is, the more accessible the interaction will feel.

If you’re working across languages or regions, test how your chatbot’s personality comes across in each version. What’s friendly in one culture might sound rude or robotic in another.

How to design your AI chatbot’s personality

Giving your chatbot a personality takes a little psychology, a little brand strategy, and a clear sense of who you’re building it for. It’s like casting an actor for a role.

You can build a chatbot that feels like it fits your brand and talks more like a real person by following these steps.

Step 1: Define your brand voice

Start with what you already have. Dig through your brand’s messaging, including emails, website copy, product descriptions, TV and radio ads, and social media captions. How do you talk to customers? What kind of language shows up over and over again? Are you serious, approachable, businesslike, or irreverent? Make a short list of key traits that your chatbot can emulate. 

Step 2: Understand your audience

Look at who your users are:

• What age range are they in?
• How tech-savvy are they?
• What tone do they expect? Friendly, professional, ultra-casual, or something else?

Use site analytics, survey feedback, and user testing to understand how your audience prefers to communicate. That will inform the rest of your design choices, from vocabulary to chattiness.

Step 3: Create a character profile

Time to build the bot’s persona. It doesn’t need a tragic backstory, but it should feel like someone specific and not a cardboard cutout.

Try sketching out:

• A name (even for internal use only, to help writers/designers stay consistent)
• A role, such as a helpful assistant, a friendly expert, or a chatty concierge
• Three to five personality traits like upbeat, curious, patient, or dry-humored
• A few sample phrases it might say, and some it definitely wouldn’t

This step helps your team stay consistent, even as features and use cases change with time.

Step 4: Establish behavioral guidelines

Your chatbot will only be as consistent as the rules you give it. Write out some clear dos and don’ts.

For example

• Use contractions, but skip slang.
• Add emojis, but only in casual support chats and never when the customer is irate.
• Never repeat the user’s name more than once in a response.
• Stay positive, even when delivering bad news.

These guidelines act like a brand style guide specifically for conversation. They’re especially useful if multiple people or teams contribute to training the bot.

Step 5: Test and refine

Once your chatbot has a voice, it needs practice. Test the personality on real users. Pay attention to

• How people respond (Do they smile, scoff, or roll their eyes?)
• Where conversations drop off
• Whether certain replies feel uncomfortable or unnatural

Use that feedback to fine-tune the tone, rewrite clumsy phrasing, or simplify responses. Personality design is an iterative process. Like any human personality, your chatbot will grow and improve over time.

Jotform AI Agents: Advanced personality customization features

Creating a chatbot personality from scratch sounds like a lot, but Jotform makes it feel less like “character creation” and more like “click and go.” With Jotform AI Agents, you can fine-tune everything from tone and behavior to visuals and voice, all without coding knowledge.

Jotform lets you shape your chatbot into someone your users will enjoy talking to.

Customize agent persona

Start by defining your AI Agent’s persona, or core identity. With a few clicks, you can give your AI Agent a name, assign it a role (like “booking assistant” or “help desk guru”), and choose the tone and traits that fit your brand.

You can also create custom behavioral guidelines to define how the agent handles specific situations. This could mean greeting repeat users like old friends, or keeping things ultra-polite in a more formal setting.

Adjust chattiness

Some users want quick answers. Others want a bit of small talk before they get to the point. Jotform lets you adjust how chatty your AI Agent feels, from super-brief (10–50 characters) to longform-friendly (250+ characters). You decide what feels right for your audience.

This makes it easy to customize tone per channel, too, such as keeping email responses short and sharp, while letting SMS or web chat feel more conversational.

Multichannel support

Your AI Agent doesn’t just live on your website. Jotform supports a consistent chatbot personality across website, phone, SMS, and even WhatsApp. That means your brand voice doesn’t fall apart the minute someone switches platforms.

This multi-channel support is especially useful for businesses with multiple touchpoints, such as support teams, appointment scheduling, and intake forms. Consistency builds trust. 

Visual customization

Your chatbot’s appearance matters, too. Jotform AI Agents let you create a custom avatar using AI-generated images or upload your own. You can also customize interface colors and chat window design to match your branding.

From a slick, minimalist agent to something more colorful and friendly, the only limitation is your creativity.

