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Introducing Smooch’s New API Versioning Framework

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Introducing Smooch’s New API Versioning Framework

Interacting with third-party APIs is part of our DNA at Smooch. Whether it’s for a short-term hackathon project or to create a robust new integration within the Smooch platform, talking to APIs is what we do best.

We value stability, predictability and consistency in third-party APIs and those same attributes sit at the top of our priorities when developing our own API. Since the introduction of the Smooch API, we’ve been able to add new concepts and features while keeping the interface backwards compatible. However, there comes a point in the life of an API where backward incompatible changes need to be introduced so that considerable new capabilities can see the light.

We are excited to introduce a new API versioning mechanism on the Smooch platform. This new mechanism allows us to launch new features and make API improvements that require backwards incompatible changes while allowing you to opt in to these new capabilities on your own schedule.

How it works

There is no broadly adopted standard for API versioning so we’ve taken inspiration from other long-time API providers who have had to face similar challenges to us, such as Stripe and Facebook.

When making calls to the Smooch API you simply specify the version in the endpoint URL. For example: POST /v1/apps will call the v1 Create App API whereas POST /v1.1/apps will call the v1.1 version.

Webhook payloads are also versioned, following the same version progression as the API. You can specify which version Smooch should be using when calling your server during the webhook creation. This can be done in the Smooch dashboard or by calling the corresponding Create Webhook API.

Introducing Smooch’s New API Versioning Framework

When will new API versions be introduced?

New API versions will only be released when backwards incompatible changes necessitate them. We make frequent changes to the Smooch platform to improve functionality, support new use cases and improve performance. The vast majority of those changes can be done in a backwards compatible way and your code must be ready to gracefully handle these changes.

In order to help you prepare, we’ve published a new guide that thoroughly documents changes that are considered backwards compatible. You can also read more about how our versioning scheme works so that you can adopt new versions of our platform as they become available.

v1.1 is now available

Our first version update introduces a few API enhancements and new message delivery webhooks including delivery confirmation events from third-party channels. You can read up about changes introduced to v1.1 and follow our upgrade guide to adopt this new API version. You can also find more details about our new delivery confirmation webhooks in our guide.

At the moment, we have no plans to deprecate v1 and we may support it indefinitely. In the event where we would decide to sunset this version, rest assured you will receive multiple communications prior to the v1 API becoming unavailable.

If you have any questions or feedback on versioning or need help in the upgrade process please let us know, we’re always happy to help.


Smooch Product Update 🚀 October 2018

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Smooch Product Update 🚀 October 2018

Smooch Product Update 🚀 October 2018

New in Smooch this month: Smooch API v1.1 is here along with our new API versioning framework. The first major release of this new API version includes new delivery events to provide you with more details around message delivery. We’ve also made some tweaks to our SDKs and APIs.

What’s new 🎉

API versioning is here!

Interacting with third-party APIs is part of our DNA at Smooch. We value stability, predictability and consistency in APIs and those same attributes sit at the top of our priorities when developing our own. Since the introduction of the Smooch API, we’ve been able to add new concepts and features while keeping the interface backwards compatible. However, there comes a point in the life of an API where backward incompatible changes need to be introduced so that considerable new capabilities can see the light.

Today, we are excited to introduce a new API versioning mechanism on the Smooch platform. This new mechanism allows us to launch new features and make API improvements that require backwards incompatible changes while allowing you to opt in to these new capabilities on your own schedule.

How it works

When making calls to the Smooch API you simply specify the version in the endpoint URL. Webhook payloads are also versioned, following the same version progression as the API. You can specify which version Smooch should be using when calling your server during the webhook creation.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 October 2018

v1.1 is now available

Our first version update introduces a few API enhancements and new message delivery webhooks including delivery confirmation events from third-party channels (more on that 👇). You can read up about changes introduced to v1.1 and follow our upgrade guide to adopt this new API version.

Learn more about how our API versioning framework works on our blog.

New delivery confirmation events

The Smooch API v1.1 introduces new delivery confirmation webhook triggers. Whereas v1 simply indicated if a message was successfully delivered to a channel or had failed, v1.1 allows for a more complete delivery trace when made available by the channel where the message is being delivered.

