Assist's cross-platform chatbot provides local recommendations (services) on a broad range of chat platforms. Its Facebook Messenger bot disappointly looks like a quick port of the SMS-based version of the service, but at least it comes with a comprehensive feature set. Make no mistake, Assist's technology is impressive (See 1-800-Flowers), but this port probaby was less of a priority than their customer deployments. Their long term promise is definately in enterprise sales to clients like 1-800-Flowers, so their "consumer" client is probably more proof-of-concept (aka sales tool).
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Below is a transcript of a conversation with the bot:
Links:
Functionality:
- Allows users to find local services such as restaurants, businesses, rides, i.e.
Positives:
- Best practice: Supports multiple platform and allows users to save prefernces access these platforms (SMS, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, and Kik)
- Best practice: Explains why it's asking for personal information (such as location)
- Points for use of images but sometimes they seem random or of poor quality
Negatives:
- Tries to provide broad range of seemingly non-related services and serves purely as a recommendation (and not a transactional) engine - you can search for restuarants near you but you can't actually place an order directly
- Its backend is platform agnostic (good) but lacks deep integration hooks with individual channels (like Facebook) and can't differentiate between them. As a result, it provides SMS/text versions of reponses to most questions and cannot identify users on the Facebook platform (has to ask you your name).
Platform and Technology: