Intead of Bots, in these months I used many times a lot of Chat Customer Services on some companies web sites and on Messenger. As all the studies say, communicating with a company through our favourite instant messaging app is smarter than downloading any branded app or using the old-fashioned email. My experience was great and these companies increased loyalty and my admiration.
Using Whatsapp, Messenger, Telgram or WeChat for companies is a great challenge for many technical and communicational factors:
Technical, because CRMs should access to IM platforms for identifying users and managing the requests trafic.
Communicational, because some contents should be always and easily available for customers instead of lose in the chat’s flow.
As a Product Manager I focused on the second problem and, starting from a Whatsapp-like layout, I designed the “Featured contents” function. The scope of this function is to enrich the discussion between the customer and the company saving the requested contents in a reserved area of the app.
Watch the “Featured contents” gif animation for understanding how it function in the direct relationship between a Hotel and its customer.
After my first post about Facebook Messenger Bots, I continued my research because I understand the importance of Chatbots and Instant Messaging apps. Following a transcription of the presentation that I published on Slideshare.
The assumptions from where I started my reasearch are:
Users don’t want conversations. Users want pertinent and timely contents within the app that they use most.
Chatbots have the reason to exist because users don’t like to download lot of apps and because mobile sites are slow or difficult to navigate.
Chatbots are a communication channel with an interaction pattern in a sort of way similar to the natural language. They aren’t virtual sales agents.
Chatbots have the difficult mission to bring together contents and services within messaging apps.
The best chatbots performances aren’t based on conversations. Interacting with them requires new functions and a standardized command language.
So I can say that Chatbots are an important technology because:
they represent a way for engaging users within their favorite apps
they can replace apps and websites for simple and recurrent tasks
they are the only direct marketing channel comparable with the email
they revolutionize the smartphone’s push communication marketing
they are the entrance point for advanced data building programs
users interest in downloading branded apps is decreasing
mobile navigation sometimes is frustrating
users are accustomed in making Google searches in a conversational way
But this importance bring with it some threats:
chatbots can’t really understand natural language
chatbots can’t replace the all the other apps functions
chatbots could decrease the users curiosity and research capacity
chatbots will struggle for visibility
chatbots can’t wrong a lot of answers and they can’t ask too much questions
chatbots must care a lot about language, style, frequency and relevancy of their push contents
chatbots aren’t a branded channel
Chatbots are the future of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Direct Marketing for the following reasons:
because they deliver profiled offers and contents, receiving immediate feedbacks
because they are an effective support for the human-based customer care
because they will build accurate customers profiles analyzing the interactions and asking for information, ratings etc
Thinking about all these incredible opportunities, I examined the standard instant messaging apps user experience and I realized that Chatbots should have a dedicated set of functions that designed as following.
At this point I tried to go practical matching my Chatbots functions and experience with some generalistic companies.
So please, stop dreaming about a J.A.R.V.I.S.-like Bot. AI will never be like a personal assistant that knows everything about you, that understands the environment, your feelings and your needs. AI assistant will be for ever a digital system that gives complex and nice outputs just because someone coded all kind of linguistic inputs that a human can produce; this kind of assistant will never really understand what’s happening. The most advanced AI possible is the one that has the biggest relational and semantic database tested (manually!) by real operators (read “The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots” by Ellen Huet).
Natural language isn’t the key
Machines that understand some plain language commands and that can anticipate some users needs are possible, but computers that are able to understand all kind of phrases that a human pronounces, sorry, but aren’t near to come.
Like everybody us today can understand icons on expensive glass-plates called smartphone, in the same way we must create a simplified language for communicating and using Bots.
For me nobody wants to lose his time talking with a Bot even if companies would love the idea that millions of virtual and assertive sales people talk 24h/7 with customers. Instead, the most amazing feature of the Bots AI isn’t their humanity, but the fact that users can treat them without any courtesy, that they will memorize users tastes and credentials, that they will anticipate users needs thanks to some “natural language” commands and some Facebook profile analysis.
All this doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t care about language per se, but that they should drive users to use a simplified language for the following reasons:
a simple language is easier to explain in a sort of tutorial during the first chats
a simple language is faster and more efficient than the natural one. If the number of taps for receiving an information on a chat is a way more than searching it on a website, the chatbot is going to fail
creating a sort of standard simplified language for all the Bots will ease exponentially their usage.
