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At this point, the question is not so much “to chatbot or not to chatbot” as it is “what will the chatbot do?” and “who will build it?” and “on what channel, for what purpose?”. As the prevalence of AI increases in social media spaces, digital marketers from every industry, regardless of whether they plan to have a chatbot now or in the future, must eventually answer these questions for their brand. Recently at Spredfast, we took a dive into bots ourselves.

On May 23, we sponsored an Adweek webinar titled, “Can Chatbots Provide a Great Customer Experience? How Top Brands Automate Social Service Practices.” The webinar, hosted by Adweek’s publishing director Stuart Feil, featured leaders in the chatbot space from Booking.com, General Motors, and Spredfast—these experts shared what they’re doing to automate their social customer service and customer care. We’ve rounded up three salient takeaways regarding what you need to know about chatbots today.

How to Understand the Current State of Chatbots

Kevin Morris, SVP of Product at Spredfast, shared his thoughts on the current state of chatbots. The AI environment is still pretty murky, Morris explained, but things are starting to come into focus. We have a better understanding of the realities of AI and chatbots than we did even last year, he said. As early as last year, digital marketers were wondering whether or not we were on the verge of customer care becoming completely automated, and whether or not that prospect was a good one. But it’s clear now, Morris said, that chatbots and humans will interact together for bot cost deflection—and to create great customer experiences. Here’s where we are today regarding AI capabilities for social customer care:

Today, marketers must ask where we want to plug in these new automated capabilities to existing workflows, and, importantly, where humans will still come into the equation. Ongoing human interaction is still a focus as chatbots today mainly perform three tasks: resolving the simple, assisting the agent, and inspiring the customer. Here’s what each of these tasks looks like:

• Resolving the simple: Chatbots can automate FAQs to free up agents to answer questions that are more subjective.
• Assisting the agent: Chatbots can also make agents more effective as they answer customer questions by capturing required data (email, phone number, order number, etc). Agent-facing chatbots can make interactions more effective by recommending content to agents (suggested responses based on context, suggested offers, and more), and they can resolve simple tasks, like this example:

• Inspiring the customer: Finally, chatbots can create unique customer experiences (one-off marketing promotions, making recommendations, and more) that inspire brand interaction.

Humans are still your brand’s most valuable assets, Morris said. When your chatbot hits a limit in their customer interaction—which they will—Spredfast can make the transition from chatbot to agent as seamless as possible. Read more on our newly announced chatbot capabilities and partnerships alike.

How to Tell If Your Brand Needs a Chatbot

Brennen Buckner, a Lead Product Manager on Booking.com (a leading travel site) heads up the team that’s building the brain behind Booking.com’s Facebook chatbot, as well as all of the site’s conversational interfaces.

Now that we have a better idea of what chatbots can do, we can ask the question of whether a chatbot makes sense for your business, Buckner explained. There’s a lot of opportunity in chatbots for your partners as well as for your customers, he added:

Essentially, Buckner said, whenever time is cut for your business or your partner, you have value from your bot. Chatbots can help you build your brand by aiding with visibility and scaling—they can get positive interactions to more customers. But chatbots cannot improve an already poor customer interaction, Buckner noted. They can only further and improve what the humans are already doing well, so be sure you have a solid customer care plan in place before launching a bot.

How to Tell if Your Customer Wants a Chatbot

Rebecca Harris is the Global Head, Social Center of Expertise at General Motors, a group she helped implement several years ago. Harris shared GM’s perspective on whether or not customers want chatbots. She explained that GM now has two out of three customers requesting that their issues be resolved on social, which is essentially a request for a chatbot, even if the customer doesn’t realize it. In fact, Harris said, the majority of their customers really want all of their problems to be solved via Twitter. Though GM isn’t ready for that reality quite yet, chatbots are helping them to meet customer demand for resolution of issues via social.

Buckner seconded Harris’s perspective. He said that even when customers aren’t explicitly demanding a chatbot, one could still help your customer care experience. If people are expecting outcomes from social channels, chatbots could help. For example, if people are Tweeting your brand asking repeated simple requests, like questions about deals, that’s a good sign that a chatbot could aid your care efforts, Buckner continued.

Source Jaime Netzer

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Could you join the T-shirt millionaires?

The site that lets you create designs for free and earn money if they're a hit

Ever looked at the T-shirts on offer and though you could do a better job?

You might have an amazing idea but even then there is the risk that it could crash and burn, leaving you out of pocket and with boxes of T-shirts in the garage that you were convinced would sell like hotcakes.

Tapping into that entrepreneurial spirit but desire to avoid things going wrong, website Teespring offers aspiring designers a chance to test the waters and only incur costs if T-shirts sell.

It's part of the new world of 'on-demand' commerce - and has made some of its sellers a fortune. 

