Enterprise Chat News Roundup #1
This summer has been full of non-stop updates for Enterprise chat platforms and developers building on them. Mainly product updates from Slack API, several acquisitions, and investments in bot startups.
Here’s the round up of articles and stories we’ve been following recently:
Develop a decision framework for enterprise chatbots and conversational experiences
Enterprise chatbots are critical for digital workplace transformation. They can access status and workflow data, perform tasks automatically, respond to text or voice commands, plan and schedule interactions, and contextualize events within internal and external business processes.
Howdy acquires Botmetrics
The team that powers BotKit have acquired Botmetrics! This is big news for enterprise-grade analytics across the major chat platforms.
We started Botmetrics with the aim of enabling bot makers to better understand their users and increase engagement within the brand new conversational UI paradigm. Together with Botkit, we have processed over half a billion customer interactions and customers love Botmetrics for its ease of use and simplicity. ~ Arun Thampi, Co-founder of Botmetrics
How To Write Reusable and Testable Code with Microsoft Bot Framework
via Chatbots Magazine (link)
Chatbots Magazine goes through insights and steps for getting the most out of Microsoft’s developer SDK for chat apps. Read the guide.
LogMeIn acquires chatbot and AI startup Nanorep for up to $50M
Gartner predicts that “conversational agents” — which you can interpret as a more fancy way of saying “chatbots” — will account for 30 percent of all customer service interactions by 2022, up from just three percent today.
LogMeIn, a leading SaaS powered connectivity and authentication platform is another example of enterprise companies betting big on conversational user experiences.
Beyond the acquisition, this move follows the trend of companies implementing chat technology at scale in an outward, customer facing role. See more.
Slack Brings Apps Front and Center with API Update
With its latest update, the Slack API team is helping developers distribute their app to more people by promoting apps in a new section on the Slack interface.
SnapTravel raises $8 million for a hotel booking service that works over chat
“We’re 100 percent free to the customer[…] and we’re building a relationship with the customer as we chat with them over a channel that’s very intimate, like SMS or Messenger. For us, it’s a conversation — and that conversation doesn’t stop when you make a purchase. It goes from search to purchase to upgrade to even post-checkout,” Henry Shi explains.
SnapTravel’s chat bot is successfully deployed on both consumer (Messenger) and enterprise platforms (Slack), utilizing both natural language processing and machine learning tech to find hotel results that best match a user’s budget and preferences. Read about it here.
