Tag: conversational ui

Fast Forward: What Marketers Need To Know About Facebook’s F8 Event

Posted on by Lab Team

Your guide to tech-driven changes in the media landscape by IPG Media Lab. A fast read for you and a forward for your clients and team.

• Facebook launched Messenger Platform to help brands to communicate with users
• Live Video with API strengthens video and video ads on Facebook
• New tools for app owners and VR content creators

Screen Shot 2016-04-12 at 1.10.50 PM

What Facebook Announced
At its annual developer conference on Wednesday, Facebook discussed their ten-year roadmap and introduced a number of new features to improve its platform and make it easier for brands to connect with Facebook users. Following Microsoft’s launch of a bot framework two weeks ago, Facebook is introducing chat bots and developer tools to its messaging app with the debut of Messenger Platform. During his opening keynote, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg demoed chat bots from CNN and 1-800-Flowers to showcase how chat bots can help publishers and businesses communicate with users on Messenger. While there will not be a curated bot store, the Messenger team does promise to help with discovery, mostly via search.

Facebook also introduced a Live API so that developers can live stream video to Facebook from any app or device. The new API should vastly expand the reach of Facebook’s Live video broadcasts as it allows lots of new broadcasting methods, like the use of multiple cameras, drones, and new devices. This is in sharp contrast to Facebook’s biggest live-stream competitor, Twitter’s Periscope, which requires streaming from a single smartphone. Therefore, FB Live can scale from a front-facing smartphone camera through TV production quality equipment and has already shown it can draw audiences that rival cable TV with the right content.

Moreover, Facebook is diving deeper into virtual reality with an open-source Surround 360 camera rig to help professional content creators capture 360-degree video with minimal post-processing. It is also looking to ship the Touch controllers for Oculus VR later this year to add interactivity to virtual reality. Zuckerberg also teased some multiplayer features that Facebook is working on to make virtual reality a more social experience.

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Facebook continues to build out its ecosystem with to two new tools: Account Kit and a new “Save to Facebook” button. With Account Kit, developers can streamline account signup and login, extending the popular “Login with Facebook” feature to users without Facebook accounts. Facebook is also expanding the four-year-old “Save for Later” feature with a new “Save to Facebook” button, which enables users to save content from third-party sites to read or watch later in the Saved tab Facebook.

Facebook also shared some interesting stats on its fast-loading Instant Articles program. Since launch, Facebook says posts in Instant Articles have logged 20% more opens and a 70% lower abandonment rate than other content. They also report an average of 30 seconds of engagement on Canvas Ads.

What Brands Need To Do

• Develop useful bots to reach customers on the messaging apps they’re already using
• Take advantage of the emerging popularity of live streaming to connect with consumers in real time
• Start producing branded VR and 360 video content to immersively engage consumers

As Messenger hits 900 million monthly users, there is no denying that it is important for brands to be present on Facebook’s messaging platform to connect with those users. With the launch of Messenger Platform, Facebook is making it possible for brands to build bots to communicate and serve customers directly on Messenger. For example, Facebook showcased a shopping assistant bot from Spring, which suggests appropriate items for shoppers to purchase directly on Messenger. Facebook’s demo shows that chat bots can be trained with basic responses on a web interface with no code while more in-depth responses require custom development, aided by Facebook’s new Bot Engine tools. Particularly interesting here is the Customer Matching feature, which allows brands to sync up customer profiles and conversations across Messenger and SMS.

spring-bot

With the Live API, Facebook is making it easier for brands and developers to integrate its relatively new live-streaming feature into their apps, platforms, and even devices. As we noted recently, live-streaming video is starting to blow up thanks to Facebook. Live video content lends an authentic touch to brands, which millennials seem to embrace. For brands looking to experiment with live-streaming, they should be prepared on the technical front to ensure a smooth broadcast, but also willing to roll with the punches and embrace the unexpected.

As Facebook makes a strong push for VR and 360-degree videos, brands would be smart to seize the opportunity and work closely with content creators to craft interactive VR experiences to intrigue and engage consumers. The new Facebook Surround 360 camera should be a great tool for brands to produce 360-degree content, and the coming interactive and social features should help make virtual reality a more powerful tool for brands to create immersive branded content to engage their audiences with.

How We Can Help
The Lab is actively producing 360 content, chat bots, and live social video products for our clients. Please contact Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) if you would like more detail or to schedule a visit to the Lab to discuss how your brand can better serve your customers with these emerging platforms.

For previous editions of Fast Forward, please visit ipglab.com. Please reply with any constructive criticism or feedback. We want these to be as useful as possible for you and your clients, and your input will help us immensely.

 

All pictures featured courtesy of the F8 Livestream

BetterBrand Launches Chat App Marketing Platform

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
London-based startup BetterBrand is launching a conversational marketing platform to help brands communicate with customers on various messaging apps. Brands using this platform will be able to engage users who visit their public page or account on supported chat apps with predefined conversations that follow a customizable conversational flow-chart and may include rich media such as photo, video, links, and buy buttons. Currently, BetterBrand supports Kik, Viber, Telegram, Slack, and KakaoTalk, with support for Facebook Messenger coming soon.

What Brands Need To Do
BetterBrand says its platform will be the first self-service marketing platform for multiple chat apps. The announcement comes at a time when big technology companies like Facebook and Microsoft are pushing brands to get on chat apps and start talking to consumers. According to eMarketer, messaging apps will reach 80% of global smartphone users by 2018. So it is in the best interests of brand marketers to experiment with conversational platforms to connect with consumers in popular chat apps.

To learn more about how brands can navigate the unique challenges that messaging apps, check out the Conversational Interfaces section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Facebook Debuts Scannable Messenger Codes For Brands

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Thursday, Facebook debuted two new tools that can encourage more users to communicate with brands in its Messenger app. With the new scannable Messenger Codes, brands will be able to generate a two-dimensional barcode that users can scan with their smartphone cameras to start chatting with brands on Messenger. In addition to Messenger Codes, Facebook also introduced customizable short URLs called Messenger Links that, upon clicking, can redirect users to brand accounts in the Messenger app. Earlier this week, Facebook started showing “Suggested Businesses” in its Messenger app’s search page to facilitate discovery  on that platform.

What Brands Need To Do
Scannable codes have long been a staple discovery tool on other messaging apps such as Snapchat or China’s WeChat. In fact, Snapchat’s customizable SnapCode is so popular that Burberry even started putting it on tags on some of their retail items to encourage shoppers to follow their Snapchat channel. As Facebook continues to make its messaging platform more business-friendly, brands should learn to use all the new tools available to make it easier for customers to find them and start a conversation.

To learn more about how brands can navigate the unique challenges that messaging apps present, check out the Conversational Interfaces section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Header image courtesy of Facebook for Business

Taco Bell And Lydia Jump On Slack With Chat Bots

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
More bots are coming to Slack to bring brands closer to the 2.7 million daily users of Slack, a fast-growing, team communication platform. On Wednesday, France-based peer-to-peer payment app Lydia debuted its chat bot on Slack that can understand users’ payment requests in natural language and help facilitate digital transfers between Slack users. Similarly, fast food chain Taco Bell also created a Slack bot to place, customize, and track users’ taco orders in a conversational manner.

What Brands Need To Do
While bots have long lived in the quieter corners of the Internet, the recent surge in messaging app usage and platform development is pushing them into the spotlight. Slack first launched an API for building bots on its chat platform in December 2014, and since then has been populated with bots made by third-party developers. Now, with Microsoft and Facebook both pushing businesses to reach their customers on messaging apps, we expect more brands to experiment with branded bots to connect with consumers.

To learn more about how brands can use chat bots to better serve customers via messaging interfaces, check out our Fast Forward feature on this topic.

 

Source: Wired & TechCrunch

Alexa Connects To More Smart Home Devices

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Voice control is coming soon to more smart home devices as Amazon adds Smart Home Skill API to Alexa Skills Kit. This will make it easier for makers of smart home gadgets to integrate Amazon’s voice assistant with their products, allowing users to control those devices remotely via voice command. For now, Amazon’s API is limited to thermostats, lights, switches, and plugs. Last week, Alphabet-owned Nest integrated Alexa into its smart thermometers to allow users to adjust the temperature without lifting a finger.  

What Brands Need To Do
According to BI Intelligence estimates, connected-home device shipments will grow at a massive compound annual rate of 67% over the next five years and hit 1.8 billion units shipped in 2019. As the availability of smart home devices rapidly grows, they provide a valuable emerging platform for brands to connect with consumers at home. As Amazon and the developer community continue to build out Alexa’s capabilities and make it more brand-friendly, brands would be smart to get on board with those devices via integrations or partnerships.

For more information on how brands can develop authentic brand voices and navigate the new rules of discovery, check out the Conversational Interfaces section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: ZDNet

 

Messaging App Kik Launches Chat Bot Shop

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Kik, a messaging app popular among teens in North America, has officially launched an in-app store for chat bots today. Aiming to build out its platform and attract more brands and publishers, Kik now allows developers to use Kik’s API to create chat bots on behalf of brands and serve users with entertainment content, customer service, and other functions via automated replies. The Washington Post, for example, is working on a chat bot that can surface relevant news stories at readers’ requests. Other brands and media owners that are trying out this Bot Shop include H&M, Vine, and The Weather Channel. The new Bot Shop will be the focal point for their discovery.

What Brands Need To Do
The launch came right on the heels of Microsoft’s debut of its Bot Framework for building cross-platform chat bots last week. Similarly, Facebook also quietly released an SDK that allows developers to build bots for its Messenger app in January. While it is too early to tell how Kik’s Bot Shop will stack up against competitors, it nevertheless provides an interesting new way for brands to connect with young users. With eMarketer predicting that messaging apps will reach 80% of global smartphone users by 2018, brands would be smart to consider experimenting with branded chat bots to reach customers on popular messaging apps.

To learn more about how brands can use chat bots to better serve customers via messaging interfaces, check out our Fast Forward feature on this topic.

 

Source: AdWeek

Header image courtesy of Kik’s Blog

Fast Forward: Microsoft Rolls Out Conversations As A Platform

Posted on by Lab Team

• Microsoft announced a major initiative that enables the development of cross-platform bots
• Brands can develop bots to reach customers on messaging apps that are popular among mobile users
• Branded bots are poised to become a crucial tool for brands to get on conversational interfaces

What Microsoft Announced
On Wednesday at its annual developer conference Build, Microsoft unveiled its grand vision for building out the next-gen tools for conversation-based platforms. And at the center of its plan is a bot framework that will allow developers to build cross-platform bots that will enable brands to communicate with customers, enhance services, and gather feedback across websites, social media, messaging apps, and Office 365 email. The BotBuilder SDK is now available on GitHub under an open source MIT license.

Moreover, Microsoft also announced that it’s adding Cortana, Microsoft’s AI personal assistant, and an API for bots to Skype with the launch of Skype Bots Platform. Skype users will soon be able to book trips, shop, or order take-out just by talking with Cortana, who will communicate with third-party party bots to carry out the tasks as needed and aiding in the discovery of new services. The company also previewed the Skype Video Bot, which aims to bring bots into real-time video.

What Brands Need To Do

• Develop useful bots to reach customers on the messaging apps they’re already using
• Take advantage of the emerging popularity of conversational interfaces with messaging-based customer services
•  Integrate some humanizing touches into automated replies to make users feel more comfortable engaging with bots

For many brands, bots can be a great tool to reach customers on the messaging apps that they are already using. By developing cross-platform bots, brands will be able to tap into the marketing potential in conversational interfaces, which we discussed in detail in our Outlook 2016. Since mobile users spend the majority of their times in social and messaging apps, it is getting increasingly difficult to convince consumers to download an app for tasks that aren’t daily habits. Chat bots can help brands remove the friction in that process and serve customers directly in the places and methods that they are accustomed to.

Furthermore, well-designed bots can create an environment in which users are more willing to share free-form answers to open-ended questions than they would in a formulaic questionnaire, which could uncover valuable insights for brands from regular customer feedback. This kind of software is also much easier to iterate and improve as functionality that users want is requested explicitly and updates can be rolled out without the approval of App Store gatekeepers.

Screen Shot 2016-04-04 at 3.07.33 PMFor travel and hospitality brands, bots can help users look up travel information and book flights and hotel rooms. Hyatt Hotels currently employs of a team of 60 across three global locations to help guests with their customer service needs via social and messaging channels. Earlier this week, KLM airlines announced a partnership with Facebook that will allow KLM customers to receive flight confirmations, check for flight status updates, and ask questions right in Facebook’s Messenger app. Building cross-platform bots with Microsoft’s framework can help automate and expand these use cases to more platforms and reach more customers.

For restaurants and QSR brands, bots can be of great help in handling online orders and gathering customer feedback. Microsoft showcased a Domino’s Pizza bot created with the BotBuilder framework, which works in multiple apps such as Skype and Slack and supports natural language interactions.

