Botsociety Review

With Botsociety you can make chatbot designs and connect those with DialogFlow and Rasa. But can you also use this software to make entire chatbots?

Let’s find out!

How Botsociety Works

Botsociety is different than other chatbot builders.

Most other chatbot builders have their own software to build your chatbot and a direct connection with messaging channels (like Facebook Messenger) to launch your chatbot on that channel.

With Botsociety, you cannot directly launch your chatbot on any channel. You can only make a design for your chatbot, put that design on DialogFlow or Rasa and then with DialogFlow/Rasa you launch it on the desired channel (like Facebook Messenger):

This is different than most other chatbot software, where you can directly launch the chatbot on the channel (instead of using DialogFlow or Rasa).

Because of this structure, you will always be dependent on DialogFlow or Rasa to put your chatbot live.

Therefore, I see Botsociety more of a “prototype maker” for DialogFlow and Rasa, than a complete chatbot builder.

 

User Interface

When you log in at Botsociety, you first see an overview of your chatbots:

If you click on one of your chatbots, you directly go to the chatbot builder of Botsociety.

Here, Botsociety makes use of a Bot Says – User Says interface. You can determine what the bot says and the response of the user on that:

And when you created an entire conversation, you can see the overview of the conversation with their flowchart feature:

Also, you can test the chatbot in the interface. But there is more. You can even invite other people to test out your chatbot:

This is what Botsociety calls a “usability test”.

It is clear that Botsociety is mainly focused on designing the conversation you have with your customer. Furthermore, the interface is easy to use and it is easy to set up your chatbot.

• Visual Flow Builder

  Create chatbot dialogs with a visual flow builder.
• Test chatbot

  Is it possible to test the chatbot before putting your new flows or changes live?
• Interface easy to use?

  Is the chatbot platform easy-to-use?
• Easy to setup a chatbot?

  Is it easy to set up your chatbot with this chatbot platform?

Chatbot elements

Botsociety provides enough elements you can use to build your chatbot design.

The main drawback of their chatbot elements is that you cannot ask for user input. For example, you cannot ask “What is your email?” and then the user types in their email (with validation).

• Delays

  Use delays between messages in your chatbot
• Images

  Can you send images via your chatbot?
• Video

  Can you send video via your chatbot?
• Audio

  Can you send audio via your chatbot?
• Attachments

  Can you send attachments via your chatbot?
• Gallery (Horizontal list)

  Show a gallery of cards inside your chatbot. A card consists of an image, title, subtitle and button.
• Vertical list

  Show a vertical list of items inside your chatbot
• Emojis

  Can you use emojis inside your chatbot?
• Persistent Menu

  Can you add a persistent menu to your chatbot?
• Quick Replies

  Can you add quick replies to your chatbot where users can click on?
• Buttons

  Can you add buttons to your chatbot where users can click on?
• Free text input

  Can chatbot users freely type text to your chatbot whenever they want to?
• Location sharing

  Can users share their location inside the chatbot?
• Email validation

  When a chatbot user gives their email, can the platform validate it's a correct email address?
• Phone number validation

  When a chatbot user gives their phone number, can the platform validate it's a correct phone number?
• Date validation

  When a chatbot user gives a date, can the platform validate it's a correct date?

Users

Because Botsociety is mainly focused on the design of the conversation and doesn’t launch your chatbot directly on your channels, it is not possible to see any user data in Botsociety.  This data will be available on DialogFlow or Rasa.

Because of this, it is not possible to see an overview of your users, not possible to add custom fields or tags and you cannot segment your users.

• Custom fields

  Store information from your chatbot users inside fields. For example, you can ask for someone's email and store it inside the "email" custom field.
• Tags

  Add tags to users in your chatbot flows to organize and categorize contacts.
• User segments

  Can you create user segments based on custom fields and tags?

Messages

The same is true for Messages. Botsociety is not directly connected with any messaging channel, so it is not possible to send broadcasts or sequences.

