Solvemate Review

Solvemate is a chatbot builder that “enables meaningful conversations”. With their platform, you can create chatbots on websites, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. But should you use Solvemate to create your chatbots?

Let’s dive in!

What is Solvemate?

Solvemate is a “customer service automation platform powered by smart conversational AI”. They mainly focus on companies with a high volume of repetitive support questions and at least 15 customer service agents.

Before we deep dive into the various elements of Solvemate, it is important to understand how their software works. Solvemate uses a combination of dynamic decision trees and natural language processing to create chatbots.

With “normal” decision trees, you ask several pre-determined questions to the user and based on the answers of the user, the chatbot will provide certain messages. However, with normal decision trees, the questions that you ask are always the same (just as the message of the chatbot).

With dynamic decision trees, this is different. Instead of always asking the same questions to the user, you ask only the questions that you think are necessary. And this is what Solvemate does.

With Solvemate, you only have to provide certain questions into their system, and Solvemate will decide which questions are relevant to the user:

This comes with its pros and cons (as you will see in the review). On the one hand, if you will deal with thousands of questions every day (and the algorithm works well), the system can choose only the necessary questions for the user and ask them, which is really efficient.

On the other hand, this system heavily complicates the interface of Solvemate and it is not easy to do simple things, such as asking questions without needing their help.

User Interface

When you start for the first time with Solvemate, you will get through a step-by-step guide, that will help you get started with the Solvemate platform (which is pretty useful):

When you have gone through this guide, you can create your chatbot flows (called Solutions in Solvemate). Each solution starts with an identifying question, which is a yes/no question that specifically asks whether the solution is what the user is looking for. This system is required for each solution, which can be a pro and a con (depending on what you want to do).

Therefore, each chatbot flows generally consists of 3 elements:

1. The user asks something to the chatbot
2. The chatbot asks if this is the solution the user is looking for (the identifying question)
3. If the user replies with “Yes”, the chatbot provides an answer

And this is how you can set that up:

However, it couldn’t get it to work. To be honest, the interface of Solvemate is a complete puzzle to me and I don’t think it is easy to set up your chatbot.

First of all, I do not understand why each chatbot flow needs to consist of an identifying question, because there are many use cases in which you don’t need an identifying question. Secondly, when you’ve determined the identifying question, I didn’t find a way how you can create an answer for that question. Also, for me, it is unclear how the chatbot flows relate to each other and how you can activate different chatbot flows.

After speaking with a Solvemate representative, he told me that for simple things such as asking questions and creating questions, instruction by Solvemate is almost always necessary. Also, in many cases, Solvemate first builds the foundation of the chatbot and provides training, before the customer will start with using the 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

The chatbot elements of Solvemate are pretty minimal.

With Solvemate, it is only possible to use images, emojis, quick replies and buttons.

• 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

In Solvemate, it is possible to create custom fields (called Variables).

However, I did not succeed in asking a question to the user and saving the answer in a custom field. For this, you probably need some training by Solvemate.

Moreover, it is not possible to create tags or user segments in Solvemate.

• 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

In Solvemate, you cannot send broadcasts and sequences. Essentially, every conversation in Solvemate is initiated by a question of the user.

Moreover, it is possible to use conditions, but you need help from Solvemate to do this. The Solvemate representative told me that it is possible to personalize the chatbot experience with the following variables:

But again, I have never tested this out, because you need help from Solvemate to implement this.

Also, it is possible to make a chatbot in any language, but it is not possible to handle multiple languages at the same time.

• 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

With Solvemate, it seems that the chatbot can recognize keywords, but I never got this to work.

This is also true for intents, it seems that the chatbot can understand the intent of the user, but I also couldn’t get this to work either.

I think for both of these features, you also need the help of Solvemate.

• 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

With Solvemate, you can put your chatbot on:

• Your website
• Facebook Messenger
• WhatsApp
• Your app

• Website

  Can you publish your chatbot on your website?
• Facebook

  Can you publish your chatbot on Facebook?
• Instagram

  Can you publish your chatbot on 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

Solvemate provides direct integrations with various live chat applications:

• Zendesk
• Salesforce
• Freshdesk
• LiveChat
• Focalscope Chat

But these are almost all the integrations they provide. They don’t provide integrations with Zapier, Integromat and Google Sheets, and it is not possible to create your own webhooks.

• 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 an API inside your chatbot flow to send or get data from other applications?

Marketing

With Solvemate, you can put an advanced native widget on your website and create a landing page.

The landing page of Solvemate is pretty simple, it is just a blank page with a chat widget on the right bottom:

The native widget is a little more advanced. You can use the native widget as a chat widget (just as on the landing page), but you can also use it embedded on a website page:

Also, with both the native widget and the landing page, you can customize the styling of the widget:

What is a little bit of a drawback with a chatbot builder so focused on websites, is that it is not possible to show different greetings per page on your website.

• 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

Solvemate provides a 30-day free trial on their platform. This gives you plenty of time to test out all the features and decide whether Solvemate is the right fit for you.

The first plan of Solvemate will cost you €349 per month and comes with a chatbot for web and mobile, proven bot templates for key industries (I haven’t seen these), a chat widget, built-in AI, email & phone handover and analytics.

If these features are not enough, you can also go with one of their more expensive plans:

Moreover, if you are choosing Solvemate, I would always recommend having some onboarding (this is also what Solvemate themselves recommends). Their onboarding plans start from €500 and range from providing training, to Solvemate creating the chatbot for you:

In general, I think these prices are pretty expensive for the features they provide.

Also, as you can read above, I couldn’t get the chatbot to work, which was a huge drawback.

• 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?
  349
• 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

Solvemate provides a dashboard with the number of started conversations, number of solutions, the self-service rate, verification rate and time-to-solution:

Moreover, the dashboard shows the conversion funnel and the customer satisfaction score:

I think these analytics shows some basic insights in your chatbot, but don’t provide enough information to improve the answers of your chatbot. Also, Solvemate doesn’t show the questions your chatbot didn’t know an answer to, which is a disadvantage.

• 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

Unfortunately, Solvemate 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

Solvemate provides no templates that you can use. Also, it is not possible to create templates yourself and share these with others.

Moreover, you cannot copy 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

Solvemate doesn’t provide any optimization, such as A/B testing.

• A/B Testing

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

Support

Solvemate provides some tutorials on documentation on how you can use their platform.

But in my opinion, the documentation is mostly focused on developers and not so much on explaining how their platform works. As I already mentioned before, there are some things that I couldn’t get to work and their documentation also didn’t point me in any direction.

Moreover, they provide customer support through 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, should you buy Solvemate to create your chatbots?

It depends on the type of company you are (and I don’t say this often).

I think I would never recommend Solvemate to a small or medium-sized company. Often these types of companies want to do things (partially) themselves, and that is not possible with Solvemate (you are almost always reliant on Solvemate). Also, I think their pricing plans are too expensive to make a decent return on investment.

But, if you are a large enterprise company that needs to handle thousands of customer service questions every day, Solvemate can be interesting. Using the dynamic decision tree algorithm (assuming that it works well), it could save you tons of hours creating chatbot flows, because the algorithm decides the most optimal questions for the user.

That being said, with Solvemate, you also need to think about your reliance on the company. Solvemate is definitely not a do-it-yourself platform and you probably need some onboarding (and them creating the chatbot for you) to get started. Also, I think Solvemate is primarily useful for customer service chatbots, and not for chatbots focused on marketing.