Super simple. Works REALLY well.Hi everyone!I recently built an A.I. side project that writes your emails and more for free and in seconds (and it is REALLY good at it). I originally made this for myself, but once I started showing it to people it was clear that I should release it for everyone to use.So here we are!It’s called Octie, and you can sign up for free here: https://octie.aiOver 1,000 brands have already signed up for Octie, some that are small, and many that I bet you saw in a grocery store, or on TV, within the past 24 hours. They have used Octie to write thousands of emails, product descriptions, and more, and these have already been emailed and distributed to millions of people.All of this has happened within the past 7 days, it’s been very wild to watch.I hope you get as much value from Octie as I have been.Thanks,Matt Schlicht (MattPRD)Early Access: This A.I. bot will write your emails for free was originally published in Chatbots Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At Dashbot, we recently hosted a meetup in NYC to discuss brand strategies in conversational interfaces. As the space continues to mature, more brands are getting involved and moving from experimental to production deployments. We assembled a great group of industry experts to share their thoughts and tips for brands looking to build a chatbot or voice skill.Our panelists included:Alec Truitt, Global Product Partnerships, Google AssistantAnamita Guha, Global Lead of Product Management, IBM QAntonio Cucciniello, Senior Software Developer, Reprise DigitalBrian Plaskon, Senior Product Manager, Realogy HoldingsWhat use cases are brands developing for?Our panelists see a wide variety of use cases from customer service, productivity tools, and information sharing to entertainment and marketing initiatives.At IBM, they work with everyone from individual developers to Fortune 20 enterprises. The most common use case, though, is customer care. Large enterprises go to IBM given their ability to handle sensitive data across industry and geographic regulations.Google works with a similar range of users and enterprises. The use cases for Google Assistant Actions depend on the context — in the home (recipes, home automation), mobile (games, local search), or in the car on the go (communication, messaging).Reprise Digital, a global marketing agency, tends to work with brands looking to experiment on a new platform, market their products, or provide information and FAQs. Given voice is a new platform, there are some set of brands that want to be first on it. We also see this frequently with innovation teams experimenting in voice. On the text chatbot side, Reprise generally sees brands looking to promote their products or answer FAQs.Realogy, the real estate holding company for Century21, Coldwell Banker, Sotheby’s, and more, developed its own voice skill, AgentX. Agent X is a productivity skill that enables real estate agents to quickly get information, including their appointments, market research, and listing information — all without the need to open their laptop.Tips from the experts — what works well for conversational interfaces?Context is keyA common theme throughout the evening was the importance of context. Where is the user? What are they currently doing? What are they looking for or to do? What are the capabilities of the device?In addition to the three contexts Alec pointed out earlier (in the home, mobile, and in the car), he recommended also considering when will the user interacts with the chatbot and how the user expects to interact with it. If the user is in the car, they cannot use their hands. If they are at home getting a recipe, having something visual can help. If the user wants to play a game, but is on a device without a screen, perhaps a quiz is better.Whether the interface is voice enabled or text only is important. As Anamita points out, users talk differently than they type.Trust can also be an important factor. As IBM works with many global enterprises handling sensitive data, one of the areas Anamita sees is that a user may be more likely to trust interacting on a computer, where identity can be more easily verified, rather than via voice.Leverage the conversational nature of interfacesConversational interfaces are quite a bit different from websites and mobile apps — what works well in those may not work well in a chatbot or voice skill.At Reprise, Antonio sometimes sees brands who want to port what they currently have on their website or mobile app to a chatbot or voice interface. Whereas the website is all about navigating from one link to the other to vertically drill into what the user is looking for, with conversation, a user should be able to say, or write, what they want and directly get to the information.Similarly with Realogy, agents are looking for information that is stored in a variety of locations and want to be able to retrieve it quickly and easily. A powerful example of Agent X is when a listing agent is in a presentation with a seller and wants to know the average time on the market or average listing price for a property, they can quickly get the info, without the need to open a laptop and start searching.As Alec adds, there is a low tolerance amongst users of voice skills. If the skill is not useful, or they do not see the value right away, they will jump to something else. If they see a great use case, they will invest the extra time. It is important not to replicate what you already have on your website or app, but to consider what will add value to the user and what is faster to use.Keep it simple, provide guidanceAnother common theme amongst our panels was to start simple.As Alec pointed out, with