• Home
  • Services
    • Accounting Services
    • Bookkeeping
    • Payroll
    • Cash Flow Forecast
    • Consulting for QuickBooks®
    • Training for QuickBooks®
    • Xero Cloud Accounting
    • Cloud Accounting
    • Sales Document Automation
  • Resources
    • Resources
    • Mobile Accounting
  • Blog
  • About
    • About
    • Send Us Your Referrals
  • Contact
1 (760) 573-1038
info@strategic-ba.com
June 22, 2017

Cool Apps: Chatbots

Ken Aurigemma Cool Tech Tools

ShareTweetPinterestLinkedin

In the last year, chatbots have exploded. A chatbot, short for chat robot, uses artificial intelligence to imitate a conversation with people. One place they have exploded is the Facebook Messenger app, which is a free instant messaging platform.

To get Facebook Messenger, you can download the app on your smartphone or go to https://www.messenger.com on your PC or Mac in any browser.

In Messenger, a chatbot looks just like a person. All you need to do to connect to a chatbot is to go to the People section and enter the name of the bot you want to connect with. Typically, there will be a Get Started button. The bot may ask you some setup questions such as your time zone, city, or topic preferences.

Bots can do many things. There are bots to deliver the news daily (Chat Newswire), bots that entertain and play games, bots that help you find recipes and restaurants, bots that improve your productivity, bots that help kids with their homework (Christopher Bot), and even a bot that connects with QuickBooks (Freelanzr).

Each bot works a little differently. In general, you will receive a welcome message, then the conversation will begin. The bot will prompt you to ask a question, enter a phrase or a word, or select from a group of horizontal button choices.

Bots are useful for your daily routine. You can get daily news, weather, reminders, and tips. If you are stuck standing in line somewhere, riding public transportation, in an Uber or taxi, or experiencing other downtime, you can have several conversations with your bots to pass the time.

If you don’t know of any bots or wonder about a bot that does a specific thing, there are lots of bot directories available. To get you started, here is one bot list:  https://botlist.co/.

The cool part is you can design your own bot for your business which can be fun for customers. The Facebook Messenger platform is open, and you can find out more about how to create a bot here: https://messengerplatform.fb.com/.

There are more platforms for chatbots besides Facebook Messenger, including Twitter, Android, Slack, and Amazon Echo, to name a few that you can explore if you don’t care for Messenger or Facebook.

It’s still early for bots. The effectiveness of the bots depends on how well they are designed as well as how much time the user spends learning how to work with the bot. Try connecting with a couple of bots to see if they will be productive for you. If nothing else, your kids will love the game bots while they are standing in line with you.

Do You Have Past Due Accounts? Five Ways to Streamline Your Payroll Process

Related Posts

Business Tips, Cool Tech Tools

Cool Tech Tools: Easy Ways to Create Video Graphics

Cool Tech Tools

Cool Tech Tools: Apps that Get You Places

Business Tips, Cool Tech Tools

How to Work from Home More Often

Recent Posts

  • Should Your Business Become Cash-Free?
    January 14, 2021
  • PPP January 2021 Update
    January 13, 2021
  • Wrapping Up 2020
    December 31, 2020

Latest Tweets

→ Follow me
  • Home
  • Services
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Contact Us

Payroll Services, Accounting Services and Services for QuickBooks®

Strategic Business Alliance, LLC

6132 Innovation Way
Suite 102
Carlsbad, CA 92009

1 (760) 573-1038

info@strategic-ba.com

Client Login


Intuit, QuickBooks, and QuickBooks ProAdvisor are registered trademarks of Intuit Inc. Used with permission under the QuickBooks ProAdvisor Agreement.
Copyright Strategic Business Alliance 2020 | Site Design by Accelerator Websites