The site was founded in San Francisco in 2012 and has sent 19 million products to 180 countries to date. It claims to have already made its users more than $300million (£240million) - including 30 millionaires. 

Today, the company has three offices in the US, and one in London. 

Teespring millionaire: 'I want to build my own brands and hit $10m'

Sumit Sinha, 26, started his T-shirt business with a fellow student while he was still at university. 

He originally wanted to build his own online marketplace, but a lack of start-up capital meant he turned to Teespring. 

None of Sumit's original designs made anything but eventually the sheer volume of ideas being produced meant that he struck gold.

Striking gold: Sumit Sinha kept going until he found designs that were a hit

'After about 20 or so campaigns, and midway through our total testing budget, we hit our first big winner. That more than made up for all the losses we had made thus far and then some,' he says.

'We realised the more campaigns we launched, the more our chances of hitting a winner. Without wasting time we started launching as many campaigns as we could. We then hit on another winner and hired our first employee.'

His company, Scaleswift, have a dedicated research team that scout for phrases and trends to inspire new designs. 

'We do research to find what is trending in the market and what people are looking for. Then our creative team comes up with their ideas about how those phrases can be best represented on a shirt. Finally, it goes to the design team.'

He says that the perfect design is a combination of many different factors: The combination of quote or phrase with the design itself, but then also the right audience targeting, and effective advertising.

Today, Sumit, who is from Bihar in Eastern India, has 16 employees and around 10,000 designs. His turnover ranges between $1.2million and $1.5million a year (£1-£1.2million). But his ambitions stretch further still.

'We want to hit $10million turnover by building long term brands. More importantly, we want to increase our size to 100 people over the next three years and build a long term, profitable company.'

How does Teespring work? 

Users create their idea using the Teespring designer and decide how much they want to sell it for, after the 'base fee'. 

This fee includes the cost of manufacturing, production, handling, Teespring's cut and customer services after the product has been sold.

Teespring's initial cut is 25 per cent, but can fall to as low as 15 per cent depending on how many you sell.

The cost is also determined by the level of quality you opt for, taking the base cost from around £7 for basic, up to £11 for 'top of the line'.  T-shirts are the main focus but would-be entrepreneurs can also design other products such as sweatshirts and mugs.

Users can upload designs, or use those already provided by the website, such emoticons shapes and pictures of animals. Most of the designs are intended to be funny or politically engaging - or a mix of the two.

The products are made to order, so if no one commissions one of your T-shirts it won't have cost you anything - apart from your time. 

Teespring also incentivises sellers by awarding them five levels of membership depending on how many units they've shifted and offering perks like free translation services when they reach the higher echelons of membership.

What's the catch?

UK customers who want to buy your products will have to fork out for shipping costs - between £2.75 and £3.99 for the first item and £1 for every additional item (or £3.50 for mugs).

You are also expected to find your own customers. Teespring provides free design and marketing tools but you will need to think carefully about your design, target audience and your marketing campaign to make sure it gains traction. 

This means it would be helpful to already have a strong social media following or ready audience of some form. 

Some Teespring sellers like Alison (featured below) choose to advertise through Facebook, although obviously this will ramp up initial costs.

If your design infringes on someone else's intellectual property, for example by featuring an existing trademark, logo or fictional character, the site will remove it. 

Likewise, if you are deemed to be copying someone else's Teespring campaign then you won't be allowed to sell on the site.

'I left a 25-year career at DWP to make a living out of T-shirts'

Former civil servant Alison Scott left her 25-year career behind to sell through Teespring, after her witty and politically-charged merchandise proved to be a hit.

Alison: 'If you can find an audience, your sales are basically unlimited'

Alison was a deputy director at the Department for Work and Pensions  when she started designing T-shirts, mugs and bags on the website in 2015.

She has gone on to leave her government job and build a successful online business, Stow shirts, which encompasses T-shirts, mugs and bags.

At first business was trickling in, but then her 'All I want for Christmas is EU' T-shirt became a runaway success after the referendum result last year, selling thousands during the festive party season.

She says: 'I started in a very slow and part-time way, just doing the odd shirt as I felt like it. And then in June I had a running shirt and thought "maybe I could make a go of this"'. 

'I quickly had two or three more designs that sold, 20 or 30 shirts, and at that point, I ran some numbers and thought it would definitely work. Christmas 2016 was better than I was expecting, though.'

Alison, who is based in Walthamstow in East London, is proactive about marketing her designs, using Facebook advertising to get the word out. 

She adds: 'I think the tipping point was my first profitable Facebook ad that scaled. That was when I saw the power of the platform, that if you can just find your audience your sales are essentially unlimited. 

'And that rang a bell, because I'd been looking to build a new career in an area where I could lever my work, so that I did something once and sold it many times.'

By ELEANOR LAWRIE FOR THISISMONEY.CO.UK