voice, it is especially important to keep interactions simple rather than complex back and forths. For example, placing an order for food delivery from scratch can be rather complex. However, re-ordering a previous delivery is much easier, and better suited to voice. We see the same thing with the food delivery clients we work with. We also learned from our voice survey, that approximately 53% of purchases through voice interfaces is for food delivery.In general, the process Alec sees developers follow with Google Actions is to first build the foundation and make sure the Action works, next layer in visuals and make it more interactive, and finally delight the user so they come back and re-engage.Simplicity was also a key goal for Realogy. One of the most popular use cases is just looking up real estate listings. They plan to build new capabilities where it makes sense. They are not just doing voice for voice sake.To get started, Brian recommends going through the design exercise at https://alexa.design/cdw and to read “ Understand how users invoke custom skills “ to add variety into the interaction model.In addition to starting simple, it is important to let the user know what the chatbot or voice skill can do. While Alec suggested the initial interaction can intro what the chatbot can do, it should not do that every time. If the user comes back, allow the user to take the next steps. Anamita recommends including a “fallback” Intent to catch cases the chatbot does not handle. If the fallback is triggered, the chatbot could respond, “sorry I cannot do X, but I can do these six things.”Personality can be importantDepending on the use case of the chatbot or voice skill, personality can be an important factor.IBM has an “empathy suite” including a tone analyzer and personality insights. When implemented in a customer care chatbot, if a user says they are having a horrible day, the chatbot can understand that and provide a different experience.As users become more comfortable interacting with chatbots and voice, providing a personality can be quite useful. As Anamita explained, initially chatbots were built for efficiency or to automate a task, but now people are creating relationships with them. Children are growing up with bots that have been anthropomorphized, like the Pepper Robot.Whether to enable empathy or a personality in a chatbot comes back to context. Anamita sees teaching and therapy use cases as more suited for empathy versus something more transactional. As Brian added, real estate agents range from “Type A” to “Type A,” so they keep personality and cuteness to a minimum. Right now the goal is to be as helpful and productive as possible, but there is room for personality in the future.At Reprise, copywriters try to come up with a voice for the brand — a name and description of the persona and how they would talk. They use this in all the copy as it is important for the voice of the brand to be the same across the entire experience, whether that is on the Internet or voice device.In regards to using voice actors on Alexa or Google Home, the panel in general thought they could be beneficial depending on the use case. For example, Antonio pointed out that if a user were interacting with a Jimmy Fallon skill, they would probably be more engaged if it was his voice rather than the default device’s voice.User acquisition and discovery are challengesOur panelists generally agree that user acquisition and discovery are challenges.Education is one of the underlying issues. Some users do not even know third party voice apps exist. As we noted in our earlier voice survey, one of the issues is users tend not to know what voice apps are even called.Similarly, while Antonio finds users tend to not understand how to invoke the voice apps, improving the invocation can lead to increased acquisition. Associating the invocation name with the brand or something popular can help.Making use of the “can fulfill” Intents on Alexa or Google Home can lead to increase acquisition too. If a user asks for something that matches a “can fulfill” Intent, the skill may be presented as a possible option to the user.Discovery can depend on the use case. Anamita finds word-of-mouth tends to work when users are searching for chatbots for need or pleasure. If the use case is more transactional, the enterprise could suggest to the user to try the chatbot instead.Even internal promotion within a company can be a challenge. At Realogy, there are a lot of competing internal marketing initiatives. What worked for Brian was to incentivize folks with device giveaways. He recommends channeling your internal game show host — “there’s a little Steve Harvey in all of us.”Alec’s team at Google is working on solutions to improve user acquisition and discovery. They are not only looking to help with generating initial acquisition, but with retention as well to keep users coming back. One of the challenges is users sometimes do not remember how they found a particular voice app and then how to get back to it.Analytics are essentialOur panelists all agreed analytics are important. As Alec pointed out, you need great analytics to identify what is driving usage and how to improve it.Realogy uses Dashbot to gain insights into how agents are interacting with Agent X. They wanted to know if agents would know how to interact with the skill and which features were used more than others. Dashbot helped answer those questions. They also found there is a voracious appetite for new capabilities.Through Dashbot, Reprise has also been able to improve engagement. They learned for one of their client’s Google Actions, that most of the Intents were not being used. It turned out the issue