[ericmarcos]

Chatbots on Whatsapp are kind of hard from a UX point of view because the platform don't support rich elements like buttons or webviews (unlike Facebook messenger). I hope Whatsapp adds these kind of features soon, otherwise users will get frustrated when interacting with bots and never use it to talk to businesses again. And no, AI/NLP is not the answer to this because users are lazy and prefer to tap on buttons than to write 20 characters... I know this because I'm the creator of Botonic (a React-based conversational framework) and we've been building conversational apps on Whatsapp and other platforms for years. By the way, if anyone is interested in access to the Whatsapp Business API beta feel free to drop me a line at [e-mail]

[riantogo]

“... rich elements like buttons or webviews (unlike Facebook messenger). I hope Whatsapp adds these kind of features soon”. I on the other hand hope they never add these kind of features. If I wish to converse with bots, spam, ads etc. I could always reinstall fb messenger or enjoy the pop ups on every other website. I know I’m being naive but I hope whatsapp is left alone by fb.

[pcroh]

No thank you. I like whatsapp for its simplicity. If I wanted a copy of Messenger or Telegram I would use those instead.

[ericmarcos]

Simplicity of features != UX Simplicity It's way more simple to tap on a button than to write complex sentences. We've studied this, when users have both options available (buttons and input text), 80% go for buttons.

[pcroh]

What I also meant is that I don't want bots on whatsapp.