Chatbots are becoming ubiquitous and people are getting more and more used to trust them with private information, personal preferences and sometimes even account passwords and data.

Users may (and will!) share sensitive data during their conversations. How you handle this data and manage your trust relationship with you users is now of the utmost importance.

In the following sections, we’ll see how Xenioo provides all the tools you need to guarantee privacy and data safeness.

1. Why you should use the chatbot privacy opt-in

If your chatbot is processing user data or sending offers related to your products you may need to ask consent. Additionally, you will need to make it to guarantee that your user choice cannot be altered in any way.

While it is still on your flow to honor any kind of privacy setting the user has requested, it has been proven that a chatbot asking for privacy permissions tends to put most users at ease with any conversation.

Out of the box, Xenioo offers a full privacy opt-in action, built exactly for this purpose.

Placing this action at the first step of your chatbot will automatically create an opt-in request for privacy standard permissions.

User choices will enable specific conversation privacy flags that cannot be altered in any way by you and that secure the exact user response.

Users may (and will!) share sensitive data during their conversations.

2. The right to be forgotten

Additionally, your chatbot may offer your users the power to exercise their right to be forgotten.

The right to be forgotten is the right to have private information about a person be removed from Internet searches and other directories under some circumstances and it applies to chatbots too. Your users may ask you to forget them and remove any conversation exchange you’ve had with them.

Again, Xenioo got you covered with a simple and effective action.

By using this action in any point of the conversation, or by using it directly from your conversation command center, you will instruct Xenioo to delete each and every information collected about the active user.

After this command is executed no information about this user will remain on any of the Xenioo services.

Please note that deleting user data is different from allowing your users to change their privacy preferences. In the first case you’re literally wiping any data that Xenioo has about your contact while in the latter you would ideally show again the privacy opt-in to allow changes in usage preferences.

3. Hiding conversations data

Everything your user says to your chatbot is recorded and readily made available in the conversations section.

Every operator that can access the conversation section to give support can potentially see variables, inputs and detailed profile information.

While flow information like chosen product or current coupon points (just to name a couple) may be relevant from a support standpoint, there may be many other cases where information should never be disclosed, even to users that should help your customers.

Chatbots are becoming ubiquitous and people are getting more and more used to trust them

If this is your case, you can use the fine-grained users permissions granted by the PRO Team package. You can hide conversation variables from your support team.

They will still be able to access and see any (and only) assigned conversation, but they won’t be able to access variables, tags and privacy settings in any way.

4. Volatile conversations

In some cases the data of shared during a conversation may be so sensitive that in no way it should be persisted.

No trace of the conversation should remain on Xenioo for any reason at any given time. Moreso, the conversation should not even temporarily be saved on any Xenioo medium as if it never really existed but temporarily, on Xenioo memory.

Only the chatbot and the user should know about this conversation and nothing should remain after the conversation is finished.

How can this be possibly achieved? By using Volatile Conversations.

Volatile Conversations are created using “Forget User” action we’ve seen previously and by enabling the “Enable user activity until deletion”.

Putting this action at the very beginning of your chatbot will force Xenioo to run all the conversation in memory without ever saving anything anywhere.

The conversation is considered offline after about 5 minutes the user has said anything. Xenioo will just flush all the data from memory and totally forget it ever happened.

If the user comes back it will be threated as a brand new user, never seen before.

Chatbot privacy and data safeness: Wrap Up

We’ve just seen a good number of different privacy options that can cover all of the possible needs your chatbot can have.

Whatever are your requirements, Xenioo is capable of fully supporting your conversational design and comply with your privacy policy rules.

Or not? Does your chatbot have requirements that Xenioo is not yet covering? Join our Facebook group and let us know!

The post 4 Effective Way To Deal With Your Chatbot Privacy And Data Safeness appeared first on Xenioo.

A lost conversation is when a user leaves before signing up for your service or completing the questions you’ve prepared.

How can we get back to the user sometimes later to try to reconnect? Let’s read on and learn how you can easily do it with Xenioo.

First interaction to improve Chatbot Conversion Rate: “Hello? Is There Anybody Out There?”

One of the first options we can use to get back to our users is a broadcast. A broadcast is basically a scheduled push that can be set to be sent to a specific time, date and time or even on demand.

Let’s consider a very simple chat flow like this one:

This flow, on Whatsapp (as an example) lead to a conversation like this:

After this, our user leaves the conversation. Since we want to detect these cases, the first thing we need is a way to check if the user has passed our question. We are using a tag action for this and changing the flow as follows:

Basically what we are doing is set a WAITING_ANSWER tag before the question and remove it right after. This way we know that if a conversation has a WAITING_ANSWER tag then the user is waiting at the input, otherwise the flow has completed and we’ve our email.

Setting Up Your First Broadcast

What we need to do now is create a broadcast that now and then checks for all users that still have the WAITING_ANSWER tag and contacts them to check back. Using broadcasts you are basically creating a “Scheduled Task” that your chatbot can execute every specific interval.

To reach our goal we can easily create a On Interval broadcast that loops every 1 hour and is directed to only a specific audience, like in the picture below.

Since we don’t want to check back to all users every hour we make sure to create and select a specific user that can be quickly generated using the Broadcast Audience Creator. The resulting filters will look similar to this:

Once the basics are down we can move to the Design section of the broadcast, where we can lay down the part of the flow that handles the reconnection. The broadcast design is identical to the general chatbot design and in fact, you can do here everything you can do in your normal chatbot.

After saving (and enabling!) the broadcast we can go ahead and test our reconnection with our previous conversation. When the time you’ve chosen for your broadcast is triggered, Xenioo will automatically send your message to the user.

At this point our user is back in the game and its again up to us to re-engage the conversation so that it is lead to our desired conclusion.

Wait! We can do Better to improve our chatbot conversion rate

While our previous example is simple and effective, it has a couple of flaws that will become very clear as more users are reached and more time is spent online by our chatbot.

1. The broadcast is executed at a specific time, regardless of when the user abandoned the conversation. A user that left the conversation 5 minutes ago would be contacted together with someone who left it an hour ago. It would be better to have a relative time for every single user.
   
