My Customers Have Customers: 4 Lessons from Building a Chat UI Builder

Presented at UX Scotland 2017.

Four lessons I learned about chat builders, that have nothing to do with chat or UI builders, and everything to do with merchants and time.

Transcript

1. my customers 
 have customers Katrina Bautista Product Designer, Shopify @katbuilt and other lessons from building a chat ui builder
5. Would this have happened via email?
6. Enriching how customers 
 discover and interact 
 with merchants …?
7. @katbuilt #ConvComm #StreetCred #Hashtags
8. Conversational commerce Utilizing chat, messaging, or other natural language interfaces (i.e. voice) to interact with people, brands, or services and bots that heretofore have had no real place in the bidirectional, asynchronous messaging context. https://medium.com/chris-messina/2016-will-be-the-year-of-conversational-commerce-1586e85e3991
9. Commerce has always been conversational
10. Conversational commerce 
 is not just between merchants and customers
13. when i joined Shopify, i had never worked on chat experiences before. like, ever. and that’s ok. …neither had Shopify, really. '
14. it’s a land grab — 
 everywhere, 
 for everyone, 
 always 1
16. https://www.quora.com/Facebook-Growth-and-Traction/What-are-some-decisions-taken-by-the-Growth-team-at-Facebook-that-helped-Facebook-reach-500-million-users
17. 1.2 billion people use Facebook Messenger
18. 1.2 billion people our merchants haven’t met yet
19. My customers have customers 2
20. My customers also have
 customer acquisition problems 

21. @katbuilt https://www.shopify.com/blog/easily-find-new-shoppers-with-shopify-channels more than 60% of Shopify merchants use 
 more than one sales channel
22. @katbuilt https://www.shopify.com/blog/easily-find-new-shoppers-with-shopify-channels more than 60% of Shopify merchants use 
 more than one sales channel
23. @katbuilt * Alasdair G. paraphrased this from a poet from Canada by the way (Dennis Lee).
26. Reading technical documentation is a way of doing a competitive analysis before other products are built yet
27. What is your 
 minimum atomic interaction?
28. @katbuilt source:
29. Merchant impact Be wherever customers are Up close & personal with customers at 
 all points before, during, and after sale Always ready for the future - 
 features mature as messaging platforms do
31. That’s why 
 we don’t build bots
32. That’s why 
 we don’t build bots We give customers a conversation-starter, 
 then we get out of the way.
33. Nobody* tests. Everybody lies, though**. 3 * Nobody with better things to do ** Because they have better things to do
34. How many decisions 
 did you make today?
35. How many decisions 
 did you make today? Scientists say we make thousands of decisions per day, some sources say as high as 35,000. A Cornell University study says we make 226 decisions on just what to eat.
37. my brain has too many tabs open
38. How toomanytabs-tolerant
 is my experience?
39. YOUR BRAND | Title of page
40. Specific < Less specific < Least specific
41. How easy is it to squirrel?
42. Complex workflows are inherently stateful. Decide if your user must stay and finish, or if they can pause and come back later. (believe me, whether or not they must see this through to the end, they’ll probably come back later. BRB, my phone is ringing, i need a snack, nature is calling, our supplier just shipped us a lorry of pants instead of trousers, etc)
43. @katbuilt
47. @katbuilt What can I automate about this, so my user can get back to doing something that is probably not this?
48. hold your user’s hand,
 and then let your user go. let them see for themselves. they’re adults, Business Adults.
49. People don’t have time for 
 the features they request
54. Why weren’t people customizing?
55. The same merchants who care about more features
 often don’t have time for the features they requested in the first place.
56. @katbuilt What can I fill in with the best i can, so my user can get back to doing something else that probably isn’t this?
57. there’s always new things to learn 4
58. @katbuilt chatfuel.com UI builder
59. @katbuilt manychat.com UI builder
60. @katbuilt Facebook’s automatic responder editor (does not work on mobile)
62. Polaris polaris.shopify.com
63. @katbuilt polaris.shopify.com
64. @katbuilt
65. my customers have customers 4lessons automate then get out of the way make it so they don’t have to nobody tests and everybody lies use the old to teach the new there’s always new things to learn learn the terrain, draw your own maps it’s a land grab in the early days @katbuilt
66. thank you / Katrina Bautista kat.bautista@shopify.com @katbuilt @katrina uxscot17.slack.com