Remember chat bots? Facebook plans to double down after disappointing start
LOS ANGELES — At its annual conference for software developers in 2016, Facebook trumpeted chat bots as the next big thing in tech.
A year later, users of Facebook Messenger are still waiting.
Chat bots, those automated robots that respond to human queries, had an underwhelming debut. Many of them were buggy or annoying. They didn't catch on with consumers, and critics were unkind.
But Facebook hasn't given up.
“We’re doubling down and tripling down on bots,” David Marcus, Facebook’s vice president of messaging products told USA TODAY last week. “We’re fully invested in this, and in it for the long haul.”
Marcus says Facebook currently has some 33,000 bots up and running, and that number will grow. Announcements about chat bots will be a major focal point again this year at the F8 developers conference in San Jose, Calif., which begins April 18.
In launching chat bots, U.S. companies took a page from huge social networks in Asia, where businesses have been able to insert themselves into the growing volume of conversation on texting platforms. On China's WeChat, for instance, doctor's appointments and shoe shopping can take place alongside conversations.
"You have so many different channels to communicate with services and businesses and all of those things are imperfect, but they all bring something," Marcus told USA TODAY in 2016. "What we have been able to do is bring the best of each of these methods inside one conversation that happens in Messenger."
Forrester Research analyst Julie Ask says it’s still very early for bots. Just 9% of Fortune 500 companies currently work with bots, and “we’re on a long journey,” she says. “It will take five years-plus before these bots are intelligent and can make smart suggestions for us.”
One possible change coming: Facebook will introduce bringing bots to group conversations, according to TechCrunch. The idea is that a bunch of sports fans could bring in a bot offering score updates, or friends could welcome the Domino’s Pizza bot where everyone could chime in together on what kind of pizza to order. Facebook declined comment on the group bots.
We spend many minutes and even hours conversing with our friends in Messenger, where folks can already use the app to pay for goods and request a ride from Uber or Lyft. But the idea of having simulated conversations with computers seems a little off-putting to some.
"I don't use any bots," says Michael Schneider, who runs the Service app, which helps consumers get money back from airlines for missed flights and other travel related woes. "I find it easier to just go to Twitter or look at a website."
He says if he wants to order something, "I could use my voice and get it done in 10 seconds with Amazon Alexa. If I want to order flowers, chatting with a robot takes longer, and isn’t a good experience.”
Chaim Schuman believes the early bots were buggy and not that useful. But he hasn't given up on the medium. He just launched a new bot on Messenger, AskWiz, which is half-bot, half-human. Bots, he says, are a natural evolution from text messages.
His bot aims to answer simple consumer tech questions (my phone battery is losing power, how do I save a PDF?) which start with the bot and then has a human take over once the preliminary questions are answered. He hopes to make money by getting “tips” for the humans, at $2-$10 per session.
“Normally we wait a long time on the phone to get our questions answered,” says Schuman, who is based in Tel Aviv. “This is a quick solution.”
Still, he admits Facebook has a lot of work to do. “They haven’t pushed bots to consumers,” he says. “It’s quite difficult to discover" them, he says.
To find a bot, Messenger users type the name of the firm into the search window of the app. Beyond that, the companies are directed to reach out to consumers with advertising, QR codes and other avenues to help them find them.
Marcus admits there hasn’t been enough promotion for bots, and he hopes to see that change soon.
One of the chief challenges for consumer adoption of bots: They are still very buggy.
When USA TODAY tried to order a pizza from Pizza Hut this week, the error message “Send Failed--you can not perform that action,” popped up.
The Domino’s app was more effective for ordering but when we said we wanted a pizza, we were given a choice of many specialty pizzas. We had to go through many keystrokes before we could get to a classic, plain cheese pizza.
When we visited the eBay bot, we asked for men’s jeans, and the bot asked, “Which bottom size are you thinking?” The only choices given didn’t suit this reporter's body —29, 30, 31, 32 — and I wasn't given the choice to type in my size.
In all three cases, a visit to the website or app was quicker and easier.
Facebook suggested USA TODAY speak with Hussein Fazal, the co-founder of Toronto based SnapTravel, which says it’s making “thousands” of hotel bookings through the bot.
“You can go to Expedia and search for a hotel room, but sometimes it’s easier to just chat,” he says. “What are your dates? Where would you like to stay?”
He says the advantage of the bot is that his business is being seen within the hugely popular Messenger, which has over 1 billion users.
Facebook also directed us to ActiVision, which used bots to interact with consumers when it released the “Call of Duty” game.
The video game company saw some 6 million questions pour into the bot about the game. “A poster is nice, a trailer is exciting, but a character bot is immersive and engaging,” says Monte Lutz, an Activision senior vice-president.
While Facebook will be expected to tout successes like Call of Duty and SnapTravel at F8, there are the bots that were promoted at last year’s conference such as merchants Spring and Everlane that have since ditched the service.
Marcus insists that bots can improve customer service.
But, he conceded, "we’re still very early for this to become mainstream.”
Readers--how do you like Facebook bots? Let’s chat about it on Twitter, where I’m @jeffersongraham.