2. After the broadcast, there’s no way for the user to go back to the flow that was executing. Even if we get back to the user we’re not moving back to the question that is important for us.

Let’s address point one immediately by simply changing our broadcast type on-flight: from a simple On Interval, we switch to an On Trigger one.

On Trigger broadcasts are one-to-one user broadcasts that are triggered by a specific user action. While audience rule are still applied to this broadcasts only one user will be receiving it based on its conversation triggers.

For example, for our bot, we can select a trigger that starts 20 minutes after Last Interaction. This configuration means that after 20 minutes from the last time a user wrote something the trigger will start. This is just perfect for us because it’s exactly what we need. If our user goes idling for more than 20 minutes we go and try reviving the conversation.

“On Trigger” broadcasts are always targeting a single user in a single conversation but you can still use audiences to filter for a very specific user variable or tag so that even if the broadcast is triggered it is not sent.

What Was The Question Again?

Our second bullet point is little trickier but still very doable.

What we need to do first is split our flow into two parts like below:

We have basically moved all but one action to another interaction and linked them with a Go To Action. All of this can be done very quickly by simply dragging and dropping the desired contents. It has only one purpose: to have a single, repeatable interaction to be invoked later by our broadcast. We will see very soon why.

In our broadcast, we are changing the flow so that the user can be asked if there’s still a chance to complete our flow and if the answer is yes we can now redirect to the Ask Email interaction.

The user will see again the question (which is fine as we’re giving some context to the request) and will be back from where the conversation was left.

This is how our final conversation may look like:

A much better result. User is reconnected with a brief interaction and the chatbot is capable of reconnecting back to where the user left. A good user experience overall and a good way of pushing to all your idling contacts.

If you look at the conversation it now becomes clear why we did the initial split into two interactions. We can now redirect the user to the initial step of the question. And repeating the brief explanation text that gives context to the question.

I Wish I Had Just One Question Like You!

Yes, of course! Chatbots are rarely a matter of just one question and if you have more than two, or three? Or twenty? Having so many questions may make building this kind of approach really difficult.

But once again, we have a neat solution.

For any case when you need to redirect to a dynamic point in the conversation that you really don’t know beforehand you can use a bookmark action.

A bookmark action will basically put a bookmark (how unexpected! ;)) on the current interaction. After the bookmark action is executed you can use any Go To Action to redirect there in any part of the flow.

Lets expand our initial example to a more complex one. With multiple questions, we could design our chatbot to be something like this:

As you can see, the flow isn’t actually much more complex. It is just a bunch of questions one after another but we have now added a Bookmark action on top of each interaction. Now we know exactly where the user is stuck.

The change in our broadcast design is even easier.

All we need to change is the tiny Go To option from “Absolute” to “Bookmark”. What will happen is that Xenioo will automatically redirect the user to the last dynamic bookmark position.

And that’s it! We have now our full reconnection flow with personalized followup and dynamic question redirection. Now we are ready to boost our lead generation and improve our chatbot conversion rate.

Time Is Of The Essence

Privacy settings and platform-specific limitations may be stopping your reconnection plans. Reconnecting with users after a long while may catch them by surprise in an unpleasant way.

Some platforms like Telegram or WhatsApp will not stop you from doing so. But others like Facebook may try to ban your page for attempting mass contact outside of Message Delivery time windows.

Improving chatbot conversion rate: Wrap up

We just did a deep dive into some of the most interesting features of Xenioo and we saw some tips to improve chatbot conversion rate.

In this post, we’ve been highlighting both its power and flexibility. You should now have the basics for adapting your chatbot flow and create an even better chat experience.

If you are not sure about the best way to check back to your users or how to create a chatbot like this or even how to comply with different platform’s rules, feel free to contact our team at team@xenioo.com or leave a message on our Facebook Group.

The post How To Increase Your Chatbot Conversion Rate appeared first on Xenioo.

Whatsapp è in effetti la piattaforma di messaggistica più comune ed utilizzata al mondo. Gestisce milioni di utenti attivi ed ha il potenziale per diventare la più efficace piattaforma di marketing e supporto clienti.

In questo articolo vedremo come è possibile creare e pubblicare un chatbot completo e funzionante per Whatsapp utilizzando Xenioo.

Creare il chatbot

L’approccio alla creazione di chatbot con Xenioo può essere definito come “design first”(“progetta prima”).

Infatti, non è mai richiesta la selezione della piattaforma di destinazione fino al momento della pubblicazione. Questo implica che si può creare il chatbot una volta sola e pubblicarlo simultaneamente su diverse piattaforme.

Allo stesso tempo questo significa anche che è possibile creare parti di flusso e contenuti dinamici differenti in base alla piattaforma sulla quale il chatbot verrà eseguito.

Non ci sono limiti al numero di casistiche che è possibile costruire.

Fantastico, vero? Questa modalità di progettazione vi consentira di pensare fin da subito al business model del vostro chatbot e solo successivamente effettuare gli adattamenti necessasari e specifici per ogni canale che vorrete supportare.

Cosa fare e cosa non fare

Canali differenti supportanto tipologie di contenuti differenti ed in modi differenti.

Whatsapp è una piattaforma prevalentemente basata su chat testuale e supporta un numero inferiore di funzionalità rispetto ad altre piattaforme come Telegram oppure Facebook Messenger.

Per esempio, Whatsapp non supporta alcuni elementi tipici dei chatbot, come bottoni, caroselli e liste. Questi elementi, se inseriti in un chatbot Xenioo, verranno visualizzati correttamente quando il chatbot verrà usato per esempio su Telegram, ma verranno nascosti nella conversazione su Whatsapp.

Per evitare che durante la progettazione si utilizzino dei componenti non supportati da questo o quell’altra piattaforma, dovrete dare un occhio alle piccole icone che troverete in alto a destra del pannello di configurazione di ogni azione: è sufficiente posizionarsi sopra l’icona con il mouse per poter vedere una descrizione dettagliata del supporto per quella piattaforma specifica.

Come avrete notato, alcune icone sono rosse mentre altre sono arancioni. L’icona rossa indica che l’azione non è supportata dalla piattaforma, mentre l’icona arancione indica che ci sono alcune limitazioni o comportamenti diversi.