Moreover, you cannot use conditions in your chatbot flows. This is a huge drawback to me. For software that is so focused on designing the conversation, you would expect that you could use conditions to create a more personalized conversation. However, this is not possible.

Furthermore, it is not possible to make a chatbot in multiple languages.

• Broadcasts

  Send a message to all or a part of your chatbot users at a specific date and time
• Sequences

  Send messages on a pre-defined schedule with a certain time interval between those messages
• Conditions

  Make checks in your chatbot flow based on if-then logic. For example, if the user has not given their email, ask for their email.
• Multiple languages

  Is it possible to create a chatbot in multiple languages?
• Easy to translate

  Can you translate text to other languages without using a third-party platform and without creating duplicate flows?

AI & NLP

The whole idea of Botsociety is that you can create a design of a conversation, which will be used in DialogFlow or Rasa.

DialogFlow and Rasa are mainly built to handle AI & NLP (instead of flows bots), so with Botsociety there is the focus on.

Based on keywords typed in a conversation, you can respond in a certain way (as you see in the image above about the flowchart).

These keywords can be linked to certain intents in DialogFlow or Rasa.

The same is true for Entities, you can also select these in Botsociety (in Botsociety intents are called “Variables”):

Moreover, you can import existing agents from DialogFlow to Botsociety, which is a really useful feature!

• Keywords

  Trigger chatbot flow based on certain words or phrases a user says to the chatbot.
• Intents

  Trigger a chatbot flow by understanding the intent of the user.
• Entities

  Capture specific information from sentences. For example, if a user says "veggie pizza", the chatbot can understand it's not a regular pizza, but a veggie pizza.
• Dialogflow integration

  Does the chatbot platform provide a direct integration with Google's AI Platform?

Channels

As said before, with Botsociety you make the chatbot design, you put that design on DialogFlow/Rasa and via DialogFlow/Rasa you launch the chatbot on your desired channels.

This means that you can make a chatbot in Botsociety and put it on multiple channels (using DialogFlow/Rasa):

Note: With Botsociety you are always dependent on DialogFlow or Rasa to launch your chatbot, which could be a drawback.

• Website

  Can you publish your chatbot on your website?
• Facebook

  Can you publish your chatbot on Facebook?
• Instagram
• Whatsapp

  Can you publish your chatbot on WhatsApp?
• Telegram

  Can you publish your chatbot on Telegram?
• SMS

  Can you publish your chatbot on SMS?
• Slack

  Can you publish your chatbot on Slack?
• Skype

  Can you publish your chatbot on Skype?
• Email

  Can you publish your chatbot on email?

Integrations

Botsociety doesn’t provide a live chat, but this is logical, because they don’t have a direct connection with any messaging channel.

They do provide a Zapier integration, which allows you to connect to every software on earth. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find this integration or any documentation about it, so I wasn’t able to test this.

• Livechat

  Direct integration with live chat, either via a built-in live chat functionality or a third-party live chat platform.
• Zapier

  Direct integration with Zapier, one of the largest integration platforms in the world.
• Make (formerly Integromat)

  Direct integration with Make (formerly Integromat), one of the largest integration platforms in the world.
• Google Sheets

  Direct integration with Google Sheets, to store or retrieve data from sheets.
• Webhooks

  Can you call a webhook inside your chatbot flow to send data to other applications?

Marketing

Because Botsociety doesn’t have a direct connection with any messaging channel, they also don’t have any marketing features.

