The Best Advice For Building Chatbots? Don't Force People To Use Chatbots

The panel "Let's Chat About Bots" gathered representatives from four companies that have built robust bots for interacting with customers onFacebook's chat platform Messenger: Anastasia Sartan cofounder and CEO of the Russian e-commerce site Epytom Stylist; Hussein Fazal, CEO of the travel booking site SnapTravel; Felipe Bernal, head of product innovation at the Brazilian IT company Movile; and Chema Alonso, head of digital at the telecom giant Telefonica. Angelique Kamara, of Facebook Messenger Partnerships, moderated. "When we were analyzing how different types of customers were interacting with internet services, a lot of people preferred point and click, others preferred to chat with a bot," said Alonso. "…We didn't want to force one specific channel. We wanted to be in the channels our customers love. And Facebook Messenger is one of them."