Tenete presente che tutte le azioni “non visuali” di Xenioo, come quelle per le integrazioni o la NLP, sono perfettamente supportate da ogni canale senza limitazioni, Whatsapp compreso.

Pubblicare il chatbot su Whatsapp

Quando il vostro chatbot sarà pronto per essere pubblicato, potrete procedere con la fase di attivazione del canale Whatsapp.

Come potete vedere dall’immagine sottostante, la configuarazione del canale è piuttosto semplice.

Vediamo nel dettaglio cosa significa e come impostare ogni campo della configurazione del canale Whatsapp.

1) Service Provider

Xenioo supporta Whatsapp attarverso l’utilizzo di fornitori esterni del servizio (Service Provider). Questa lista verrà aggiornata da Xenioo periodicamente per integrare nuovi fornitori oppure nel momento del rilascio delle API ufficiali di Whatsapp. In quest’ultimo caso, Whatsapp sarà integrato nativamente con Xenioo.

La connessione tra Xenioo ed i Service Provier è completamente trasparente verso chi utilizza la piattaforma ed è possibile cambiare da un fornitore all’altro senza ripercussioni sulle funzionalità del chatbot.

Al momento Xenioo supporta i fornitori elencati nella tabella sottostante.

Ogni fornitore offre differenti vantaggi a costi diversi. La tabella sottostante mostra un breve riassunto delle caratteristiche offerte da ciascuno dei fornitori supportati.

Provider di API WhatsApp “non ufficiali”

Fornitori di API WhatsApp Business

Nella scelta del provider sarà necessaria la valutazione dei costi e delle funzionalità che ogni Service Provider mette a disposizione.

Maggiori dettagli riguardo l’uso e la configurazione dei Service Provider di Whatsapp nella nostra guida online.

I Service Provider sono servizi indipendenti da Xenioo e con la quale Xenioo si integra per supportare l’esecuzione dei chatbot su Whatsapp. Il team di Xenioo è disponibile per aiutarvi nella selezione del Service Provider adatto per il vostro chatbot.

2) Sender Phone Number

Questo è il numero di telefono associato con il vostro chatbot.

Non tutti i Service Provider hanno bisogno di questo numero, quindi impostatelo unicamente se è richiesto dallo specifico servizio che state utilizzando.

Xenioo escluderà ogni messaggio in arrivo che non sia diretto al numero specificato in Sender Phone Number, quindi è importante verificare che questo numero corrisponda esattamente al numero che il Service Provider visualizza nella propria pagina di configurazione come “integrated” oppure “connected”.

L’errata configurazione del Send Phone Number comporta una mancata ricezione dei messaggi e della conversazione del chatbot (non utilizzate caratteri come + oppure / per spezzare il numero, se questo non lo sta facendo il Service Provider).

3) API Key

Questo è la specifica chiave API del Service Provider selezionato.

Deve essere recuperata dal pannello di configurazione del Service Provider e copiata in questo campo.

E’ tramite questa chiave che si crea il collegamento tra Xenioo ed il Service Provider selezionato, e quindi dovrete essere sicuri di impostare esattamente tale valore.

4) Hook Url

Questo valore lo troverete già valorizzato e corrisponde all’URL Xenioo da impostare nel pannello di configurazione del Service Provider, ove richiesto.

Questo URL consente di creare il “ponte” tra il Service Provider selezionato e Xenioo ed è dove il Service Provider invierà in tempo reale tutti gli aggiornamenti per ogni messaggio spedito tramite Whatsapp.

Includere ed escludere numeri

Alcuni dei Serivce Provider supportati da Xenioo sono pienamente capaci di integrarsi direttamente con un vostro numero telefonico.

Questo è molto comodo perchè vi permetterà di non dover gestire un nuovo numero telefonico potendo riutilizzare viceversa un numero che già si possiede (potrebbe essere per esempio il caso in cui già si disponga di un numero per il supporto clienti che non si vuole cambiare).

D’altro canto potrebbe essere un problema se non si vuole che Xenioo prenda il controllo totale, grazie al chatbot, di qualsiasi conversazione avvenga su quel numero.

Per aiutarvi a gestire questa situazione, in Xenioo è stata aggiunta una comoda ed utilissima funzionalità che permette di configurare i numeri telefonici da includere oppure escludere.
E’ possibile specificare numeri completi oppure parziali utilizzando wildcars, come per esempio 0389* per indicare tutti i numeri che iniziano con 0389.

Per esempio, i numeri configurati come “da escludere” non faranno mai partire il chatbot associato vostro numero.

Gestire le conversazioni

Come per tutti gli altri canali supportati da Xenioo, anche ogni conversazione Whatsapp sarà resa disponibile all’interno della sezione Conversation del chatbot e sarà pienamente controllabile da voi o dal vostro team.

In ogni momento sarà possibile prendere in consegna (Take Over) la conversazione per poter chattare direttamente con l’utente dall’interfaccia di Xenioo.

Nel caso di chatbot per il supporto clienti oppure assistenza alle vendite, non è raro infatti dover intervenire direttamente con un operatore umano per sbloccare situazioni di stallo o aiutare in modo più preciso gli utenti in difficoltà.

Potenzia il tuo chatbot Whatsapp con Xenioo Forms

Xenioo Forms è una nuova funzionalità disponibile su Xenioo che consente la creazione di moduli di inserimento dati completamente personalizzabili.

Puoi utilizzare Xenioo Forms per rendere il tuo chatbot più semplice ed intuitivo, garantendo una esperienza di conversazione sempre migliore e coinvolgente.

Nel video seguente puoi vedere un esempio di come è possibile utilizzare Xenioo Forms per aggiungere la richiesta di feedback all’interno di un chatbot Whatsapp.

Allora, siete pronti a pubblicare il vostro primo chatbot per Whatsapp? Create ora il vostro account gratuito su Xenioo!

The post Come creare un chatbot per Whatsapp con Xenioo appeared first on Xenioo.

Whether you prefer a more direct, operator-to-person chat, whether you choose a more automated approach, doing a web page today means basically having a chat area somewhere. Today designers struggle with their generic chat platform basic colors and limited layout configurations and your web chat usually ends up looking like an afterthought at best.

Luckily for you, Xenioo offers both a UI configuration interface and the ability to go deeper, allowing full layout customization of each and every component.

What you’re going to see next are some examples of how you can completely redesign the Xenioo web interface to fit with a number of different web layouts. All the example style sheets are supplied for free! Look out for the full link at the end of the article.

Let’s look at some website chatbot layouts

1. Dark

Dark mode themes are definitely the flavor of the day and creating this kind of layout with Xenioo is super easy. The main elements here follow the general website prominent colors giving your chatbot area a stylish lookout.

2. Ice Cream

Xenioo web chat is not limited to the classic button-chat-area setup but can be quickly deployed as a full page or attached to a very specific area of your page. Our sample page shows a very nuanced theme that can be easily embedded in colorful commerce or portfolio page.

Whether you prefer a more direct, operator-to-person chat, whether you choose a more automated approach, doing a web page today means basically having a chat area somewhere.

3. Seaside

When your website relies heavily on imaging and multiple product areas the best approach to a chat zone may be to let the user see through it all. Seaside does exactly that. By eliminating the full frame of the chat and giving a full page transparent block to your chat, this theme will blend into your page seamlessly.

4. Skin

Again, with Xenioo you can choose wherever your chat needs to be: you are in full control of everything. This example style embeds your chatbot in a classy portfolio page that will both surprise and please your visitors. The chatbot lives in a vertical, nearly central band that can nicely replace any feedback form.

Also, they have that attraction factor that will lead to an increase in contact requests!

5. Dark Detached

Dark themes can be perfect on full white pages too. By correctly balancing the website accent colors you get a reader-friendly and stylish panel. Using the full power of Xenioo styles we also detach the chat area from the user message are giving a nice general color break.

6. First Contact

Contact us forms are so 2018. Chatbots allow for far greater flexibility, can be easily integrated and already collect all the info you want in a more friendly way. Also, they have that attraction factor that will lead to an increase in contact requests!

7. Flat

Is your website leaning toward stylized shapes and flat layout? Yes? Then this is the style for you. Based on the typical flat layout, this style removes all of the round corners and aliased shapes giving each block greater importance.

Dark mode themes are definitely the flavor of the day.

8. Agency

Do you build chatbots or resell chatbot services? You should definitely get in touch with us. In the meanwhile, this embedded chat theme should give you a great idea on how to embed a window-less chatbot directly into your landing page.

Ready to unleash your website chatbot inner designer?

Great! You can start by downloading all the Xenioo style sheets you’ve seen on this article for free. You’re completely free to use them on your website, modify them and add new content.

Questions? Doubts? Be sure to join our ever-growing group @ Facebook

Credits

Some of the awesome themes we have used to showcase our Xenioo layouts here have been created by talented designers and are currently available for purchase from their respective creators. You can find all the direct links below:

• Trax (Dark Theme)
• Panagea (Seaside Theme)
• Mariam (Dark, Detached Theme)
• Angle (Flat Theme)
• Volos (Skin Theme)
• Execore (First Contact Theme)
• Spacle (Agency Theme)

The post 8 Awesome Custom Styles For Your WebSite Chatbot appeared first on Xenioo.

After you finally publish your chatbot and it’s out there in the wild interacting with your users, that’s when the real work starts.

Measuring exactly how well your questions are handled and how good each interaction is performing is essential for tuning each flow so that your results are maximized.

But how can we do it? And How can we check each and every user and create a global map of the best routes? How can we quickly realize which are the most difficult questions? How to pinpoint the flows where users are lost or get stuck?

We have been asking ourselves the very same questions on a daily basis and with our latest update, we’ve created something that can finally give an answer!

Xenioo Flow Statistics for chatbot performance

Xenioo Flow Statistics are a brand new feature (enabled by default on every account) that will automatically display usage statistics directly on your chatbot flow. With Xenioo Flow Statistics you have all of your user’s usage numbers clearly shown directly on your chatbot design and updated nearly real-time.

To understand how Xenioo Flow Statistics work, let’s build a simple chatbot. Have a look at the one below.

Our chatbot is doing a couple of things:

1. Is asking our users to give a product model and later their email
2. Is trying to stay in touch with users refusing to answer the previous questions

After publishing our chatbot it doesn’t seem to perform very well. We get very few people registering their product and we can’t really figure out why. We start checking each user conversation but as they grow in number it becomes pretty much impossible to track them all.

How can we verify our chatbot performance? Where are we loosing our users? Why aren’t they following our flow the way we want?

Cracking the numbers

In less than an hour after our chatbot goes live data starts coming in. Xenioo starts consolidating all your conversations data and giving it back to your chatbot flow.

Our design area starts to display our performance numbers right on the screen.

What we see on our flow above is exactly how our users are interacting with our chatbot. Our flow starts at the Start Interaction and there we’ve (obviously) 100% of our users. From there, Xenioo is displaying the percentage of people that moved from there to the following interaction.

So, reading the flow, we can see that 77.6% of our users chosen the Question 1 path while 22.4% opted for the No Questions one. Our aim is probably to collect as much information as possible and right now, we’re just loosing nearly a third of our potential contacts (and customers!).

For our test, let’s try to change around our start interaction to give our users a hint about something good happening if they participate in our survey. We publish again our chatbot come back the next day.

Daily Updates

It’s getting better! Now just about 13% of our users are not choosing to participate in our little test survey.

But we can do more with this data: let’s click on the Show Statistics button on our top toolbar to display all of the Xenioo Flow Statistics settings.

Xenioo Flow Statistics are consolidated daily and each day of your chatbot life is available and will stay as long as your retention allows. On the Date Range of our settings, let’s ask to display only the latest day, the one right after our flow update and then click Refresh.

Awesome! Checking only the latest day, we see that with our changes we’re actually reaching nearly 95% of our potential customers. A lot better than before. We can now move on to the rest of our flow.

Input Statistics

Activating Xenioo Flow Statistics, you can now see a small badge beside our Text Input action saying 56.4%. This is telling us that more than half of users fail to correctly input the expected text in that question.

How can Xenioo help us improve the performance of this question? Let’s click on the action.

Looking at the action details you will immediately notice an additional space where the percentage is repeated with a little more information. Near the short explanatory text, you may find a “Show Samples” link. Click on that link and Xenioo will automatically display a list of the 10 most recent wrong answers given to the question!

Now we know which is the input that stops our users. We can use NLP to help them out with their questions or give better explanation of which information we’re requesting.

Remember all the data is consolidated so if you’re looking at multiple days you’ll see the most recent inputs of all the filtered days!

Go with the Xenioo Flow for chatbot performance

By default, Xenioo Flow Statistics will display relative interaction values. This means that the percentage displayed on an interaction will be relative to the number of users of the previous one.

If you look at the percentages above what Xenioo is actually telling you is that of 100% of users visiting the bot, only 86.2% reach the Question 1 interaction. Of all the Question 1 users, only 66% reach the Ask Email.
The same way, as 13.8% of users choose not to reply, only 25% of those choose the Be Friends path.

Xenioo Flow Statistics also support absolute mode. Selecting the option from the Statistics Settings menu will automatically switch your view to display each percentage as an absolute value related to your start interaction.

While using the absolute mode, each interaction percentage is calculated in relation to the number of users that reached the start interaction and not to the number of users coming from the calling one.

Take Control

Phew! We have just learned a lot of new things today! We are looking forward to seeing how this new tool will help you take control of your chatbot performance.

What do you think? Is this the tool you’ve been dreaming about? Let us know by joining our Facebook group or by contacting us directly: we’re looking forward to your feedback!

The post Chatbot Performance, why is important to measure to improve your results appeared first on Xenioo.

In Xenioo siamo fortemente convinti della validità dei classici flussi conversazionali o guidati, ma ci siamo anche resi conto che non tutto può essere raccolto da un (lungo) elenco di domande. Infatti alcune informazioni sono più intuitive e rapide da fornire per l’utente quando sono presentate sotto forma di moduli di richiesta dati standard.

Ma come possiamo far convivere conversazioni e moduli richiesta dati (chiamamoli per comodita forms da qui in avanti) ? Xenioo Forms è la nostra risposta a questa domanda!

Grazie all’utilizzo di nuovi elementi dinamici direttamente all’interno del nostro designer, è possibile creare moduli di richiesta dati anche complessi e che si integrano perfettamente all’interno del tuo chatbot.

Immagina di poter costruire un modulo che può essere precompilato al volo con i dati provenienti dal tuo chatbot, oppure un sondaggio che si adatta in base ai risultati della conversazione appena avvenuta.
Tutto questo, e molto altro ancora, è ora possibile grazie a Xenioo Forms e nei prossimi paragrafi vedremo alcuni casi d’uso nel mondo reale.

1. Accedere ad un servizio protetto

Di solito, nel momento in cui il chatbot deve consentire all’utente l’accesso ad un proprio account tramite credenziali private, è quando iniziano le difficoltà.

Come chiedere all’utente le credenziali di accesso? Come gestire la richiesta di una password in chiaro e che può essere vista da chiunque sovraintenda alle conversazioni? Gli utenti del chatbot sono a proprio agio nel fornire le proprie credenziali all’interno di una chat? Assolutamente no (e per mille buoni motivi)!

Grazie a Xenioo Forms sarà ora possibile creare un modulo di accesso perfettamente funzionante ed integrato con il tuo chatbot. Questo non solo ti aiuterà nel raccogliere i dati di cui hai bisogno, ma darà ai tuoi utenti la percezione che tutto stia accadendo in una sezione specifica e sicura della conversazione.

2. Registrare un nuovo account

I moduli di registrazione sono più complessi rispetto ai moduli di accesso poichè è spesso necessario assicurarsi che sia stato inserito un indirizzo email corretto oppure che la password scelta dall’utente soddisfi alcune regole di sicurezza standard.

Costruito partendo dall’esperienza acquisita sul campo, Xenioo Forms non è solo un insieme di nuovi campi, ma rappresenta una soluzione completa per il disegno di moduli personalizzati.

E’ possibile infatti creare regole complesse basate sulle espressioni regolari che, applicate durante l’immissione dei dati, assicurano che tutto quanto inserito sia conforme a ciò che ci si aspetti.

E, naturalmente, tutto quanto fornisce Xenioo Forms è stato pensato per offrire la migliore esperienza utente indipendentemente che l’utente acceda da dispositivi mobile oppure desktop (nel caso in cui il tuo canale di pubblicazione preferito preveda una versione desktop).

3. Raccogliere feedback

L’acquisizione di feedback(suggerimenti) da parte degli utenti è uno dei cardini per ogni business di successo.

Farlo su alcune piattaforme, come per esempio Whatsapp, può diventare più complicato del previsto in quanto controlli e contenuti avanzati non sono disponibili.

Grazie a Xenioo Forms, creare un modulo per la raccolta di feedback è facile come creare un semplice flusso composto da testo ed immagini. Fare in modo che i dati appena raccolti possano essere inviati per esempio a Zapier, Firebase oppure verso qualasiasi altro tipo di integrazione tu preferisca, è un gioco da ragazzi.

4. Gestire prenotazioni

Stai creando un chatbot che necessita di gestire un qualsiasi tipo di prenotazione da parte dell’utente?

Chiedere all’utente domande specifiche in modo colloquiale e mirato è qualcosa che puoi costruire facilmente con Xenioo e per tutti i canali che desideri rendere disponibili. Ma ammettiamolo! Ad un certo punto potresti aver bisogno di cosi tante informazioni da richiedere una dopo l’altra da trasformare il processo in qualcosa di molto noioso e frustrante per l’utente.

Potendo integrare controlli complessi e selezioni a scelta multipla, senza scrivere una sola riga di codice, Xenioo Forms ti permette di creare moduli di prenotazione perfetti per il tuo business in pochi minuti.

5. Raccogliere informazioni quando offline

Xenioo fornisce tutti gli strumenti di cui hai bisogno per creare la miglior esperienza di assistenza clienti sia per chatbot completamente automatizzati che gestiti da operatori umani.

Ma come puoi gestire la situazione che si verifica quando i tuoi operatori non sono disponibili?