The users fruition model will be like the one that today drives sites like Yahoo Answers, Quora or the common FAQs pages where contents are organized and required using the “How to…” and “What is…” format.
I love to design even if I don’t know how to develop my projects because I can’t code. I’ve hundreds of sheets full of ideas, functional requirements and wireframes, but writing them down is really time consuming and I’ve never enough time.
For the Drivin’ project I’m doing an exception. I really want to transform my sheets in a real service so I decided to write a presentation to introduce my idea and searching partnerships.
First of all, what is Drivin?
– Drivin’ is a service that helps users to share car routes with their friends through the social networks
– Drivin’ is a platform e that puts in communication people that have similar transportation needs
– Drivin’ is a service that creates a new trusted Car Pooling network and puts the basis for a Neighborhood social platform
Read the full presentation on Slideshare and if you are interested, read at the end of this page.
I’m searching for someone that can help me to develop Drivin’.
If you are a freelance coder or a company, contact me!
We can collaborate for building something socially meaningful and that could become a StartUp.
PS I really believe in this project and I don’t care about the intellectual property. I trust in the web knowledge sharing and in the execution. If someone will copy Drivin’, it will never be the same of what I designed 🙂
Zuckemberg and his staff are implementing the platform improving functions, mobile, and interactions among users and the rest of the web (like, fan, follow etc).
Looking at my friends, my relatives and my collagues, I think that Facebook is not only a social network, but it is going to be the official web personal page. The functions and the importance that Facebook is going to have can’t be based only on the social interaction. The normal/low profile users, the majority, are using Internet starting from Facebook. For them is normal thinking about their personal page as the official personal medium like a blog or a web site. I think that most of them ignore WordPress, Flickr or Tumblr, and probably they might not have any reason to open a YouTube Channel or a Twitter account.
In a near future a lot of people could decide to manage their digital life just using Facebook like a platform provider for self promotion, business and social interactions.
Why?
Because on Facebook you can build a personalized page (the coming Timeline) with an exclusive url (vanity url). You can upload unlimited pictures and videos that you can embed and share inside and outisde FB. You can share contents, events, birthdays and check-ins. You can write short or long statuses (up to 63.000 characters). You can video chat and mail. You can tag people (do you remember the Blogrolls or the pingbacks?). You can follow the streams of other people even if they are not your friends (something like Feed Reader). You can create a page, a sort of web site, or a group, a sort of personal community. You can advertise and analize visits (FB Ads & Insights). You can install thousands of social application and games. You can buy and sell (check Blomming, a great Italian start up) and last but not least, you can sync and manage a lot of these contents on your mobile device.
Simplify WordPress, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, MySpace, Foursquare and Twitter and you’ll obtain Facebook on dec’11. Ok, you’ll never have the functions of all these platforms, but do you think that the mass need them? Do you think that your mom will open a YouTube Channel for sharing her nephews videos or posting a comment to the new Italian Government?
No, forget it!
The strongest “function” of Facebook remains the social one. Everyone is on Facebook and all the companies are opening official pages that one day could replace the official web sites. Even Facebook for Developers is supporting the Facebook content management systemification. If you integrate FB on your web site you have a rapid subscribe process and easy share/comments functions, but remember that you are moving the attention of your users from your site to Facebook. The FB’s API are a great commodity, but they are a threat because one day your users could prefer remaining on the blue site avoiding your site.
In conclusion, I think that Facebook is going to be:
the biggest DB of people, interests and connections for the active users and the real connection between them
the biggest DB for marketeers for the sociographic information and the detailed maps of the user’s interests and connections
the biggest DB of contents and contents link because the mass produce, import and link everything on FB
the strongest conversation platformbecause we have more friends inside FB than outside it
the strongest potential paid social networkbecause anyone could live without FB
the biggest publishing application platform because installing an app is easier and viralest on FB than anywhere else
the most integrated social network on the web because to reach visitors, a web site should be easily sharable and accessible from/to FB
the most powerful analytics platform because they collect visits, impressions and shares of real indentities building a precise social tree everywhere FB is integrated
