Bots Are Awesome! Humans? Not so Much
Your bots are talking to humans. Learn how to cope with this fact.
In the past few days my personal resume bot has exchanged over 24,000 messages via Facebook Messenger and SMS. It’s chatted with folks from every industry and has introduced me to people at Facebook, Microsoft, and Google — plus a half dozen small, compelling teams.
What I learned about humans and AI while sifting through those conversations is fascinating and also a little disturbing.
I’ve distilled that data into useful nuggets you should consider before jumping on the bot bandwagon.
The Backstory of #EstherBot
Earlier this week I built and launched EstherBot, a personal resume bot that can tell you about my career, interests, and values. It shot to the #2 spot on Product Hunt and my Medium post about why and how I built it spread like wildfire – racking up over 1k recommends. (Get instructions for building your own free bot here.)
EstherBot speaks to the current zeitgeist. The era of messaging has arrived along with a botpocalypse, but few people have seen examples that go beyond the personal assistant, travel butler, or shopping concierge. To some, those feel like solutions for the 1% rather than the 99%.
EstherBot is relatable and understandable. The idea is simple — the resume hasn’t really changed that much in the digital age. While you’re producing all this information about yourself in the way that you use social media, your resume doesn’t actively seek out opportunities that you might be interested in. Your resume doesn’t constantly learn and get better by observing you. Instead, you have to do all this manual work, just like you used to. Why?
There’s a ton of data that could be used to connect you to better opportunities. Data including hobbies, values, location preferences, multimedia samples of your work. On and on. A resume simply can’t hold all of that, but a bot can.
The mass market may not yet understand the convenience afforded by bots that can book a restaurant or schedule a meeting. But everyone, at some point, goes through the overwhelming process of finding a job or recruiting a new hire.
As a result, EstherBot received so much traffic that it literally broke my Messenger app. Messenger’s notification system completely froze due to the speed and quantity of incoming / outgoing messages — locking up after 2k notifications.
Oh, the Humanity…
If you interacted with EstherBot odds are I’ve at least skimmed a portion of the transcript because I’ve been constantly tweaking the script to improve the flow and responses based on what I’m seeing humans do and say. (Yes, I even read yours, Josh from Arkansas, who tried sexting with it. When you use Messenger it links to your Facebook profile — you aren’t anonymous!)
Humans Go Wildly Off Script
Setting up interaction boundaries and expectations is key, but even when you do — it won’t be enough. Humans will push the limits. Structured templates can be helpful guides but you’ll likely need cues to get failing humans back on track.
Scripted bots are especially tough sells because they require a human to follow the rules. If you do go the scripted route, be sure to offer a wide variety of potential reactions to prevent the bot from repeating itself over and over. Humans hate that.
For instance, offer up dozens of error message variations. Then program your bot so it doesn’t send the same message to the same person more than once. When in doubt – use gifs. Humans love them.
Here’s how my bot shows that it’s confused:
Humans Can Lose Their Cool
Once a human gets frustrated with a bot they are quick to lash out. Your bot will experience name calling and may even receive ugly emoji or stickers. As a result, you should have calming or perhaps funny responses to common teenage assaults like “I hate you!” or “Why are you so dumb?”
Humans Give Up Easily…
For all of our ingenuity and evolution, humans are fairly lazy. If the solution isn’t immediately accessible or painfully obvious then your user will simply give up and leave the conversation.
…but Humans Will Also Reengage Later
As mobile app builders know all too well, getting people to open an app and give it another chance is very hard. By comparison, reengagement with a Messenger bot is easy, because the most recent conversations are readily accessible, at the top of the list. Do you even remember where the last app you installed ended up?
The desire to chat creates an opportunity for interactive storytelling. Use it to your advantage.
In looking at interactions with EstherBot from this evening I can see that roughly 20% of conversations are reengagements. This means the conversation actually started hours, and in some cases, days earlier. With bots in Messenger, people don’t have to remember to open a specific app, which is yyyuge.
Humans Chat With a Bot Like They’re Chatting With a Human
One of the first things humans tend to do is anthropomorphize the bot. They’ll start by asking things like, “Hey — how’re you?” or “Tell me about yourself.” Because of course the bot has feelings and a creation story it’s just dying to share.
The desire to chat creates an opportunity for interactive storytelling. Use it to your advantage.
Featured CBM: The Future of AI Is in the Hands of Storytellers
Maybe your bot should have an origin story. Maybe it has “sibling” bots or “friends” that it cross-promotes to help you solve other problems. Luka provides an entire botourage within their app—from food to news bots.
Your bot’s responses should provide users with surprise and delight.
The Nitty Gritty for Bot Builders
In looking through the data it’s clear to me that there are a few key learnings to share:
90% Chose Messenger Over SMS
EstherBot has two very clear offerings — chatting over Messenger or SMS. Messenger won by a landslide.
Based on my own technical limitations I didn’t build a native Messenger Platform bot but can see that’s definitely worth the investment given user preference for interacting on Facebook. (If you’re a developer and want to work with me on this, hit me up!)
Messenger is Not Yet Business Friendly Enough
There are a few gaping holes in the platform as it exists today that could hamper a business’s success.
- There’s no way to authorize access to email addresses. This is a big problem since follow up interactions are then restricted to Messenger. So, if someone has a negative chat experience and blocks you, you’re donezo!
- Messenger lacks Insight data. Facebook is famous for surfacing actionable and useful demographic data for businesses but in the case of messaging—it is is nonexistent. Sure, you get the total number of conversations and things like total number of deleted conversations, but I don’t know anything about the thousands of people who’ve chatted with EstherBot.
- Managing conversations at scale is truly painful. It’s possible that I just haven’t tried the right tool yet but so far, I can say that interacting inside of Facebook is not sustainable and the Slack integration I used is only workable for low traffic bots. With thousands of conversations to track and a dozen happening simultaneously, it’s an unmanageable mess. If you’re a big enough business this problem could tank you.
Without a Bot Store, How Does Discovery Happen?
Most bot discovery is happening through press, which is an unsustainable growth lever. Ben Tossell’s Botlist is a site that recently launched but what’s really needed is more support at the platform level.
Now’s the time for creative marketers to step up and develop best practices for messaging and bot engagement.
Without a tool for being featured or surfaced on a platform how can you manufacture desire, urgency, and social proof to grow?
Related Featured CBM: Chatbots and Facebook: the Best Way to Advertise
