Hey, everyone.
Derek Johnson with tatango.com.
Today I'm giving you an inside look at an RCS chatbot demo from a company called HERE
WeGo.
So, you may not have heard about HERE WeGo and that's part of why RCS is really cool.
So, first off, how do you get access to the RCS chatbot directory?
First off, you have to have a Samsung device.
This is the Galaxy S9.
So, once you pull it out of the box and it's on AT&T network, when you click "Messages,"
you'll see in the very, very right-hand corner "Chatbots."
And you'll see there's about a dozen chatbots.
CNN, 1-800-Flowers, Express, Kroger, Walgreens, even Warby Parker has their own RCS chatbot.
What's really cool too is usually, this is where you have your friends and family conversations,
but then intermixed will be the brands that you talk to.
So you can quickly, you know, let's say, you know, go into AllModern and continue the conversation
or go into Quartz and continue the chatbot experience, and then swipe up and talk to
your mother or father.
So, it's a really cool experience and they've really integrated it well into the messaging
app on the phone.
Again, this is not a special app or a download or a turn on type thing.
You just click "Messages" and it's right there.
Also, under "Contacts," right above, actually, your friends and family, which would be down
in this area, you have "My Chatbots," which these are my favorite type of chatbots.
So, as I said, we're gonna talk about a chatbot called HERE WeGo.
And let's go find it.
"HereWeGo Chat."
Now, right off the bat, remember how I said a lot of people I bet don't know what HERE
WeGo is?
Well, it's really nice, because when you click on the chatbot, it actually tells you what
each chatbot is and what the brand is.
So, "Location and navigation made simple with HereWeGo Chat.
Get started now."
So, now I understand what HERE WeGo is.
I can quickly, if I really like this, I can quickly click "Add," and it adds it to my
favorite chatbots and I can remove it if I want.
So, let's start.
This one's really cool because it uses location.
So, I'm gonna click "Chat."
And right off the bat when I click "Chat," it fires off a message to HERE WeGo with the
word "Chat" so it knows that the chat is starting and then HERE WeGo can send information.
So, right off the bat, you have "HereWeGo Chat" instead of a short code.
So, much better branding in RCS messaging than SMS and MMS.
And then you have the little logo on the left-hand corner instead of that greyed-out kind of
person that is usually used for short code messaging.
So, "Hi.
Going somewhere?
Just type where and the best routes are coming right up.
If you need help, type 'help.'
You need to share your location, we can find you.
(Hey, it's technology, not magic!)"
I like when brands put a little bit of a human spin on their chatbot so it seems a little
more human.
Now, what's really cool is this.
"Touch to send your location."
This is a button.
So, SMS, MMS, you can't have a button in your message.
With an RCS message, you can.
And in addition to that, you can definitely not have a button in an SMS or MM message
that shares your phone's location with a brand.
I'm gonna do this.
Takes a little bit of time to figure out where you are, and I'm in the office right now.
But that's pretty amazing.
It knows exactly where I am, which is kind of creepy almost, but it's really, really
helpful in the context of this app, because I wanna know where I'm going, it needs to
know where I am right now.
So, this right here it's actually not a map within the Google maps or anything like that.
This is just an image, and then you have the title, which is "Route Roughly 1 minute and
75 feet by car."
What's interesting is I'm going to...I think it was because I was using this earlier.
I think it knows that I want to go to Chipotle.
Okay.
So, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to do "How can I get to Chipotle?"
It's starting to be lunchtime here, I'm getting hungry.
Okay.
So, that's pretty crazy how, you saw how fast that was.
I just typed "How can I get to Chipotle?" and automatically, creates this message, puts
all this information in, and then I can click there and open it in the I guess the WeGo
app.
So, let's try something else.
"How do I get to Macy's?"
Pretty snappy.
That is really, really quick.
And not only are they composing the map on how to get to Macy's, this is an image, so
they're rendering the image.
They're also putting the information in the message, "Roughly 10 minutes and 1.1 miles."
"How do I get to the airport?"
That's pretty accurate.
About 21 minutes here in Seattle.
And also, it has one attachment, I'm gonna click and see what's going on here.
Maybe it was a little low on the screen there.
So, really, really interesting experience and really nice too, because I text...well,
I went through the process and I already had told them I wanted to go to Chipotle so it
was telling me what I needed to know.
But then I was like, "Ah, I need to click help" to figure out where I am and what I
can do and then look.
"Try typing something like:" this, "Get me directions to Grand Canyon," "Share your location,"
wow, you can even switch from imperial to metric.
So, a lot of really cool use cases.
Let's see, "Get me to Las Vegas."
Wow.
Pretty cool.
All of this stuff is happening really, really quickly, in addition to sharing your location.
And let's see if I type like "Share your location."
This is a really nice chatbot and it's super snappy.
So, that didn't work, but again, the nice thing is when I have an issue, I just type
help.
And instead of the whole message and data rates apply and stuff like that, and here's
our terms and conditions, that stuff usually doesn't help people that much.
This really helps me because it tells me exactly what I can do with this app.
Share location, you'll get routes automatically.
So, they know my location already.
So, it's essentially saying, "We know, now just tell us where you wanna go."
So, "Take me to New York City."
I don't know if it's roughly one day, so maybe they have a little tweaking to do.
Maybe if you drive really, really fast.
But yeah.
Cool.
And I can open and expand the app.
Again, this is an image.
This is not...I can't go and like see the streets right now and it won't show me what's
happening, but that actually would happen when I click open in HERE WeGo in the app.
So, cool use of the...a chatbot use of also sharing the location, which I've actually
not seen that many RCS chatbots use that right now, because really you have to...that is
a very private piece of information and it's deadly accurate in terms of where you are,
latitude and longitude.
So, I think for brands they have to realize if you're a retailer, you have to really give
up something really valuable to the customer if they're sharing their location.
There has to be some value or reason for sharing the location.
I definitely would not start a chatbot for something and ask right off the bat for their
location if it's not needed.
So, if you're a Subways, a Chipotle, a Burger King.
If the Burger King app was 100% "find the nearest Burger King," that makes sense.
But if you're Burger King and you wanna start a chat and see what's on the menu, there should
be something that you slide across and says, "Find nearest location."
Then, you can ask for the person's location.
But I don't think you can do it right off the bat unless the app is specific to "find
my location, get me somewhere," which is what HERE WeGo Chat is doing.
So, really cool.
Again, this is an RCS chatbot from HERE WeGo.
And this is the HereWeGo Chat chatbot I guess.
This is on a Samsung device on the AT&T network.
My name is Derek Johnson from tatango.com.
If you have any questions, comments, feedback, you want more information about RCS chatbots,
let us know in the comments below.
Thank you.