BotXperts asked — with Barbara Ondrisek of Chatbots Agency
This is the eighth interview of a series of interviews I’m doing with 10 experts of the worldwide bot scene. These interviews are part of my research which aims to find guidelines for designing messenger bots. If you want to read more about what I do and why you can do it in my previous article. You can also read the previous interviews with:
Barbara Ondrisek & Chatbots Agency
Barbara is Co-Founder and CEO of the Chatbots Agency, a software development and consulting company based in Vienna, Austria. In her bot career, which started about a year ago, she has built several bots:
Mica, the Hipster Cat Bot
Mica, helps you discover the best places worldwide. It was the first chatbot ever created for Messenger in Austria, was also one of the very first chatbots on the Facebook Messenger and Skype platform — and is still the top 7 bot on Skype. Besides that Mica is also available on Kik, Telegram and Viber.
In March Mica reached 100.000 unique users that have been chatting with her. This number doubled to 250.000 this month. In this article you can read 5 interesting facts about Mica and its users.
ELIZA Chat Bot
Everyone who has ever examined the history of chat bots as we know them now should have stumbled upon ELIZA. The original version has been greated by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966 and has been recreated for Messenger by Barbara. With this new version Barbara wants to go one step further. ELIZA Chat Bot is designed to recognize the context of a conversation and analyze how people communicate with software. The program should learn to react on a certain context based on similar conversations like humans do it too.
BotBarcamp Bot
Those who attended BotBarCamp in Vienna this year have used BotBarCamp Bot for the registration process.
Client Projects
Barbara has developed her own rule-based NLP which she uses for her project along with Java and a bot framework. The feedback from the users is very positive and especially the cat bot receives a lot of emotional and happy messages.
Bot Development
Which problems did you face while developing bots?
The external chatbot APIs of messenger apps like Facebook, Skype or Telegram change now and then or are not very well documented. That’s why you have to keep an eye open on that.
What kind of problems do you see in the interaction between people and bots?
Language and the intention behind it are generally complicated. Additionally conversations with different target groups have different outcomes although they speak the same language. A conversation with a 16 year old American teenager on Kik differs from one with a 38 year old adult from the UK on Skype. Although both users wanted the same. The challenge for the bot is to deliver to both target groups a great user experience and make them happy.
What have you improved on your bots since the release?
I continuously improve UX as well as the conversation and the dialog.
The Future of Bots
How do you see the future of bots?
Messenger bots will soon take over tasks we’re currently struggling to do on apps, websites and hotlines. For example finding an appointment among three people is a complicated thing. A personal assistant bot on the other hand could do that easily by finding an appointment through the calendars autonomously. But also the development of NLP as well as Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality offer exciting possibilities for the future.
What has to be improved so bots can work better?
On the one hand customers have to realize that bots are a big new technology that is developing and they have to let themselves into it. Also we have to learn that it can open new job positions like ‘Dialog Designer’, someone who writes the texts for bots. People liking a bot or not depends on the quality of the conversations and the bot has personality.
Bots will replace websites
What do you think about this statement?
Chatbots will not replace all apps but the bad ones. Also bots will not replace all customer service hotline, because human diversity and intelligence can’t be simply completely replaced. However, chatbots can assist in these cases especially since they are available all the time and could help while people waiting on a hotline.
