The 8 Chatbots that actually solves a problem.
Running my chatbot agency, the most popular question I always get asked is, Why the hell do we need a chatbot? That is a reasonable question and deserves an answer with no sales pitch intact to it.
My attempt in this post is not to put out “Cool use cases for a chatbot” but to exhibit chatbots that actually work. These bots aren’t use cases. They are case studies that have not only high engagement but have also made fiscal sense.
It’s hard to talk negatively about something when you have a strong bias towards it. I wanted to convince myself and of course my clients that chatbots are here to stay. That they are, in fact, an apparatus for growing sales and solving problems.
How do I reach this objective of proving bots to be utilitarian? Let’s be honest, Vanity metrics are misleading; they don’t show the complete picture. In chatbots, the vanity metrics are Subscribers, Opting-in in their first conversation, and basically any other measure that doesn’t account to engagement.
Top Articles on How Businesses are using Bots:
1. Series of stories on AI, chatbots and how can they help businesses
2. Why Messenger is the Ideal Bot Platform for Now
3. What I learned in making three chatbots for small businesses
The purpose of a chatbot is to improve on the current state of affairs. We are currently in the millennial age and a well known fact is that most millenials spend a majority of their waking hours attached to their phones and that they prefer texting over calling. Whatever an individual wants to do can be made easier simply by making it a process that millennials are most comfortable with: a chatbot that you can text! It can do everything that you are doing currently on an app. We pushed our vision with the notion that everything would move to the conversational paradigm soon. Another major reason for bot popularity is that it came out as the savior for a lot of apps that shouldn’t exist as stand-alone apps.
For example, small businesses like restaurants, have their own stand-alone apps. But this doesn’t make sense! Single user activity is not going to be more than once or twice a week. This means low engagement and lack of user retainment. The better deal for them is to be listed on a delivery marketplace like deliveroo, ubereats or swiggy.
A lot of chatbots are not used for what it is intended. Limited AI means massive technical challenges — such as understanding user intent from free-form text. So, when it comes to customer support, unless a highly trained AI is implemented, chatbots once again don’t make much sense. So, where do they work? Marketing. Using chatbots for marketing purposes had shown very clear revenue addition and success.
The most popular marketing use case is Facebook Marketing. Messenger allows you to store user identity as a subscriber and gives you the ability to reach out to them in the future. This feature is encouraging bot developers to build with marketing strategy in mind. A quick google search would easily present multiple marketing use cases. But, I don’t want to list out bots with that use case. There are already far too many that exist with use cases of newsletters or pushing promotional material to subscribed users.
Here are few bots that I think well serving the intended use case.
KLM on Messenger
KLM offers you to receive your flight documentation via Messenger. After booking your flight on KLM.com you can choose to receive your booking confirmation, check-in notification, boarding pass, and flight status updates via Messenger. This makes your travel information easy to find in a single place, available at the airport, en route or at home.
Consumers find KLM bot useful. It eliminates the need to carry any documents and gives you real-time updates about your flight. KLM didn’t try to turn the bot into “Book my flight” through messenger cause it is not the ideal thing to do. What they did try is make the customer experience better post booking the flight.
GRE Chatbot
GRE Chatbot is another interesting messenger bot that is touting eyeballs from users. For admission to a Graduate school, students are required to write Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) to qualify for different universities.
Along with testing your analytical writing and quantitative reasoning skills, the GRE also tests your verbal skills. The GRE bot lets user practice words in a flash card fashion.
Talk Push
All of my friends know that I build bots and it has become second nature to them to be on the lookout for and interesting chatbot opportunity. Talk Push was a compelling find of a friend of mine.
Talk Push is a very useful chatbot designed specifically for hiring. It acts as a filter for recruiting. Companies receive countless applications each hiring period and as a recruiter, a little help goes a long way.
It ask 2–3 questions and then starts interacting specifically to job description. In their admin interface we can specify all the questions we would like to know about them. They also have pre-configured templates, like if the position is for java developer, it front-loads few non-opinionated java questions
This bot screens all the applicants and filters out the most relevant. It asks 2–3 questions and then starts interacting according to the job description. In its admin interface, a recruiter can specify all the questions he/she would like to know about the applicant. It also has pre-configured templates. For example, if the position is for java developer, it front-loads a few non-opinionated java questions. It also has the capability of collecting text, audio, and video from applicants. TalkPush has increased recruiter output by a factor of 5.
Talk Push generates more than $100k MRR.
Hooks
This is my favorite cause I use it regularly. Simple and powerful. Hooks was one of the earliest to jump into the chatbot bandwagon. In fact, I got to know about chatbots after using hooks.
Hooks lets you subscribe to content from the publisher of your choice.
I’m subscribed to publishers like Techcrunch, Mashable and Startup Grind. If there is any new post on those platforms, I’ll get to know first hand through their push notifications. The best part you don’t need any app. Hooks chatbot sits on messenger and gives you all the updates.
Chanun
Of course, out of all these bot I had to squeeze in something that we created. We created back in 2017 and the engagement has been magic. Much of it credit goes to how we have built it around Network-Effect model. Chanun is a social chatbot.
Users can start chatting with people anonymously. Chanun is a fun, quick, boredom-killer which requires no installation.
Leeds Beckett University
Becky (the bot’s persona) guides users through the clearing process and makes a course offer in real-time based on qualifying questions. “How many UCAS points do you have?” and “What subject are you interested in?” are a few questions that Becky will ask users. Individuals who qualify can accept the university’s offer directly within Messenger.
Becky assists you in making the admission process look painless and simple.
For Leeds Beckett University, picking chatbot helped them in saving more than $3.1 Million with 1-Day Chatfuel Campaign. Don’t believe me? This chatfuel blog will help you get a better picture.
Apollo Hospitals
Apollo Hospitals is the largest integrated private hospital group in Asia with expertise in managing hospitals, clinics, health insurance, healthcare IT and many more. Apollo Hospitals are a leading destination for a number of patients from all over the world.
How does Apollo use bots? On their website, you can book appointments while going through an interactive conversation. The bot asks you a few questions about your health problem before deciding who will be the appropriate doctor for your illness.
Given their huge traffic of the website, Apollo bot does more than 10k appointments per day.
Growth Bot
Fresh out of HubSpot Labs, This chatbot is a personal assistant for marketing and sales. GrowthBot helps you become more efficient by placing information and common marketing and sales tasks within the reach of a single message or command.
So, instead of sending a message to a colleague asking “Hey how was organic traffic to our site last week?”, you’d be able to ask a chatbot that would then respond automatically.
Consider Growth bot as your personal assistant to marketing and sales. You can do tons of things with Growth bot like
- Tell me about [Person’s email]
- Company Info on [Company website domain]
- Show me the top articles on [blog or website]
- What are the top articles about [topic]
- What tech does [website] use?
- Show me something funny
Check with Ellie
Provide breastfeeding support to new and expecting mothers.
Ellie is a bot that helps with answering mothers breastfeeding related questions. Ellie guide you through a care pathway to
help you overcome your breastfeeding challenge. It gives you instant answers to your breastfeeding questions, so you don’t have to read tons of blog articles to know what’s going on.
Ellie is filled with information verified by experienced lactation consultants. You have enough on your mind caring for your newborn without searching for breastfeeding resources. Ellie help to identify and treat common breastfeeding challenges.
According to the founder, The chatbot has 81% retention over 24 days to subscribers and 17% click rate overall with roughly 50% interacting with follow up resources.
In case you want to know how much it cost to get yourself chatbot built. We have created a tool to let you know that. Check out our Cost Calculator
