Hello everyone, Derek Johnson with tatango.com.
Today, I'm gonna be walking you through an RCS chatbot demo from Skyscanner.
So, first off, how do you get access to the RCS chatbot directory?
First, you have to have a Samsung device, a new Samsung device.
So this one is the Galaxy S9.
And then you have to be on the AT&T network.
When all those things happen, you click Messages, you will see chatbots, and I didn't download
anything, I didn't activate anything.
This comes just standard right out of the box.
So you have your Conversations, your Contacts, and then you have Chatbots.
And as you can see, there's about a handful of chatbots here, but some huge brands: CNN,
Express, Kroger, SeatGeek, Warby Parker, Walgreens, a lot of great brands using and already in
the RCS chatbot directory.
So, what I said is we're going to look at Skyscanner.
So I click Skyscanner.
Really nice.
It doesn't kick you right into the chatbot, it gives you a little information.
I can add it to one of my favorites, and if it's added to one of my favorites, I go to
Contacts, and then I go to My chatbots, and you can see right there, Skyscanner.
"The world's travel search engine."
It gives you the terms and conditions.
And I click Chat.
It automatically fires off a message to Skyscanner, essentially telling them, "Hey, this phone
wants to engage with the chatbot."
So, let's look here.
Before we get started, you can see top left-hand corner, no more short code.
So short codes are five to six-digit phone numbers.
Most people don't know which short code is associated which brand.
Now, it says the brand name up in the left-hand corner.
That's great.
And then, on the left-hand, very, very left-hand corner here, you have the Skyscanner logo.
So, with a short code, usually it's one of these guys, the kind of faceless person, but
now, brands can put their actual own logos into the message.
What's cool too is, look at the, kind of, format of this message.
There's no links anymore, in terms of, like, long links, they are condensed down to buttons.
So you have buttons, "Find A Flight," and "Tell Me More."
So, "Hi.
Welcome to the Skyscanner bot.
We'll help you find your next trip," and then there's an emoji.
People are loving emojis right now.
"What would you like to do?"
Let's find a flight.
I'm gonna click it, and what you notice, it's not like a button on the website, or a website.
When you click it, it actually sends an MO message, mobile originated, from the phone
to Skyscanner, and then Skyscanner processes that message and sends a message back.
So, "Okay, let's start again... where would you like to go?"
And they're saying that because I've done this chatbot many different times.
So, I wanna show weekend trips.
And you can see it's pretty snappy.
"Flying Friday, November 30th 2018."
So, let's see.
This is because I've been searching, they know some of my, you know, presets essentially.
Let's do New York City.
So I'm gonna fly from New York City, and...
That's pretty cool.
So, from New York City, here are the suggestions that they have.
And what's really nice is this carousel.
So, as you can see, hopefully you can see on my screen here, if I scroll, sorry, if
I scroll this way, or this way, that's pretty cool.
That's like an app-like experience or maybe even a mobile web experience, but this is
within the messaging experience.
This isn't...I haven't downloaded the app or anything, this is all within.
And what's really cool too is, instead of just kinda ending at this one, they put in
this last card with more options, and when you click one of these...
Just FYI, it's not a button.
It just expands the image.
The button is down here.
So you can see each, actually this one...you know, Try Edinburgh and then Route Tips.
So this one has two buttons, and this one over here only has one button.
So, let's pick a place.
Let's go to Chicago.
Let's do Route Tips for Chicago.
Pretty cool.
They're using these, they're called carousels, and people call them tiles, carousels, but
essentially they have an image, this also could link to a video or a GIF, I guess, and
then they have the title and then some description, and then they can have as many buttons as
you want down there that are stacked on each other.
There are some brands that are using these carousels where the image is on the left,
but most of them, because they want the full width of the screen there, they're using the
image at the top.
But pretty cool.
I click View Chart.
So that one is not a smart reply where it actually sends the text message off.
That one is connecting you to their mobile website.
So that's like a regular button on a website.
So, let's go back.
What's really cool too is you can go back and click on things, and it reactivates where
you were.
So I wanna click Try Chicago.
"Searching for a flight New York, United States to Chicago, flying out in November."
So it gives you all of the information, "You're going to Chicago," "Route tip."
So then, you can click, you know, "Hey, I wanna change my destination."
So this is really what chatbots were originally designed for is for you to kind of do your
own work instead of calling up, you know, an agent on the phone and then having them,
you know, manually work with you.
So it hopefully saves, you know, a lot of time.
I might have bad connection here but let's see if it is connecting.
Yeah, so sometimes it takes a little bit of time.
But I can go and I can click New Search, you could see how this is pretty kind of engaging.
Like, I could just continue to look at things, you know...
"Where do you like...?"
I wanna see the weekend trips.
Yep, let's go from Seattle this time.
So, look at all these different, you know, options that I have.
And it's a beautiful experience.
Like, these are high resolution images.
They look really nice.
You know, this is cool how it says the price there so I can quickly go through and go,
"You know what, $611 is a good deal for Bangkok."
You know, I wanna try Bangkok.
And it sends all this information, and then actually, it says "Searching for a flight,"
and then, "Replying with results shortly," so that might take a little longer for them
to process and then it'll send you the flights.
But as you can see, we had a lot of interactions.
Just look at all this stuff.
But what's really interesting, what's cool about RCS is you wouldn't see this kind of
thing, like, all these interactions with SMS or MMS, you wouldn't have the tiles and the
carousels that go left to right, you wouldn't have all these different buttons.
It really is a better experience than a SMS and MMS in almost every single way.
So, really cool to see a brand like Skyscanner not only use RCS, but really embrace it and
take it...
You know, they could've done something really simple.
This is pretty complex, and it works really well and it's super snappy.
It's a really cool example of a travel company, or a travel website, using RCS and being involved
in the RCS chatbot directory.
Again, this is on a Samsung device on the AT&T network in the Samsung AT&T chatbot directory.
My name is Derek Johnson with tatango.com.
If you have any questions, comments, feedback, if you want more information about RCS or
how Skyscanner is using RCS, let us know in the comments below.
Thank you for watching this video.