• Facebook website widget

  Embed your chatbot as a Facebook Widget on your website.
• Native website widget

  Embed your chatbot as a native widget (your own branding & colors) on your website.
• Landing pages

  Can you create a simple landing page to drive users to your chatbot?
• Facebook Ads

  Start a conversation with your chatbot when someone clicks on a Facebook Ad
• One-Time Notification

  Send one-time notifications via Facebook Messenger for a topic that a chatbot user has opted-in for
• Facebook comments auto-reply

  Automatically reply with your chatbot to users who comment on your Facebook Posts
• Button creator

  Add a button to your website to drive users to your chatbot
• Custom URLs for your chatbot

  Generate a simple URL that can be shared anywhere to send users to your chatbot

Pricing

Botsociety has a free plan, which comes with unlimited chatbot designs, a maximum of 30 messages per design and 3 projects.

The first paid plan is the Professional plan, which is $79 per month and comes with unlimited designs, unlimited messages and unlimited projects:

To me, this is quite heavy pricing for software that you can only use to design your chatbot conversations.

• Free trial

  Does the chatbot platform provide a free trial?
• Free plan

  Does the chatbot platform provide a free plan?
• Price per month

  What is the lowest price per month for creating a chatbot on this platform?
  79
• Monthly pricing available?

  Is it possible to pay monthly?
• Money back guarantee

  Is there a money-back guarantee in case you are not satisfied with the platform?

Analytics

Because Botsociety doesn’t have a direct connection with any messaging channel, they don’t have any Analytics.

• Dashboard

  Dashboard that provides general analytics of your chatbot.
• User input

  Get the input from users that your chatbot didn't understand.
• Sent messages

  The number of messages that were sent by your chatbot.
• Open rate

  The percentage of chatbot users that opened a message inside your chatbot.
• Click rate

  The percentage of chatbot users that click on a button inside your chatbot.
• Conversion rate

  The percentage of users that converted through your chatbot. For example, the percentage of users that gave their email address
• Fall back rate

  The percentage of interactions where the chatbot did not know an answer to a question.
• Custom dashboards/reports

  Can you create your own dashboard or reports?

eCommerce

Botsociety doesn’t provide any direct eCommerce integrations.

• Payments

  Collect payments inside your chatbot
• Shopify

  Direct integration with Shopify to get products, order information and cart data.
• WooCommerce

  Direct integration with WooCommerce to get products, order information and cart data.
• Buy directly within the chatbot

  Ability for chatbot users to buy products or services directly from a chatbot
• Cart abandonment

  Trigger messages in the chatbot when a user abandons their cart on a website or inside the chatbot

Templates & Cloning

Unfortunately, Botsociety doesn’t provide any pre-built templates.

Also, you cannot create a template yourself and share it with others.

On the other hand, you can create a conversation design and share this with others (and others can see this design and edit it).

Moreover, you can duplicate your chatbot flows and chatbot elements.

• Templates

  How many pre-built templates does the chatbot platform provide?
  0
• Make template

  Can you make templates yourself?
• Share template

  Can you share self-created templates with others?
• Duplicate chatbot flows

  Is it possible to duplicate chatbot flows, so you can easily reuse them?
• Duplicate chatbot elements

  Is it possible to duplicate chatbot elements, so you can easily reuse them?

Optimization

As mentioned before, you can do usability tests with Botsociety. With these tests, you can invite some people to test your chatbot and leave comments on your design.

Really useful feature! (Especially for designers)

• A/B Testing

  Can you optimize your chatbot flows by performing A/B tests?

Support

Botsociety provides tutorials and documentation on how to use their platform.

Furthermore, they also provide customer support via email.

• Tutorials

  Does the chatbot platform provide tutorials on how to use its platform?
• Documentation

  Does the chatbot platform provide documentation on how to use its platform?
• Customer support

  Does the chatbot platform provide customer support?

Conclusion

So, would I use Botsociety to build my chatbots?

No, I wouldn’t. But it is a useful tool to design your chatbot experience. I would use it for two situations:

I think Botsociety is useful for companies who already use DialogFlow or Rasa and lost the overview of the conversation. Then Botsociety can be a handy add-on to structure the chatbot again by using their flowchart functionality.

Moreover, Botsociety can be useful for conversational designers to quickly create a mock-up of their conversation and share it with others.