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As a owner of a bot building platform (https://www.botamp.com https://www.botamp.com), it's very disappointing to read articles like this. All the hype around c

As a owner of a bot building platform (https://www.botamp.com https://www.botamp.com), it's very disappointing to read articles like this. All the hype around chatbots, the high expectations that will obviously never be met (at least not with current technology) are hurting adoption of these very useful tools. Actually, for this very reason we don't even have the word "chatbot" on our homepage. When people say things like "stay in contact with everyone who clicked on the ad to open a conversation with the bot", "Discovery is the biggest challenge", it shows that they just don't get it. No customer, ever, will open their Messenger just to hold a conversation with your chatbot. Customers don't actually want to "discover" your bot so that they can chat with it. Why would they want that? They have more important things to do with their lives. :) What customers want when they write to you on Messenger is finding information or performing a transaction. When you understand that, you can quickly see the benefit. E.g. add a bot that will instantly reply to frequently asked questions to decrease the load of your customer support team. And when the bot doesn't understand requests, don't make it say "sorry I don't understand", just leave the question and a human will reply later (and maybe send a message with expected timeframe for human response). When you have a chatbot which can replies to more than 30% of customer queries (for some of our users, we've seen bots reply to more than 90% of questions), it'll save plenty of money and time for your business. About discoverability, well, how did your customers find your Facebook page in the past? Why do we need a special way to "discover" now? Maybe for "game and entertainment chatbots" a bot store would work, but I just don't see how it would work for serious businesses. How can a business leverage bots right now? - quick data collection - instant answers to frequently asked questions - surveys and polls over chat - lead nurturing via Messenger (engagement rates > 70% compared to low read rate of email)

dominotw 10y ago
> - instant answers to frequently asked questions > - surveys and polls over chat I don't understand the bot part of this. First looks like a search box over faqs and second sounds like a web wizard survey .
- sorich87 10y ago
  Look at Wikipedia definition of bot (or other definitions on the first page when searching Google) "Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone." I think "instant answers to frequently asked questions and surveys and polls over chat" (with some NLP to make it better) surely match that definition, no? I don't understand why everyone is so fixated on the AI/conversation aspect. :) With the current state of the technology, companies can benefit by using bots to enhance human-to-human conversations, not trying to replace them altogether.
  - hw 10y ago
    > companies can benefit by using bots to enhance human-to-human conversations, not trying to replace them altogether. I think you hit the nail on the head here. Bots should be a complement to human conversations, not a replacement. Having a bot doesn't mean you hire less customer support agents, it just makes them more productive.
    - sorich87 10y ago
      Often times, it really means you hire less since there's less support load. E.g. we have a customer which support requests are more than 90% frequently asked questions. Adding a bot to their Facebook page decreased their support load from full time to at most 1h a day. :) But as you mentioned, when using a bot, the goal should be customer happiness, not cutting costs.
jamesmccann 10y ago
Your line of thinking here really resonates with me. I'm building services on top of two bots right now that fit into this transactional "I want to do X in as little time as possible" category and I think Messenger bots are a fantastic way to achieve that.
- chinathrow 10y ago
  > I think Messenger bots are a fantastic way to achieve that. And a fantastic way of building your bot on top of the platform of a 3rd party, which, at any time and for no reasons, can cut you off.
  - sorich87 10y ago
    When you have a very active Facebook page with thousands of fans, you'll get dozen of questions every day via Messenger. A bot can help with that. And I agree with you. If you weren't using Facebook to reach customers in the past, there's no point building a Messenger bot.
hw 10y ago
> E.g. add a bot that will instantly reply to frequently asked questions to decrease the load of your customer support team. And when the bot doesn't understand requests, don't make it say "sorry I don't understand", just leave the question and a human will reply later (and maybe send a message with expected timeframe for human response). Why not just present your users with your FAQ and a search box prior to them chatting with an agent? If most customers write in to support on questions that they would've found answers to via an FAQ, wouldn't that work? You don't need a bot for that, and it's just more load on a customer to try and understand the interface to the bot. I think bots are going to be big in customer support or in conversations between a customer and a business, but I feel like a lot of bots are being built to try and replace the human connection between customer and the business, which I think is the wrong approach.
- tfigment 10y ago
  One experience I had with a bank that was hard in the past was querying specific account information, specifically routing numbers. Either search would tell me where to look on a check (great let me go find those) or give a generic FAQ. A chat interface can provide that without having weird navigation to boot. To be fair the bank did fix that search recently so it shows me my actual routing numbers now. Also I just spent 50 minutes in chat with either a bot (or possibly human named Anil) with Comcast trying to sort out a billing issue. Spent 20 minutes trying to point out the lines in the bill I was disputing though I got the credit but I'm not sure if they actually knew why they were giving it. I'm not sure if it would have been faster to call by phone (usually not) but I thought I'd try the chat interface. I wonder if a good bot might be able to figure out context and get a human involved and give them relevant context faster and sped that interaction up.
- sorich87 10y ago
  > Why not just present your users with your FAQ and a search box prior to them chatting with an agent? Because e.g. the user asked the question on Facebook Messenger. And you don't want to send them to your website when you can reply instantly, right there. > You don't need a bot for that, and it's just more load on a customer to try and understand the interface to the bot. I'm actually advocating for bots with no interface, no IRC-like commands. The customer sends the question via chat. If the bot understands it replies instantly, if not a support person replies. Simple. No "type X for whatever" or "sorry I didn't understand your request". > I feel like a lot of bots are being built to try and replace the human connection between customer and the business, which I think is the wrong approach. We're definitely on the same page. :)