Quando tutti i tuoi operatori sono offline, puoi usare Xenioo Forms per creare un modulo completamente personalizzato in grado di raccogliere le informazioni dell’utente al posto tuo. Non appena i tuoi operatori torneranno online, avranno a disposizione tutto il necessario per contattare nuovamente i clienti e continunare la conversazione online.

6. Completare un ordine

Il tuo chatbot è in grado di dare la giusta assistenza ai tuoi clienti?

Con i moduli che è possibile creare con Xenioo Forms puoi facilmente creare una esperienza di check-out completa ed altamente personalizzabile, sia nei contenuti che nella presentazione.

7. Effettuare ricerche avanzate

L’utilizzo dei chatbot in ambito aziendale e B2B(business to business) sta crescendo e diventando sempre più comune. Molti clienti Xenioo utilizzano già chatbot all’interno delle proprie applicazioni private per aiutare e guidare i propri utenti.

Andando oltre il semplice aiuto, il livello successivo del prossimo assistente virtuale può essere quello di diventare parte integrante della tua infrastruttura di knowledge base: il punto ideale dove gli utenti possono ricercare e trovare informazioni, reports e documentazione aziendale.

Perchè cercare tra un elenco infinito quando puoi semplicemente chiedere al tuo assistente il rapporto del mese scorso?

Con Xenioo Forms puoi ottimizzare le ricerche creando moduli con filtri, rapidi ed efficaci.

8. Creare buoni sconto dinamici e volantini

I moduli che puoi creare con Xenioo Forms sono cosi flessibili che puoi usarli non solo per raccogliere dati, ma anche come pagine di contenuti(landing page) da consegnare ai tuoi utenti senza utilizzare alcun hosting esterno o web design.

Usa Xenioo Forms ed il tuo chatbot potrà facilmente distribuire volantini o buoni sconto che gli utenti potranno stampare o semplicemente usare quando richiesto.

Forte! Quando e come posso iniziare con Xenioo Forms?

La buona notizia è che tutto ciò che ti serve altro non è che Xenioo. Esatto: nessun server e nessun back-end esterno per ospitare i tuoi dati.

Tutto viene creato e gestito da Xenioo ed è perfettamente integrato con il tuo chatbot.

Devi solo registrare un account gratuito su Xenioo e dare libero sfogo alla tua creatività.

Hai creato qualcosa con Xenioo Forms che vuoi condividere? Hai qualche domanda da farci? Fai un salto sul nostro gruppo Facebook e unisciti alla nostra community sempre crescente di creatori chatbot.

The post Potenzia il tuo chatbot con Xenioo Forms: 8 Casi d’uso appeared first on Xenioo.

Here at Xenioo we firmly believe in conversational and standard flow patterns, but we also realized that not everything can be collected by a (long) list of questions as some information are still quicker and more intuitive for the user when presented in a standard form layout.

But how can we marry conversations and forms? Xenioo Forms is our answer to the question.

Using highly dynamic field compositions built directly inside our designer, you can create complex forms that fully integrates with your chatbot flow.

Imagine building a form that can be filled with your chatbot data on-the-fly or a survey that adapts to what the user did inside a conversation. This is entirely possible now and in the following chapters, we’re going to see some real-world use cases.

1. Log In To Your Service

Usually, when your chatbot needs to log in your user to an account is when troubles start.

How do you ask your user to login? Are you requesting a password in plain text that may be seen by anyone overseeing the conversations? Are your users comfortable with giving away credentials inside a chat? Absolutely not (and for good reason!).

Using Xenioo Forms you can now build a fully functional and cool looking login form that will help you collect the data you need and give your users the idea that everything is happening in a specific, secure section of the conversation.

2. Account Sign Up

Signup forms are more complex than standard forms as you often need to make sure that a correct email address has been used or that the password your user is choosing meets some basic security parameters.

Building from the foundation of our experience, Xenioo Forms are not just standard fields but a complete package.

You can build complex, regular expression based rules that will be enforced during data entry and will ensure that your data contains exactly what you expect.

And of course, the experience is built to have a seamless experience whether your user is accessing from mobile or desktop (if your channel of choice has a desktop version).

3. Collect Advanced Feedback

Acquiring feedback from users is one of the cornerstones of successful business.

Doing this on some platforms (like WhatsApp for example) can become a little tricky as advanced controls and contents are not available.

Thanks to Xenioo Forms, creating a full feedback form is now as easy as building your chatbot flow with text and images and have all of the data fly to Zapier (ora any other integration you like) is as easy as it gets.

4. Make Detailed Reservations

Are you building a booking chatbot? Asking your users detailed questions in a conversational fashion is surely a very nice experience that can be built with Xenioo on every channel but let’s face it: at some point, you’re going to need a lot of information and asking and an endless train of questions may become tiresome at some point.

By being able to integrate complex controls and multiple-choice drop-downs, without writing a single line of code you will create the perfect reservation form in just a matter of minutes.

5. Collect Information When Offline

Xenioo providers all of the tools you need to set up a great customer support experience for both automatic and operators managed chatbots.

When all of your operators are offline, you can create a fully customized offline form that can collect user’s information for you. As soon as your operators come back online, they’ll have everything they need to contact back your customers!

6. Order Details Completion

Is your chatbot assisting your customer’s shopping? With Xenioo forms you can easily re-create a full checkout experience with all the control on contents, layout, and behavior.

Customizable content allows for even greater flexibility as you can really build whatever functionality you may need.

Your shop can be open 24 hours a day and be available on multiple channels at once.

7. Advanced Search And Filters

Corporate and Enterprise usage of chatbots inside intranets are becoming more common and many Xenioo customers are already using chatbots inside private applications to help and guide their own users.

Moving forward from just helping, the next level of your virtual assistant can be to become an integral part of your application by being the go-to place for wizards, quick searches and reporting.

Why search through an endless list when you can just ask your assistant for last month’s report?

With Xenioo forms you can see how you can fine-tune your results by creating quick forms for search, filter and reporting results.

8. Dynamic Coupons And Tickets

Xenioo Forms are so flexible you can use them not just for collecting data. You can also deliver to your users without using any external hosting or web design.

Your chatbot can now easily deliver flyers or discount coupons your users can print or just show whenever required.

Great! What Do I Need To Start?

The good news is that all you need for all of this is Xenioo. That’s right: no servers and no complex back-end to host your data.

Everything is created and managed by Xenioo and is seamlessly integrated with your chatbot.

All you need is to signup for a free Xenioo account and unleash your creativity!

Have a great example to share? Any questions you want to ask? Drop by our Facebook Group and join an ever-growing community of chatbot creators.

The post chatbot Data collection with Xenioo forms: 8 awesome Use cases appeared first on Xenioo.

In questo articolo vogliamo introdurre un nuovo canale in grado di integrare completamente il tuo chatbot, via voce, con una telefonata standard.

Ti piacerebbe creare un chatbot che sia in grado di interagire con i clienti che chiamano al telefono per chiedere informazioni oppure supporto?

Continua a leggere perchè è esattamente quello che ti spiegheremo in questo articolo.

Questo articolo descrive come utilizzare Twilio per attivare il tuo canale telefonico in lingua inglese. Se ti interessa attivare il tuo assistente virtuale su telefono anche in lingua italiana, è ora possibile grazie all’integrazione di Xenioo con VoxImplant! Scrivici a team@xenioo.com per ulteriori informazioni.

Il nuovo Phone Voice Channel

A partire da oggi, Xenioo supporta il nuovissimo canale Phone Voice Channel.

Questo nuovo canale ti permette di agganciare il tuo chatbot ad un numero telefonico attraverso l’integrazione con un provider telefonico.

Lo stesso chatbot che hai usato per raggiungere i tuoi clienti su Whatsapp, per esempio, è già pronto per diventare il tuo nuovo assistente virtuale telefonico!

Utilizzando lo stesso approccio utilizzato per i chatbot di Whatsapp, Xenioo ha creato un livello di integrazione efficiente e versatile che di fatto elimina qualsiasi preoccupazione derivante da modifiche o cambiamenti tecnologici delle piattaforme supportate.

Mentre il tuo lavoro deve essere quello focalizzarsi sulla realizzazione della miglior esperienza conversazionale possibile, noi continuiamo a lavorare per integrare i migliori providers all’interno di Xenioo.

Configurazione del Chatbot “telefonico”

Un chatbot telefonico è molto simile ad un tipico chatbot vocale: tutto si svolge tramite una conversazione in tempo reale dove non ci sono pulsanti, link ed altri tipi di indicatori visuali.

Per creare un primo chatbot pronto per essere configurato, puoi semplicemente partire seguendo le linee guida tipiche per la realizzazione di un chatbot Whatsapp oppure replicare gli esempi che abbiamo reso disponibili per Amazon Alexa e Google Assistant.

Una volta creato il chatbot, è necessario procedere alla configurazione del provider. Il provider è il fornitore del servizio vocale con cui Xenioo si integra. Attualmente, Xenioo supporta Twilio ed altri verrano messi a disposizione nei mesi successivi.

Configurare un nuovo account su Twilio è estremamente veloce e gratuito.

Dopo che hai creato il tuo account Twilio, puoi passare a configurare i dati di pubblicazione su Xenioo.

Clicca sul link Twilio Dashboard per visualizzare i dati globali del tuo account. In questa pagina potrai recuperare i valori di Account SID e Auth Token che dovranno essere copiati nei rispettivi campi presenti nella maschera di pubblicazione del canale Phone Voice Channel in Xenioo.

Testiamo il chatbot?

Ora che tutti i campi sono stati correttamente configurati, è sufficiente cliccare sul solito bottone “Publish” per pubblicare e dare vita al tuo chatbot.

Cosa succede dietro le quinte durante la pubblicazione?

Xenioo in automatico si connette al provider selezionato, nel nostro caso Twilio, e crea quello che noi chiamiamo “automated responder” basato sul flusso disegnato in Xenioo.

Il risponditore di Twilio si chiama Autopilot e dopo la pubblicazione potrai vedere nel tuo account Twilio un nuovo bot appena creato da Xenioo appositamente per te.

Fantastico, vero? A questo punto sei già in grado di testare il chatbot nel simulatore messo a disposizione dall’ Autopilot di Twilio in modo da cominciare a verificare come funziona la conversazione progettata con Xenioo.

Puoi andare avanti ed indietro tra il test vocale di Twilio ed il flusso disegnato su Xenioo (ri-pubblicando ogni modifica) fino a quando non pensi di aver ottenuto il risultato desiderato per il tuo chatbot.

Differentemente da come funziona con Alexa, il chatbot è in grado di ricevere il 100% di tutto il testo che è stato rilevato attraverso la conversazione telefonica. Questo significa che tutti i tipi di input sono supportati, e non solo le espressioni NLP.

Colleghiamo il chatbot ad un numero telefonico

Una volta soddisfatto della capacità conversazionale del chatbot appena costruito, sarà il momento di collegarlo finalmente ad un numero telefonico reale.

Per fare questo bisogna per prima cosa recuperare l’endpoint dell’ Autopilot: questo endpoint è necessario perchè specifica dove verrà rediretta tutta la conversazione che avviene sul numero telefonico che intendiamo utilizzare.

Clicca sul tuo Autopilot all’interno del tuo account Twilio, e poi su Channels. Nella lista dei canali, clicca ancora su Programmable Voice. Vedrai una pagina simile a quella mostrata nell’immagine seguente.

Copia il lungo url che trovi nel campo Voice Url perchè ti servirà da impostare nella configurazione del tuo numero di telefono. Da questa pagina devi semplicemente comprare un nuovo numero telefonico nella nazione di tua preferenza e settare il medesimo campo Voice Url incollando il valore precedentemente copiato.

Salva tutto ed il tuo assistente telefonico intelligente sarà pronto all’uso!

Infatti sarai già in grado di chiamare il numero che hai appena configurato e cominciare cosi a parlare con il tuo chatbot.

Drin!Drin! Pronto?

Sei pronto a creare il tuo primo chatbot di supporto vocale telefonico? Non vediamo l’ora di vedere cosa riuscirai a fare utilizzando questo nostro nuovo canale!