For retailers, bots can be a great tool for product recommendations while also allowing retailers to sell directly to users on messaging apps. For example, Sephora recently created a bot on messaging app Kik that will guide users through a short quiz and offer them a customized product recommendation based on the answers users give.

Market Impact
Microsoft is hardly the only company that wants to help developers and brands build bots. All major players in the development of conversational interfaces, from big companies such as Facebook and Google to messaging apps like Kik and Slack, have all announced their own programs and tools to help brands build bots to communicate with consumers. What Microsoft announced on Wednesday, however, will make it a lot easier for developers and brands to build bots that will work across various marketing channels and touchpoints. The coming proliferation of bots should also propel the mainstream adoption of conversational interfaces, which would change the rules of search and content discovery and further alter brand-customer interactions.

How We Can Help
Please contact Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) at the IPG Media Lab if you would like more detail or want to schedule a visit to the Lab to discuss how your brand may benefit from integrating with messaging apps and voice platforms.

For previous editions of Fast Forward, please visit ipglab.com. Please reply with any constructive criticism or feedback. We want these to be as useful as possible for you and your clients, and your input will help us immensely.

 

All images courtesy of Microsoft’s developer site

KLM Airline Integrates Into Facebook Messenger

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
KLM has become the first airline to integrate with Facebook’s messaging app in order to reach customers where they already are. The Netherlands-based airline has announced a partnership with Facebook that will allow KLM customers to receive flight confirmations and digital boarding cards, check for flight status updates, and ask questions directly in the Facebook Messenger app. The integration kicks off today and will roll out globally “in the coming days and weeks.”

What Brands Need To Do
Messaging apps are dominating time spent on mobile devices as more and more mobile users start using them as their primary communication platforms. eMarketer forecasts that the number of messaging app users worldwide will reach 2 billion by 2018 which will be 80% of smartphone users. KLM has seen a 40% increase in customer feedback since it activated the Messenger button on their Facebook Page last year to allow customers to contact KLM via private messaging. It is clear that customers like this way of communicating with brands, the same way they communicate with everyone else. Therefore, brands need to follow their customers and consider integrating their customer communications into popular messaging apps.

To learn more about how brands can navigate the unique challenges that messaging apps presents, check out the Conversational Interfaces section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: VentureBeat

Fitbit Becomes The First Wearable Company To Integrate With Amazon’s Alexa

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Another day, another new skill added to Amazon’s virtual assistant service Alexa. Today, Fitbit unveiled its integration with Alexa, which allows users to get their daily fitness stats, such as steps taken and heart rates, simply by asking their Alexa-enabled Amazon devices. The fitness wearable maker also designed some contextual messages so that Alexa can offer users words of encouragement throughout the day.

What Brands Need To Do
While Fitbit is the first wearable company to integrate with Alexa, it is not the first one to add a conversational touch to fitness wearables. Moov, for example, created a fitness tracker that talks to you during workouts via wireless earbuds to guide you through the exercises and reads you key biometric stats. Nevertheless, by integrating with Alexa, Fitbit has added another dimension to its product and a new touchpoint to engage users. As Amazon and the developer community continue to build out Alexa’s capabilities and make it an increasingly brand-friendly platform to reach consumers at home, brands would be smart to get on board with those devices via integrations or partnerships.

For more information on how brands can develop authentic brand voices and navigate the new rules of discovery, check out the Conversational Interfaces section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: CNet

SXSW 2016: Quaker Oats Integrates With Alexa To Offer User Recipes

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Quaker is tapping Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa to help customers easily find trendy recipes for making overnight oats, the long-standing, household brand announced at SXSW today. Working with agency partner Organic, Quaker has created its first app for Alexa, which is available through Amazon products such as the Echo speakers. The company is also planning a launch campaign to promote the Echo app when it becomes available to the public this summer.

What Brands Need To Do
Hands-free interactions enabled by voice interfaces are a natural fit for the kitchen, where it is more convenient for users to give commands by speaking rather than touch. So it makes sense for Quaker to integrate with Alexa to add a futuristic sheen to its 135-year-old brand. As Amazon and the developer community continue to build out Alexa’s capabilities and make it an increasingly brand-friendly platform to reach consumers at home, brands would be smart to get on board with those devices via integrations or partnerships.

For more information on how brands can develop authentic brand voices and navigate the new rules of discovery, check out the Conversational Interfaces section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdWeek