Chatbots - the Pros and Cons of building your own

This is the first in a new series of podcasts that talks in a slightly more technically manner about chatbot/ voicebot production, as well as development projects and everything in between.

Introducing Dave Antwis our technical lead, who can offer a more technical standpoint as the series progresses.

The first one is a soft start talking about the pros and cons of building your own chatbots, how you can keep ownership and improve skills internally whilst still having a good product and experience in the end.

We touch on CRM build in chatbots and where they sit in the landscape.

Find out about chatbots here

Pros

-         Perceived as Cheaper

-         Control if skilled

-         Building skills internally

-         Adhere to business ownership policies

Cons

-         Not skilled

-         Poor experience

-         Not utilising all features of a platform

-         Scoping challenges

-         Lots of time lost internally – resource issues

Options 

-         We could build it – but transfer knowledge to team

-         Control to specific stakeholders in the team

-         Much better experience from day one

-         Less internal resource needed

-         Options to integrate into the business with dev support

Our latest series of podcasts, concentrates on voice and how that is going to impact the next few years with tips along the way. Find out more about voicebots here and if you have any subjects that you would like us to discuss then email info@disruptionworks.co.uk with the subject Podcast and we will see what we can do ;-)

Transcript

0:0:10.520 --> 0:0:20.530
 Steve Tomkinson
 Well, welcome everybody to a new and exciting edition of disruption works chitchats with Dave. How are you doing today, Dave? Are you doing well?

0:0:21.70 --> 0:0:27.140
 David Antwis
 I'm all right. Yeah. It's exciting for me up on the 30th floor. You've got carpets and everything.

0:0:28.250 --> 0:0:29.140
 David Antwis
 Thank you.

0:0:35.810 --> 0:0:36.170
 David Antwis
 Not.

0:0:28.90 --> 0:0:36.660
 Steve Tomkinson
 That's right. Well, we have. We have like a cafe and everything up here. You know, it's it would probably look after themselves. Ohh bless you. Never been up here before.

0:0:37.20 --> 0:0:38.950
 David Antwis
 Are best not tell the team. I tell you that.

0:0:43.580 --> 0:0:43.840
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:0:41.310 --> 0:0:46.660
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, don't. It only upsets them. Yeah. Yeah. You can't. You can't tell him everything. Go keep some stuff to yourself.

0:0:47.650 --> 0:1:17.20
 Steve Tomkinson
 Uh, well, thanks for joining us today, Dave. UM, so that we're this. This is now the first in a new series of podcasts that talks are slightly more technically about chatbots and voice, but production as well as dev projects and pretty much everything in between. And the reason we got Dave on today is that Dave is head of our IT delivery. So is kind of well placed to answer a lot of these questions.

0:1:17.590 --> 0:1:31.660
 Steve Tomkinson
 And the the conversation I wanted to have today, Dave was pretty much around our pros and cons of building your own chat box. Now because we get this a lot, you know, a lot of people kind of.

0:1:32.810 --> 0:1:33.200
 David Antwis
 Umm.

0:1:32.410 --> 0:1:36.820
 Steve Tomkinson
 Talk to us and that that, that kind of trying to build those and we've seen a little bit of.

0:1:41.140 --> 0:1:41.520
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:1:37.950 --> 0:1:42.540
 Steve Tomkinson
 Influx on that side of things and and it's not that we don't.

0:1:43.430 --> 0:2:2.860
 Steve Tomkinson
 You know, people don't not build their own chat bots because there's plenty of chat bots built into platforms. Now you know you've got the arms and all that type of stuff with these things in them, and that's good and fine. But I suppose really it's, is it the best use of your team's time? Is it a good starting point? And what are the challenges, you know?

0:2:8.520 --> 0:2:8.890
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah.

0:2:10.950 --> 0:2:11.260
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah.

0:2:20.180 --> 0:2:20.800
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, yeah.

0:2:3.400 --> 0:2:22.160
 David Antwis
 What is something done? The people using Salesforce and what have you there? There are chatbot modules that are being offered and thrust into their faces and people are wondering about them and starting to try and use them should they, I don't know.

0:2:22.700 --> 0:2:24.160
 David Antwis
 Uh, I.

0:2:23.710 --> 0:2:27.440
 Steve Tomkinson
 Well, late they I think they're the platforms themselves are properly OK.

0:2:28.370 --> 0:2:29.500
 Steve Tomkinson
 You know there there are.

0:2:35.910 --> 0:2:36.930
 David Antwis
 Yep, Yep.

0:2:39.570 --> 0:2:39.980
 David Antwis
 Well.

0:2:30.430 --> 0:2:42.110
 Steve Tomkinson
 Like there's a huge gap in variety of different Chapel platforms. There's millions of them and you know, some have got good tools and some of them have got port tools. You know, there's that.

0:2:45.670 --> 0:2:46.450
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, now.

0:2:41.540 --> 0:2:50.190
 David Antwis
 We use a lot of different technologies for chatbots ourselves and and pros and cons. Well, I love doing it so.

0:2:53.920 --> 0:2:54.320
 Steve Tomkinson
 Well.

0:2:51.410 --> 0:2:59.380
 David Antwis
 Other people should as well. I'm sure there's an easy, but maybe they're maybe not. Everyone's like me and the guys here. Yeah.

0:2:58.890 --> 0:3:1.730
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I I suppose the pros.

0:3:17.480 --> 0:3:17.900
 David Antwis
 Right.

0:3:1.810 --> 0:3:19.190
 Steve Tomkinson
 That that there are some pros at doing it yourself. I I mean initially it's perceived as cheaper. You know, you don't have to get somebody like ourselves in to do that stuff you've got, you can use an internal resource that may be more comes person or something like that to kind of kick stuff off.

0:3:19.330 --> 0:3:19.700
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:3:29.20 --> 0:3:31.70
 David Antwis
 That's valuable, yes. Yeah.

0:3:40.100 --> 0:3:40.560
 David Antwis
 Well.

0:3:19.500 --> 0:3:42.20
 Steve Tomkinson
 Umm. And and if they have got the skills to build this out properly, then you know you've got that skill in house. So you know that's a useful. Yeah, it is. It is. And so we can't knock that stuff. I mean, even down to business ownership and stuff like that. I suppose that kind of works out. If you've got all that in there.

0:3:42.610 --> 0:3:48.760
 David Antwis
 Yeah, ownership is something that often constrains companies. They they don't necessarily want.

0:3:55.600 --> 0:3:55.990
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah.

0:3:50.400 --> 0:4:9.10
 David Antwis
 To be constrained by it, because it it does limit the services that they can buy in and. And whilst it's nice to have control it well the the skills internally that's that's an expensive thing to maintain. I'm sorry we're in the pros section and I'm I'm already I'm already toning.

0:4:11.70 --> 0:4:11.340
 David Antwis
 But.

0:4:7.150 --> 0:4:17.260
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, we are. Yeah. We were supposed to be talking about pros. And you wanna you went quite swiftly into cons and believe that that's the thing like I you know, you're right.

0:4:16.770 --> 0:4:18.830
 David Antwis
 I'm looking, yeah, but person perhaps?

0:4:18.420 --> 0:4:19.820
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah.

0:4:21.160 --> 0:4:29.290
 Steve Tomkinson
 You get in that, I suppose you like. OK, the, the you. You're right there. The business ownership thing is a thing. But.

0:4:29.980 --> 0:4:30.690
 David Antwis
 Book, yes.

0:4:29.960 --> 0:4:43.370
 Steve Tomkinson
 You know, if you pick the right platform and if you are integrated into Salesforce, if you're integrated into Microsoft, then building your stuff out in Salesforce and Microsoft is a could be a logical solution for you.

0:4:43.200 --> 0:4:46.530
 David Antwis
 It it will fit a lot of organizations, yes, yeah.

0:4:46.280 --> 0:5:4.950
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, absolutely. And so you've already got ownership, but it doesn't mean that you can't kind of have external help with that stuff and and you know downstream, but we we can have a little chat about that in a bit anyway. But I suppose the cons which you were starting to segue into pretty sharp.

0:5:5.30 --> 0:5:5.560
 Steve Tomkinson
 You say?

0:5:6.200 --> 0:5:6.530
 David Antwis
 Ah.

0:5:7.40 --> 0:5:11.390
 Steve Tomkinson
 I I gotta be around the obvious stuff, you know, at the problem that we got with chatbots.

0:5:21.330 --> 0:5:21.650
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:5:12.190 --> 0:5:43.240
 Steve Tomkinson
 Is that we've got, uh, you know, newer chat box and people who have designed them and invested in them properly. They're really good experience. Yeah. But there are still some very big chat bots out there and some, you know, kind of small business chat bots out there that are really bad. You know, they're terrible experience. So big brands are using them poorly. They don't do nearly enough. You get called down and blind alleys. You know, you get all the classic problems.

0:5:43.370 --> 0:5:45.160
 Steve Tomkinson
 There are chatbot shouldn't have to do.

0:5:46.60 --> 0:5:46.390
 Steve Tomkinson
 And.

0:5:52.950 --> 0:5:54.950
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, it is.

0:5:45.700 --> 0:5:55.970
 David Antwis
 Yeah, it's. It's like having a talking to an employee who just doesn't care about the job, isn't it, that you're you're not getting satisfaction?

0:5:56.500 --> 0:6:0.950
 Steve Tomkinson
 No, absolutely. And it you know, and the problem with that is that they don't.

0:6:1.950 --> 0:6:32.30
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, it's, it's. You're just not getting the experience that customers are now expecting they the expectation of of customer experience is going through the roof now. And there's a business you live and die on that really because if you're not providing good service and you're not providing responsive communications, then as soon as somebody in the market comes into the market that does do that, then there's a massive transition. You can lose market share really quickly and or.

0:6:36.80 --> 0:6:36.840
 David Antwis
 That's true.

0:6:32.210 --> 0:6:57.490
 Steve Tomkinson
 Just not get them back again. You know the return customers and stuff and that's that's the biggest thing that we say, you know from from our side talking to new clients that are coming in is that they've tried it and they've done a bad job of it. And and that's you know it's a real challenge to to do it right. You know we've been doing this for years so we know what we're doing. You know this is what we do.

0:6:56.350 --> 0:7:3.960
 David Antwis
 You know, even a A failed a failed client project before they come to us. They could have spent a year on it themselves.

0:7:3.270 --> 0:7:29.200
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have at that, you know, a recent clients come into us and that, you know, they've been with the six months now. But they had spent just over a year trying to sort it out and do it themselves because they saw that as the cost effective route which we were saying was a con, was a pro. But actually it's a con. If you take us to it, then that's not working, you know, that, isn't it? There is a real problem.

0:7:30.850 --> 0:7:31.360
 Steve Tomkinson
 There was.

0:7:35.40 --> 0:7:35.350
 Steve Tomkinson
 No.

0:7:30.700 --> 0:7:39.710
 David Antwis
 We'll chatbots, chatbots, all magic out-of-the-box. You, you, you don't, you don't drop them on your website and suddenly everything's.

0:7:41.180 --> 0:7:45.370
 David Antwis
 Artificially intelligent and all that. But that's not how it works.

0:7:43.370 --> 0:7:59.110
 Steve Tomkinson
 No, no. Look, there's, there's lots of AI used in the background, but it's more about learning what people have been asking you for. It doesn't give you all the responses and content and everything else that's involved. You have to design those flows and those things need to happen.

0:8:0.280 --> 0:8:0.670
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:8:10.740 --> 0:8:11.770
 David Antwis
 Of course, yeah.

0:8:0.620 --> 0:8:26.820
 Steve Tomkinson
 Because you can't. You know you can. You can do a mix of both and that gives you a lot of power to have massive knowledge bases, which we're working on now, you know, for some big organizations. And that uses a bit of I AI and it's dropped in but it still has to be content has to be found. It still has to be written in some sort of format that makes sense in a chat bot rather than just bring in a web page back. You know that's a waste time.

0:8:32.730 --> 0:8:33.20
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah.

0:8:25.750 --> 0:8:36.100
 David Antwis
 And we're involving those connections and integrations as we go because the challenges are changing and the data is getting bigger and the requirements are.

0:8:37.370 --> 0:8:38.830
 David Antwis
 Water it's.

0:8:39.770 --> 0:8:40.860
 David Antwis
 Yeah, it's very interesting.

0:8:43.370 --> 0:8:44.800
 David Antwis
 Expectations in yeah.

0:8:38.450 --> 0:9:5.170
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, the expectations broader from the customers. So yeah. So then you've got loads of probably loads of features if you're building it yourself that you're not utilizing because you don't really know or you haven't maybe got the skills to to do a little bit of small works dev or something like that too to make something talk to another system or any of those things, they're pretty.

0:9:5.500 --> 0:9:11.950
 Steve Tomkinson
 Bread and butter were to us, but for the likes of an internal team then you get quite a flat.

0:9:21.30 --> 0:9:22.320
 David Antwis
 Yeah, yeah.

0:9:13.80 --> 0:9:22.560
 Steve Tomkinson
 Experience, even if you've managed to do some conversation flow, it's not really doing any self-service. It's not doing anything else other than that really. So it's pretty hard.

0:9:23.700 --> 0:9:23.960
 Steve Tomkinson
 Hello.

0:9:23.310 --> 0:9:37.510
 David Antwis
 Well, the the more, the more of these that you do the you know you you keep seeing the same recurring themes in challenges that businesses are experiencing. So we can.

0:9:42.360 --> 0:9:42.720
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah.

0:9:45.890 --> 0:9:46.370
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah.

0:9:38.440 --> 0:9:47.640
 David Antwis
 What we do, what you do, really cause you talk to them more than I do, is that you anticipate their needs and and it's it's I like that.

0:9:57.300 --> 0:9:57.710
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:9:57.770 --> 0:9:59.200
 Steve Tomkinson
 Do is is pretty endless.

0:9:59.720 --> 0:10:9.110
 Steve Tomkinson
 Umm. But we're focused around what the need is. I mean, look, there's always a baseline of, you know, we'll have this, this and this, but.

0:10:9.940 --> 0:10:13.810
 Steve Tomkinson
 You just you don't just have this whole.

0:10:15.110 --> 0:10:17.10
 Steve Tomkinson
 Well, this is all I can make it do.

0:10:19.40 --> 0:10:19.580
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:10:19.650 --> 0:10:20.150
 David Antwis
 That's.

0:10:23.990 --> 0:10:24.910
 David Antwis
 It'll be funny.

0:10:17.810 --> 0:10:26.940
 Steve Tomkinson
 Which say you know which is pretty much what happens when you're doing some of these out of the boxes. You know, I've got a template and this is all we're having. You know, it's the template.

0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:35.320
 David Antwis
 So we should may not be a good idea, but maybe we should put that on our website. Is that and this is all we can do and just Can you imagine that? No.

0:10:37.680 --> 0:10:38.560
 David Antwis
 No, I don't think so.

0:10:37.10 --> 0:10:40.570
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, yeah. That I I like that. I like that.

0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:51.740
 David Antwis
 A couple.

0:10:41.650 --> 0:10:59.380
 Steve Tomkinson
 I I look, I suppose that the upshire is like it was never going to be that we we think you know this is our a Disruption works podcast. So we were never gonna be like yeah go build it all yourselves don't work don't don't worry us don't don't darken our door with you with your presence.

0:11:1.30 --> 0:11:18.490
 Steve Tomkinson
 You know, I, you know, and asked to be said, but like there are pros. If you've got the skills, if you've got skills internally, then ownership is great, but it doesn't stop you from coming out to somebody like us. Even you know, we're pretty platform agnostic, as you know Dave, you know we'll do stuff in Microsoft and all the rest of it.

0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:19.190
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:11:20.620 --> 0:11:43.170
 Steve Tomkinson
 But it doesn't mean that we don't have. We can't transfer the knowledge back to the team, so they are educated internally. So some of the pros we talked about earlier is that they'll have skills internally if they can build them and stuff like that. And we'll do that. That's not a problem to us cuz if we can make our client better at what they do, then businesses, usual stuff should never really be done by us, you know.

0:11:43.90 --> 0:11:43.340
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:11:43.290 --> 0:11:54.200
 Steve Tomkinson
 And we're happy to do it, but it's it's a shame if you don't have that internally, especially in something that's integrated and it's your own kind of platform and stuff like that.

0:11:56.70 --> 0:12:4.330
 Steve Tomkinson
 So you know your stakeholders, the people that are doing the day-to-day should have the control of them. We can give that back to them. But we've built something.

0:12:2.690 --> 0:12:20.320
 David Antwis
 Well, we, we see that. Yeah, we see that happening. Clients take ownership that happily take ownership of the of of the chat bots in there looking. I don't have this like becomes like a they mentor the chat bot. It's seems to me.

0:12:21.430 --> 0:12:22.860
 David Antwis
 You know once like what?

0:12:20.180 --> 0:12:25.500
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said. Well, it's that member of staff, isn't it? You know, that's that's what we're trying to do.

0:12:28.40 --> 0:12:28.670
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah.

0:12:23.950 --> 0:12:29.690
 David Antwis
 Yeah. Once they've got one they like they they go. Alright let's let's nurture it.

0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:56.170
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:12:29.820 --> 0:13:1.100
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, let's let's make sure Charlie's got all the knowledge in the world about this, you know, and then they can add that stuff in. It makes them more dynamic. But I suppose we do get most of our clients will lean on us at some point because they, you know, because it's a whole new scenario. Do you wanna do they want to integrate over here? They wanna do something that's a bit more complicated, a bit more self-service because that's the big one of the big advantages which we can then provide full self-service journeys that maybe.

0:13:1.410 --> 0:13:3.380
 Steve Tomkinson
 Uh. Within the scope or the?

0:13:6.800 --> 0:13:8.420
 David Antwis
 Gotta remember, yeah.

0:13:4.440 --> 0:13:23.240
 Steve Tomkinson
 Uh, skills internally, you know. So then that's when the chat bots come it really into their own. If you can do as much self-service as as much of the process as possible. So if you can do 70% of the process, so your team only have to do 30 because you've got somebody like us to build that process for you.

0:13:24.50 --> 0:13:26.330
 Steve Tomkinson
 Then the benefit is there, you know, so it's huge.

0:13:28.970 --> 0:13:29.580
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, it says.

0:13:36.740 --> 0:13:37.260
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, yeah.

0:13:39.950 --> 0:13:40.290
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah.

0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:44.680
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah.

0:13:25.700 --> 0:13:47.470
 David Antwis
 That's that's what the whole thing's all about, isn't it? When we're when we're buying something on our on our website, we're filling in our own credit card details and all of that we're doing. We're doing that. Companies work for them by typing into their website where they're automating a task which will take people and time and.

0:14:1.690 --> 0:14:2.40
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:13:46.820 --> 0:14:13.830
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, that's right. So if it's a different process like an on boarding in HR or a, you know or some sort of uh query that's requires a lot of information that then the team can come back with an answer against then that self-service journey is something that we can build in. And then if you have got this CRM integration like Salesforce or whatever, we keep talking about Salesforce, but there's hotspots, there's all sorts of different places then.

0:14:14.990 --> 0:14:16.400
 Steve Tomkinson
 You get everything back in.

0:14:27.700 --> 0:14:29.30
 David Antwis
 OK. Yes.

0:14:37.140 --> 0:14:37.540
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:14:17.380 --> 0:14:40.810
 Steve Tomkinson
 But without any of the uh, the two and fro, you know it's not a an e-mail that goes. I I wanna help. I want some help on this. You go. OK. Can you give me all this information that I should have had first time round? You know the the chat bar go OK. Let me ask you a few questions and then you're essentially filling in for me. But it doesn't feel like that you know.

0:14:40.190 --> 0:14:40.910
 David Antwis
 Don't tell them.

0:14:44.190 --> 0:15:1.470
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, alright. Well, like, OK, I I'm not sure we we push the pros nearly enough on this chat on this podcast for anyway and I think that the The upshot from our perspective is that obviously we want you to build your chat box for you, but it doesn't mean.

0:15:23.270 --> 0:15:23.590
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:15:2.540 --> 0:15:28.890
 Steve Tomkinson
 That you have to always come to us for everything that you haven't read about it. I think if if uh Andreas we've done for other clients, if we do the setups and builds for people and and do a lot of handover and onboarding and documentation to support it then people can have a bit of ownership and they can take it on and and just call us when they need us kind of thing you know retained or however it may be.

0:15:29.900 --> 0:15:31.150
 Steve Tomkinson
 So there are pros.

0:15:32.580 --> 0:15:33.180
 David Antwis
 I guess.

0:15:32.410 --> 0:15:35.90
 Steve Tomkinson
 To after a point, I think after a point.

0:15:34.450 --> 0:15:44.700
 David Antwis
 I guess you don't get locked in either way, and if if someone has built their own bot and they've got their own internal skills up.

0:15:45.460 --> 0:15:48.490
 David Antwis
 They can still talk to us about something that.

0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:48.880
 David Antwis
 Umm.

0:15:53.510 --> 0:15:55.110
 Steve Tomkinson
 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:15:49.420 --> 0:15:56.630
 David Antwis
 Uh problem. They've got or something else they want to do on it. You know, we can advise even.

0:15:57.290 --> 0:15:57.740
 David Antwis
 Umm.

0:15:59.300 --> 0:15:59.720
 David Antwis
 Yeah.

0:16:4.400 --> 0:16:7.240
 David Antwis
 Lots of good work. Yep, Yep.

0:15:58.310 --> 0:16:11.650
 Steve Tomkinson
 So even if they've started their stuff off and they've got maybe a bit stuck or plateaued on it, you know, we could come in and maybe get take take it to take it to the next level for them so that they can go, OK, this is this is a little bit.

0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:20.140
 David Antwis
 Yeah, we don't. We don't have to move in, do we? Yes, sort of.

0:16:12.140 --> 0:16:22.230
 Steve Tomkinson
 Uh, where we want to be, but we're struggling to get there and we can come in and do that and and and then move back away again. No, that's right. Yeah. Well, we don't have to live with them.

0:16:22.390 --> 0:16:53.320
 Steve Tomkinson
 OK, yeah, this the day on the the unwanted lodger. We don't. We don't have to do that. Yeah, but we can be. We can be the advisory and we are and and that's how we do interact with clients sometimes. Alright, thanks Dave. Well, hopefully you found that useful and welcome Dave to this series. So this is gonna be me and David are going to chat about all this stuff. So if you like that or if you've got any suggestions about.

0:17:6.500 --> 0:17:7.730
 David Antwis
 Definitely, yeah.

0:16:53.720 --> 0:17:9.150
 Steve Tomkinson
 Subjects you wanted to talk about more than happy to do that. So e-mail is in it's info@disruptionworks.co UK and we'll be happy to to have a chat about that maybe on the next one. Alright. Thanks very much. Alright. Cheers everybody.

0:17:9.710 --> 0:17:10.240
 David Antwis
 Cheers.