Ricordati che puoi condividere la tua esperienza nella nostra community privata su Facebook oppure scrivere al nostro team per avere tutto il supporto tecnico che ti serve.

The post Creare Un Chatbot Che Risponde A Chiamate Telefoniche appeared first on Xenioo.

Would you like to have your chatbot interact with calling customers for information or support?

Keep reading, that exactly what we’re going to do.

The Phone Voice Channel

Starting today, Xenioo supports a brand new Phone Voice Channel.

This new channel lets you integrate with a phone provider that can connect your chatbot to any number.

The very same chatbot you’ve used to reach your customers on WhatsApp? It’s already fine for becoming a phone assistant!

Using the very same approach used for WhatsApp chatbots, Xenioo has created an integration layer that removes all your worries about platform changes and technology shifts by providing a clear providers selection.

While you focus on creating the best conversational experience possible, we keep looking for the top service provider technologies.

Setting up your phone chatbot

A phone chatbot is very similar to a typical voice chatbot: everything happens in a real-time conversation where there is no buttons, link or any other type of visual cues.

Following the typical WhatsApp guidelines or Alexa and Google Assistant examples, you’ll create a chatbot fully ready to be configured.

After you’ve designed your chatbot, you need to set up a provider account. Currently, Xenioo supports Twilio as a provider, with more coming in the next months.

Setting up a Twilio account is fast and free.

Once you’ve created your Twilio account, you can configure the Xenioo publishing dialog. Click on the Twilio Dashboard link to display your account global data and from there, copy the Account SID and Auth Token values in the Xenioo Phone Voice Channel fields.

Testing your phone bot

Once all fields are set, click on the usual Publish button to bring your chatbot to life.

Behind the scenes, Xenioo will connect to your provider and automatically create an automated responder based on your design flow.
The Twilio responder is called Autopilot and after publishing, you will immediately see a new bot created for you. You don’t need to configure anything: Xenioo has done all the hard work for you.

That’s it! You can already test your chatbot in the Twilio Autopilot simulator and see how the conversation goes. You can go back and forth from voice testing to Xenioo design while you’re fine-tuning your flow until your chatbot is perfect.

Differently than Alexa, our chatbot is going to receive 100% of the text that is detected through the phone. This means that any type of input is supported, not just standard NLP expressions.

Attaching to a phone number

Once you’re satisfied with your chatbot conversational skills, you can proceed to attach it to a phone number.

In order to do so, you’ve first to get the Autopilot endpoint: we will need it to let our phone number know that everything goes to an endpoint.

Just click on your Autopilot bot and then click on Channels. In the list of channels, click on Programmable Voice. The page will display something similar to the picture below.

Copy the long Url you see and move to your phone numbers configuration. From there all you need to do is just buy a phone number in the country you prefer and paste the Voice Url you just copied in the Telephone configuration field with the very same name.

Save everything and your phone assistant is ready!

You can already call the number you’ve just configured and have a chat with your bot!

Ring! Hello, it’s our phone chatbot!

Are you ready to create your first real-time voice support bot? We’re looking forward to seeing what you can achieve using this brand new channel.

Remember to share your thoughts on our Facebook group or write to our team if you need any kind of support!

The post Making your phone chatbot reply to costumers calls appeared first on Xenioo.

In this second part, we’re going to delve deeper in other parts of advanced skill creation approaching. We will see topics like streaming, state management, and live publishing.

Playing audio

Sending audio to an Alexa device can be done in two ways. You either send a small sample, like a sound effect, or you send a longer and more complex streaming source.

The two options are not mutually exclusive but work very differently.

To send a small sample you can just add an Audio Action to your chatbot specifying the source file.

Leave all fields empty (as there’s no need for any additional information) and check the “Embed in speech encoding if available”.
This way Xenioo will automatically create an SSML audio message with your mp3.

If your audio is long (like for example a song or a podcast) and you also want to give the user the ability to pause, skip ahead or stop you have to go for the second option: audio streaming.

Epicentric is a full streaming platform supporting complex playlists and effects and so playing simple audio wasn’t enough for us.

Streaming your audio

To enable streaming you have first to let Alexa know that your skill will use the Audio Player interface.

This is done by enabling the interface inside the Alexa Developer Console.

As soon as you enable this interface, you’ll notice that your intents are automatically expanded to support standard playlist navigation: play, previous, next, stop and pause.

All of these intents are managed directly using Xenioo AI: just match each intent with the built-in Alexa intent key like we’ve seen in our previous post and Xenioo will automatically build the correct model to manage your player.

If you are building a multi-language skill, make sure to clone all intents in each language you want.

Xenioo will then automatically build an Alexa model for each language.

Working with Alexa States

Another important aspect of working with Alexa audio is responding to state changes during streaming.

Alexa will not only let you know that the audio has started but also when it is nearly finished and when it’s over. When the user stops or pause Alexa will let you know at exactly what position it was stopped and if the playlist needs to be set, renewed or cleared.

All of these events are automatically managed by Xenioo and redirect to your flow so that your chat can act accordingly. The usual approach is still here: remove all the nuisances from your workflow while keeping you in control of everything.

The key actions here are the Control Device State action and the Device State Switch Action. Both these actions will receive a state change from an Alexa device. They can be used to manage your flow accordingly.

Account Linking

Account Linking describes a set of procedures that can be used to link an Alexa skill to a specific account. For example, your user may be using your Alexa skill only with an active subscription to your service.

Once you’ve set up the account linking procedure for your application, you can use the alexa_account_link_token variable anywhere in your flow to identify (or login using your own API) your user.

Please note that although mainly static, the Alexa user-id value may be subject to sudden changes. Do not rely on this value to uniquely identify a user.

Final Publish

After implementing a full streaming skill with all the features we wanted, we are now ready to go live.

Xenioo is currently passing 100% of the routine security checks done by Amazon services. It is perfectly suitable for hosting your most advanced skills.

Building streaming skill? Want to have your own Podcast skill on Alexa? We already built a complete production-ready template covering all we’ve seen in this post for free!

Just join Xenioo and add it to your chatbots collection!

The post How to build an Alexa Skill With Xenioo (Part 2) appeared first on Xenioo.