5 Companies that Pushed the Right Buttons with Their Chatbots
Even though chatbots have existed in one form or another for over 50 years, Facebook’s Bots for Messenger platform breathed new life into them. Kik, Slack and Skype soon followed suit, but none of them could surpass Facebook’s initiative. According to one of the most recent bot counts, there are well over 33,000 Messenger bots across all sorts of industries. Finance institutions, retailers, legal services and even HR departments have all tried to develop a bot. Sometimes, the goal is simply to provide customer service, while in other cases, chatbots can handle whole transactions.
In this blog post, we’re taking a look a 5 companies who have developed successful chatbots on various platforms. That is translated into passing the test of time, becoming popular and even adding value to the parent companies.
H&M’s Chatbot Masters Outfit Recommendations
Swedish fashion retailer H&M has had a mobile app for quite some time now. While that remains great for online shopping on the go, H&M’s chatbot is not without its merits. First of all, the Kik bot enables mobile customers to browse various outfits based on gender and style. Once they decide on a specific outfit, customers can shop, save, share or move onto the next one.
What H&M managed to do with this chatbot was to create an even stronger bond with young audiences. By moving the shopping experience from the browser and mobile app into an interface youngster are familiar with, the retailer leveraged chatbots for better marketing and engagement.
Starbucks’ Chatbot Brought Personality Into Play
With The Real PSL (Pumpkin Spiced Latte), Starbucks tapped into the success of seasonal trends. Instead of creating a Messenger chatbot that would just talk about their products, the coffee house gave one of their products personality. Since the Pumpkin Spiced Latte is a really autumnal drink in the UK, launching the campaign at the end of August made perfect sense.
As you can see in the above picture, the chatbot even had a real-life avatar in the form of a Starbucks cup wearing oversized glasses. From snarky answers and one-liners to cat GIFs and anecdotes, The Real PSL seemed to have everything. The Verge even went as far as to call it the perfect Facebook friend.
Disney took a similar route by promoting Zootopia using a Judy Hopps chatbot. As Sam Shaw, head of insight at Canvas8 pointed out, “People’s relationship with a fictional character is exploratory. In the entertainment business, it’s a great way to explore new channels to express the brand. Not all bot interactions have to be functional.”
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HealthTap Provides Personalized Medical Answers Right Away
Self-diagnosis and self-treatment are anything but recommendable, especially in the case of severe health conditions. For everything else, there’s HealthTap’s Messenger bot. Since it’s not always possible to visit a physician whenever you’re under the weather, getting free personalized answers from 100,000 US doctors sounds like a good alternative.
If the chatbot understands your question, it provides links to several trustworthy online resources. Otherwise, you have the option to send out the question and have it answered by a doctor. HealthTap also gives the alternative to get the answer instantly by accessing its premium health consulting service. The $25 fee might seem like much, but in case of emergency, the answer could be saving your life.
In short, HealthTap’s chatbot provides a glimpse at the company’s service while also hinting at a possible upgrade.
Unilever Wants to Change Behaviours with Its Chatbot
Using cartoons to encourage kids to brush their teeth sounded like a good plan for Unilever-owned oral care brand Signal Pepsodent. But how could these cartoons be delivered in a friendly interface? Unilever figured out that the best option to kick off the “Little Brush, Big Brush” campaign would be a Messenger bot created by R/GA London.
The premise is rather simple. Parents visit Signal’s Facebook Page, hit the Send Message button and are greeted by the following message: “Welcome to Little Brush Big Brush, your 21-day challenge to establish great brushing habits. Click Get Started to begin your adventure!” The whole personalization process takes a while, but it’s entirely worth it.
The interactive experience features 21 cartoon clips such as the one presented above. Each of the episodes ends up with the challenge of brushing the teeth. Up to 4 kids can join this adventure, and at the end of each episode, they will all receive badges.
“We are really proud of this fantastic piece of personalised communication which allows us to tell our story, whilst also educate and engage parents and kids on brushing for two minutes, twice a day,” explained Anuj Rustagi, global brand director of Signal. “Research has shown that we can help to drive behavioral change with 21 episodes of Little Brush, Big Brush evening challenges, and that is something really meaningful.”
Unilever’s real challenge is to maintain a perfect balance between being useful and overbearing through a well-controlled language. “The nature of branding is changing,” pointed out Brendan Murphy, senior partner at creative consultancy Lippincott. “We need to design bots with that human voice and decide when they are allowed to get snarky or deploy empathy.”
Surveybot Made Surveys More Accessible
While still an important part of market research, surveys seem to have become something people try to avoid at all costs. Would this experience be any different if the interface would be friendlier? Surveybot certainly thinks so. The best thing about their platform is that it makes creating and deploying surveys a lot easier. Not to mention that the responders will find the Messenger UI a lot easier to use than typical survey platforms.
The best part about Surveybot is that there’s no coding experience required. After visiting their website and setting up the survey, you can deploy it to your Facebook page. As in the case of many other chatbots, Surveybot reduces the friction users experience when responding to surveys.
Final Thoughts on Useful and Successful Chatbots
There are some things you should keep in mind when creating a chatbot for your business. First of all, you need to show people that you actually care about them. Don’t just deliver content or expect to get answers. Create a conversation, build a story around it and turn everything into a tailored experience. The chatbot needs to be easy to use and shouldn’t be text-heavy, for the best possible results.
The above five examples are only some of the chatbots that can really change the world for the better. As more features will be added to chatbot platforms, we will surely get to see many other such conversational UIs that turn everyday tasks into something memorable.
Author Bio:
Florian Hieß is Head of Digital Marketing at Swat.io, a Social Media Management solution that’s helping companies to improve their content management and customer support on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and others. As well as for Walls.io, a Social Media Wall to collect and display all interactions using your hashtag on more than 15 platforms.