Voice personality

For phone-based agents, the voice matters just as much as the script. Jotform lets you select your agent’s voice, including accent, tone, and gender. You can match the vibe of your customer service chatbots to that of your interactive voice response system, which gives users a smoother, more cohesive experience.

Training and guidelines

If you want a chatbot that speaks knowledgeably about your product line, pricing tiers, or internal policies, all you have to do is train your AI agent. Jotform AI Agents support custom knowledge bases, meaning your chatbot won’t just sound right; it’ll know what it’s talking about.

This is where the differences between basic chatbots and smart, brand-aligned AI agents really become obvious. These agents truly are the future of chatbots.

Template library

If you need a little guidance, don’t worry. Jotform offers over 7,000 pre-built AI agent templates, complete with established personalities for different industries: healthcare, real estate, education, e-commerce, and more.

You can use them out of the box or tweak them to fit your brand. It’s an ultra-fast way to get up and running without sacrificing personality or control.

Best practices for AI chatbot personality customization

Customization doesn’t end after your initial setup; it’s an ongoing process. These best practices will help your chatbot stay sharp, helpful, and worth talking to.

1. Maintain consistency across all interaction channels and touchpoints

Your chatbot shouldn’t sound like a different person depending on where you talk to it. Whether the customer interacts with it on your website, via SMS, or in an email follow-up, your agent’s tone and style must stay consistent. If your bot is friendly in chat but oddly formal over the phone, users will notice, and it’ll feel disjointed.

Tip: It helps to create a brief chatbot tone guide, similar to a mini brand guide, and share it with your whole team.

2. Regularly update and refine personality based on user feedback 

Gathering user feedback is the ultimate way to find out what your customers want, expect, or enjoy. If you ask for their feedback about something, users will tell you, one way or another. You should also check chat transcripts for clunky phrasing, tone mismatches, or places where people drop off or become irritated. Sometimes, a simple word tweak can change the whole feel of a chatbot response.

If you’re not tracking how your chatbot makes people feel, you’re missing out on valuable information straight from the source.

3. Ensure transparency about AI interaction while maintaining an engaging personality

Let users know they’re talking to an AI Agent, although this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be a buzzkill. You can keep it light: “Hi! I’m Roy, your friendly digital assistant. I’m here to help!” Transparency builds trust and helps set people’s expectations correctly from the start. It also avoids the awkward “Wait, are you a real person?” moment.

4. Avoid reinforcing stereotypes or biases in personality design

This one’s non-negotiable. Your chatbot’s personality should never lean on stereotypes, even unintentionally. Strictly avoid accents, phrases, or characterizations that could come off as caricatures or biases. Just because something feels fun or quirky doesn’t mean it’s appropriate.

A good rule of thumb: If you wouldn’t assign the same personality traits to a new hire during onboarding, don’t assign them to your bot.

5. Balance personality with functionality to maintain effectiveness

Being friendly is great, and being cute is fine. However, if your chatbot’s personality makes it harder to get answers, you’ve veered too far in the wrong direction. Always prioritize clarity and service. Your bot should never be so chatty that users have to wait for their answer or can’t find the requested info buried under the banter. “Fun” should always be a part of “functional.”

Transform your customer experience with AI chatbot personality customization 

A chatbot’s personality is more than pizazz; it’s performance. When you do it well, personality customization helps an AI assistant sound natural, stay on-brand, and build trust with every interaction. Your chatbot’s tone and style play a big role in how people perceive your business. Its personality can also lend itself to better visitor engagement, smoother customer support, and a more memorable user experience. Now that the world is largely digital, if that experience is memorable and unique enough, it’ll give you a leg up on the competition.

AI chatbot personality customization is a practical way to humanize your customer support, take some of the weight off your human team’s shoulders, and make your business more efficient. Your customized AI agent can improve customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and business growth. When it’s thoughtfully applied, a little personality goes a long way. 

Jotform AI Agents give sophisticated personality customization options to companies of all sizes. They enable you to build an assistant that communicates well, fits your brand voice, and adapts to user needs without losing consistency. From behavior, appearance, voice, and language to refining responses with detailed instructions, you have more tools than ever to shape a chatbot that works for your users.

What are you waiting for? Your customized, on-brand Jotform AI Agent is just a few clicks and a few minutes away. Explore Jotform AI Agents’ templates for various industries and our wide variety of personality customization features today.