There was a point in the 90s at the height of the telemarketing boom when talking to a human operator seemed like finding a needle in a haystack of automated robocalls. If many more chatbots hop onto Facebook Messenger, that may be the experience for the new age.
VentureBeat is reporting that Shopify-owned Kit CRM has launched its chatbot on Facebook’s messaging service in the hopes of broadening its reach with enterprise clients. Billed as a marketing assistant aimed at helping SMBs more easily parse the routine of starting and managing advertising campaigns on social media and the like, Kit’s AI chatbot had previously only worked with SMS messages prior to the shift to Messenger. That limited the service’s scope, Kit Founder Michael Perry told VentureBeat, because they needed users’ actual phone numbers before adding them onto the platform.
“[It] was challenging to get phone numbers in particular countries,” Perry said. “Messenger solves this problem and allows us to bring Kit to merchant accounts.”
Unlike direct-response chatbots that seek to take the burden of customer communications off retailers’ backs, Perry and Kit’s chatbot instead talks to the merchants themselves to automate the posting of Instagram or Facebook ads or the sending of follow-up emails to targeted customers. And with Shopify backing Kit as of April 2016, it should prove at least a tempting option for retailers who jump on board with the all-inclusive support they already provide.
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