was with all the overly complicated Intents. Based on the analytics, they launched a new version that was much more simplified.In addition to analytics, Anamita recommends adding a feedback loop directly in the experience. Most of IBM’s internal chatbots include a thumbs up/down prompt asking the user if the chatbot answered the question right or provided the info they needed. At Dashbot, we are able to show these customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, and the paths leading to them, to help enable improvements in the response effectiveness.What’s nextWe asked our panel if they had any thoughts on the future of the space. There was a great sense of optimism and excitement for the future.Anamita predicts digital humans becoming more of a reality — having interfaces with human facial reactions.Brian is looking forward to a generational leap in the device capabilities — what he likens to going from one game console to the next.Antonio sees users becoming more comfortable with having voice devices in their homes as well as areas for improvement for the space to take off even more. The three main areas are education (knowing how to use the device), discovery (how to find what is needed), and user experience (providing value to users). User experience is the most important to get people to adopt the devices.Alec envisions a blending of voice apps and chatbots to provide the best experience depending on the context, rather than separate experiences. Voice can be the bridge to jump from the starting point to the finish.At Dashbot, we are very excited about the future of conversational interfaces. We look forward to seeing what enterprise brands continue to develop.Watch the full panelhttps://medium.com/media/64d93c231cc35a6fd465d9fa414dcca4/hrefAbout DashbotDashbot is a conversational analytics platform that enables enterprises and developers to increase user engagement, acquisition, and conversions through actionable insights and tools.In addition to traditional analytics like engagement and retention, we provide conversation specific metrics including NLP response effectiveness, sentiment analysis, conversational analytics, and the full chat session transcripts.We also have tools to take action on the data, like our live person take over of chat sessions and push notifications for re-engagement.We support Alexa, Google Home, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Twitter, Kik, SMS, web chat, and any other conversational interface.Brand Strategies for Conversational Interfaces was originally published in Chatbots Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Is a robot going to take my job? We cover AI programs like chatbots can make our employees a little nervous and how you lead change change.Continue reading on Chatbots Magazine »

AI Chatbots in Healthcare: Transform Patient’s Engagement with Healthcare ProvidersImage source: @totalshape.comChatbots are replacing phone call-based customer service in various sectors. In the healthcare industry is opting Chatbots to help patients in resolving their concerns faster than traditional methods. In the healthcare sector, the patient’s experience remains at the top priority. These days the patient-driven healthcare environment is helping the patient to make better decisions.To remain spontaneous, it is the time for the healthcare services to embrace consumer readiness for digital communication via AI chatbot. This can help to deepen patient engagement that leads to better health outcomes. With AI Chatbots healthcare systems can accelerate the leap to add values for patient healthcare. Healthcare Chatbots industry is booming at a CAGR of 20.5% to Estimated $542.3 million Growth By 2026.Chatbots in healthcare can offer the best health care service. Smart Chatbots can help a patient to schedule a follow-up instantaneously. It offers distinctive automated conversational interactions with quality experience of care. A chatbot is a way ahead to improve 24/7 customer service and assist patients with processing every service request faster than ever before.Challenges in healthcareHealthcare is all about offering the services to the patient without any delay or any compromise. Healthcare service providers can implement the Chatbot services from scheduling an appointment to paying bills.Chatbots make it simple for patients to connect anytime. It is the best way to ultimately deliver quality healthcare that surpasses patient expectations. These days app development services are addressing concerns in healthcare while overcoming the tedious challenges.Payment ProcessingIn healthcare collecting payment is more challenging. These days’ patients are becoming responsible for a larger portion of their medical bills. If you want to increase the speed and amount of your collections, you should integrate chatbot for dealing with your patients.Patient ExperienceIn recent years the landscape of healthcare services has experienced some significant changes. The patient experience is more demand for a better service provider. Healthcare service provider faces tougher competition in attracting and retaining patients. Chatbot services help to match the level of the patient experience.Effective payment modelIn healthcare payers and patients always demand a new payment model for better services. Chatbots can be helpful to reduce cost and increase service quality. AI chatbot can encourage healthcare providers to coordinate services and promote preventive care to patients.Functioning huge dataIn healthcare data is being generated in huge amount. It is very challenging to harness the power of data and generate accurate insights into the patient. In this case, Chatbots can use to optimize the patient experience.Some use Cases for Chatbots in Healthcare SectorChatbots continue to gain grip in the healthcare sector to redefine healthcare industry. Here is a look at those use cases in healthcare.1. Customer ServiceChatbot helps the users to navigate the site or troubleshoot a minor problem. Chatbots can be helpful for users to schedule appointments, issue reminders, or refilling prescription medications.2. Patient EngagementChatbots can keep constant contact between patients and healthcare service providers. Chatbots are designed to offer accurate suggestions related to the patients’ interest. The chatbot assists the healthcare service provider to answer the question for further patient’s engagement.3. Voice assistantsChatbots can also provide voice assistance to patients for better guidance and outcomes. Chatbots having spoken conversations with patients offer the best way to tackle any size of patient’s problems. The voice technology integrated with the chatbot is an innovative way to connect the patient or the concerned person.4. Keep patient updateA chatbot can help patients prepare for any size of surgery or operation beforehand. After a patient makes an appointment, a chatbot gets in touch via text message or email to the patient. With the concern expert details, it will deliver educational materials related to the surgery. This is a new way to address any patient. This will keep the patient and family to remain updated till the last moment.Final thoughtsWith best chatbot service provider your patient will not look elsewhere for a better option. A chatbot is the best option to eliminate human bias from interactions. With natural language processing, the Chatbots can increase the number of valid responses through the conversation.With time the healthcare industry continues to embrace Chatbots to improve the health-related services. AI Chatbots are the best way to drive the consumer-centric patient expectations to deliver quick customer services. Chatbot development services are on a hike these in the healthcare sector focusing the patient services. The Chatbot services offered can be asked for medical advice, carry out administrative tasks, or consulting experts directly.Overcoming the Patient Healthcare Challenges with AI Chatbots was originally published in Chatbots Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The educational sector has undergone massive changes post the proliferation of internet services in learning.It will not be an exaggeration to say that they have completely changed the way students of all ages study, and the overall landscape of education has evolved for good.With Education App Development Companies coming in, there are a host of online educational mobile apps for readers of every age. Schools also recommend online educational mobile app these days to reinforce and supplement in-class sessions.Research suggests that the size of educational mobile apps is going to rise by CAGR of more than 27% by 2022, which marks it as one of the fastest-growing segments in mobile apps.Home-grown apps like StuDocu and Byju have also witnessed exemplary growth in the last five years and is turning out to be the primary source of learning outside classes for all kinds of courses.Some Factors That Govern the Impact of a Session, Online, as Well as In-Class, Are:1. 360-degree view of the overall subject — Teachers who leave open ends while teaching often leaves students confused.When a person learns, they develop a mind-map of the concept. When the mind map is incomplete, learning is fraught with confusion.2. Manner of Teaching — Some teachers have a habit of giving interesting examples to teach. Some others make learning extraordinarily interactive and fun.3. Engagement — When students engage themselves during the session, they tend to learn better.4. Feedback — A student remembers positive as well as negative feedback. Research suggests that feedbacks help reinforce a person’s mind-map. Examinations are the traditional feedback mechanism; in the case of app- based learning, they are online assessments.The solutions that are currently available in the market rely on coded content, embedded videos, and paid manual support to enhance the teaching experience.This is a gap that is still unaddressed and also a massive opportunity for improvement and innovation in the sector.Quality of content in training may be excellent, but it can never replace that component of personal approval that a learner seeks to reinforce their mind-map.Online mobile education is just a supplement and not a replacement to in-person education due to these very reasons in the present scenario.Chatbots are an artificial intelligence-based solution that relies on natural language processing and native language generation to address certain aspects that existing mobile apps are missing, for e.g., Instagram bot.Chatbots act as an online representative that may answer some of your questions.The best success story about chatbots in present times is their usage by financial organizations to address specific client requests without having to call or visit a branch.The chatbots are also widely used in scenarios that have intensive use cases developed traditionally. The reason is that they rely heavily on historical data and the flow of conversation.An advanced version of a chatbot is Amelia that has received a lot of acceptance across domains.Chatbot uses the Robotic Process Automation methodology in tandem with natural language processing to provide better customer experience while also gathering useful insights for the provider.Now, coming back to the education sector where a real-life human teacher imparts its learnings to pupils through innovative methods and further reinforces it by asking and answering questions, a chatbot might work like magic.To Base This Claim, Let Us Compare the Gaps in Educational Apps and Chatbot Offerings1. 