dominotw 10y ago

> - instant answers to frequently asked questions > - surveys and polls over chat I don't understand the bot part of this. First looks like a search box over faqs and second sounds like a web wizard survey .

sorich87 10y ago
Look at Wikipedia definition of bot (or other definitions on the first page when searching Google) "Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone." I think "instant answers to frequently asked questions and surveys and polls over chat" (with some NLP to make it better) surely match that definition, no? I don't understand why everyone is so fixated on the AI/conversation aspect. :) With the current state of the technology, companies can benefit by using bots to enhance human-to-human conversations, not trying to replace them altogether.
- hw 10y ago
  > companies can benefit by using bots to enhance human-to-human conversations, not trying to replace them altogether. I think you hit the nail on the head here. Bots should be a complement to human conversations, not a replacement. Having a bot doesn't mean you hire less customer support agents, it just makes them more productive.
  - sorich87 10y ago
    Often times, it really means you hire less since there's less support load. E.g. we have a customer which support requests are more than 90% frequently asked questions. Adding a bot to their Facebook page decreased their support load from full time to at most 1h a day. :) But as you mentioned, when using a bot, the goal should be customer happiness, not cutting costs.

jamesmccann 10y ago

Your line of thinking here really resonates with me. I'm building services on top of two bots right now that fit into this transactional "I want to do X in as little time as possible" category and I think Messenger bots are a fantastic way to achieve that.

chinathrow 10y ago
> I think Messenger bots are a fantastic way to achieve that. And a fantastic way of building your bot on top of the platform of a 3rd party, which, at any time and for no reasons, can cut you off.
- sorich87 10y ago
  When you have a very active Facebook page with thousands of fans, you'll get dozen of questions every day via Messenger. A bot can help with that. And I agree with you. If you weren't using Facebook to reach customers in the past, there's no point building a Messenger bot.

hw 10y ago

> E.g. add a bot that will instantly reply to frequently asked questions to decrease the load of your customer support team. And when the bot doesn't understand requests, don't make it say "sorry I don't understand", just leave the question and a human will reply later (and maybe send a message with expected timeframe for human response). Why not just present your users with your FAQ and a search box prior to them chatting with an agent? If most customers write in to support on questions that they would've found answers to via an FAQ, wouldn't that work? You don't need a bot for that, and it's just more load on a customer to try and understand the interface to the bot. I think bots are going to be big in customer support or in conversations between a customer and a business, but I feel like a lot of bots are being built to try and replace the human connection between customer and the business, which I think is the wrong approach.

tfigment 10y ago
One experience I had with a bank that was hard in the past was querying specific account information, specifically routing numbers. Either search would tell me where to look on a check (great let me go find those) or give a generic FAQ. A chat interface can provide that without having weird navigation to boot. To be fair the bank did fix that search recently so it shows me my actual routing numbers now. Also I just spent 50 minutes in chat with either a bot (or possibly human named Anil) with Comcast trying to sort out a billing issue. Spent 20 minutes trying to point out the lines in the bill I was disputing though I got the credit but I'm not sure if they actually knew why they were giving it. I'm not sure if it would have been faster to call by phone (usually not) but I thought I'd try the chat interface. I wonder if a good bot might be able to figure out context and get a human involved and give them relevant context faster and sped that interaction up.
sorich87 10y ago
> Why not just present your users with your FAQ and a search box prior to them chatting with an agent? Because e.g. the user asked the question on Facebook Messenger. And you don't want to send them to your website when you can reply instantly, right there. > You don't need a bot for that, and it's just more load on a customer to try and understand the interface to the bot. I'm actually advocating for bots with no interface, no IRC-like commands. The customer sends the question via chat. If the bot understands it replies instantly, if not a support person replies. Simple. No "type X for whatever" or "sorry I didn't understand your request". > I feel like a lot of bots are being built to try and replace the human connection between customer and the business, which I think is the wrong approach. We're definitely on the same page. :)