Technology

SOCi expands marketing toolbox with SmartBot

May 12, 2020

All-in-one marketing platform SOCi is launching an AI-powered SmartBot that will let markets deploy conversational chatbots across hundreds and thousands of individual business Messenger accounts.

It can also be embedded in websites to capture traffic from all over the web, according to a press release, and goes beyond answering consumer questions as it can drive call-to-actions including phone calls, visits to websites, lead generation and appointment bookings.

"60% of customer care communications are now happening outside of normal business hours. Further, more than two-thirds of the digital population prefer communicating with brands on messaging platforms like Messenger over email and phone. With these changing customer expectations, it is now more important than ever that multi-location businesses are available at all times and in the right places," said Afif Khoury, CEO of SOCi, in the release. "With our new SOCi SmartBot, multi-location companies can now provide 24/7 customer care and lead generation in the heart of one of the largest social communities on the planet, and they can do it at the local level and at scale."

In a recent two-month test, across 11 Messenger business pages, SmartBot responded to 11,000 inquiries from more than 2,500 customers, making sure that no customer care issues went unanswered.