360-Degree View: A trainer uploads a video of an exhaustive lecture to explain a concept. The difference comes when a student is faced with a doubt that they cannot ask anyone online.The chatbot window pops up and asks — what can I do for you today? The AI-based tool has already recorded the current context to answer the question.This tool has trained on this particular topic through training datasets having a size of several terabytes and has most likely developed a good understanding.If not able to answer, it says — “I am sorry, but you may have to reach out to an expert on this.” Voila! That is how we upsell.2. Teaching Method — During the course, the chatbot seeks student feedback. The student shares feedback, and the chatbot utilizes its intelligent system to suggest — Would you like to refer courses from another faculty? Would you like to change the language mode?The student can have a better learning experience than it would have had earlier. If the student is not satisfied with the resolution, chatbot connects him to a manual expert again.3. Engagement — The student is faced with doubt in the middle of the training. He types the same in the chatbot that is present to the right side of the training window.The chatbot utilizes its expansive knowledge in this context to answer and also suggests additional training to further brush up on the concepts.The student can clarify small doubt without having to google into more pages — a straight cut method to retain student attention and reinforce learning with zero confusions.4. Feedback — At the end of the course, the student is asked to give a small test to check his understanding. Unlike a traditional MCQ window, the questionnaire is administered by the chatbot.When a student provides the wrong answer, it explains the reason why this answer is wrong and the best way to approach such questions for future references.Once the training ends, it gives a final score and uses its intelligent model to suggest more courses to strengthen the student’s learning.Using chatbot enables the consumer to have a better experience and also allows the provider to receive better feedback on their courses.Chatbots can also be offered to students to connect with them on a personal level and counsel them on things that are bothering them or making individual decisions.Benefits That a Chatbot Can Offer in Educational Mobile AppsAnswering questions that a child may not be able to ask in a classroom setting due to peer pressure and fear of mocking by teachers and friends.Slow learners can attend the same training multiple times and keep brushing up on doubts and confusion to get at par with others.Fast learners can seek chatbot recommendations to understand what courses they may take next instead of waiting for it in classrooms. They can also ask questions such as the topics that can enable them to grow in a specific area of interest or training module to answer particular questions.Students at the tender age can rely on the chatbot to seek answers that may not have been addressed by their parents or teachers.Students who have a habit of asking too many questions can happily tinker with the chatbot to satisfy those inquisitive pangs now and then.Customization of chatbot will enhance the comfort level and engagement of the student at every age.A chatbot can turn to be a personal counselor to children at a crucial stage that may decide how they may develop their careers.A chatbot can be a personal assistant that helps the child plan their courses to complete all topics before the d-day.A chatbot can seek student feedback through the click of a button for improvements. It can also be used to design the student profile to guide them in the best way possible.Things You Need to Take Care for Ensuring That Chatbots Can Add Value to the Existing OfferingsTraining and language model should be robust and exhaustive. A poorly trained system is even worse for a student than no chat support. Reason being that it may confuse children or portray the entire app solution as flawed and inefficient.The chatbot should not slow down the overall system. Integrating a chatbot into the existing system should be seamless, so it does not lead to other performance issues in the system.Security is a concern that has to be taken care of at all times. Chatbots should be galvanized against misuse by hackers since they are directly deriving information from the core database to learn from every experience. The chatbot should be able to identify a malicious user and notify the security team.ConclusionEducational Mobile apps have only touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of value addition and contribution.Many remote villages across India rely on online education to learn. The introduction of chatbot needs to be such that it percolates to every level of users.With time and increased penetration, businesses are bound to uncover further innovative ways to enhance the educational experience and make a social difference that they are capable of.***********************************************Author Bio:-Harikrishna Kundariya, a marketer, developer, IoT, ChatBot & Blockchain savvy, designer, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz Technologies, a Mobile App Development Company. His 8+ experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT & BlockchainHow Chatbots can be a Game Changer for Educational Mobile Apps? was originally published in Chatbots Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.