A message delivery can now emit three possible webhook events:

  • message:delivery:channel indicates the message was delivered to the channel (eg. WhatsApp), but may not have been received by the user yet.
  • message:delivery:user indicates the message was successfully delivered to the end-user (note that this delivery confirmation is only supported by certain channels).
  • In case a message can’t be delivered to a channel or an end-user, message:delivery:failure will be fired and will include all the details about the failure.

These three events can be integrated into a conversation user interface to provide in-depth delivery information or they can be used for troubleshooting purposes. The message:delivery:user trigger is useful to detect failures where the delivery flow of a channel is more complex.

For example, SMS providers might accept a message (triggering a message:delivery:channel event), but then fail to deliver the message to the end-user because a carrier rejected the message later on. In that case, this would trigger a subsequent message:delivery:failure event.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 October 2018

Message delivery events flow

Check out our Delivery Events Guide where we cover how we handle differences between channels and how delivery events behave for end-users connected to multiple channels. You’ll also notice that we’ve updated each of our channel guides with a section on delivery events. Here’s an example for WhatsApp.

Other API & SDK updates ⚙

  • WhatsApp channel update: WhatsApp API Clients can now be integrated with Smooch Apps via the Integration API. This can be done whether Smooch is hosting API Clients for you or you’re hosting your own. A quick reminder that the WhatsApp Business API is still in limited availability and that brands and customer service platforms need to be approved by the WhatsApp team. We’ve also released a business profile API enabling you to configure key business information, including a profile picture for each of your approved WhatsApp numbers.
  • File size limit for attachments: The size limit for files hosted by Smooch has been raised from 10MB to 25MB.
  • iOS SDK: We shipped v6.11.0 which adds support for the metadata field in SKTMessageItem. This will help those of you who need a way to attach and process metadata on individual message items.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 November 2018

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Smooch Product Update 🚀 November 2018

Smooch Product Update 🚀 November 2018

New in Smooch this month: Lots of new stuff for Web Messenger. You can now filter and transform messages before they are displayed in the conversation; we’ve added a new configuration option to automatically open Conversation Extensions; and we’ve got the gossip on what’s to come for 2019. We’ve also made it way easier for you to connect your Smooch app to your WhatsApp API client via the dashboard, and have made a few other tweaks to our APIs.

What’s new 🎉

A bunch of Web Messenger updates

Many improvements have been made to our Web SDK this month. Here are the key ones.

Filtering and transforming messages

It is now possible to run code in the browser to conditionally hide or modify messages before they are sent to the business, or before they are displayed to the user in the conversation using the new beforeSend and beforeDisplay delegates. For example, using the beforeSend delegate, user messages can be transformed to pass additional metadata to the business. A common use case would be to add the URL of the page the user is visiting while messaging with a business. Armed with this information, the human agent or bot engaged in the conversation now has even more context to help their customer. One use case for the beforeDisplay delegate can be to hide messages from the user's view, so that Smooch can be used to communicate system or status messages to the browser without polluting the user's conversation history.

Better still, with these new delegate methods, you can implement your own creepy “monkey loves you” stored consciousness doll from that episode of Black Mirror. 😜

Smooch Product Update 🚀 November 2018

Check out our new guide to learn more and read the v4.15.0 release notes here, which also include some bug fixes. On the same topic, v4.16.0 includes a new beforePostbackSend delegate that allows you to add metadata before a postback is sent.

Automatically open Conversation Extensions

A year ago, we launched Conversation Extensions to help you create custom interactive experiences that sit on top of the chat window on any messaging channel. Powered by standard web technologies (HTML, JavaScript and CSS), Conversation Extensions combine the intimacy and contextuality of conversational interfaces with the richness and flexibility of traditional UIs. This feature allows multi-step tasks to be carried out seamlessly through an intuitive workflow, enhancing the experience for the user.

This month, we’ve added a new configuration option that lets you automatically open Conversation Extensions in Web Messenger. For example, at the end of a conversation with a user, a business could send a CSAT survey and have it automatically open to increase their response rate. Simply set the openOnReceive property on Webview Actions and Web Messenger will open the extension when the message is received. Read the release notes to learn more and check out our mini-guide to building a custom CSAT survey with Conversation Extensions.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 November 2018

2019 Web Messenger 5.0 Sneak Peek 👀

Great things are brewing at Smooch in regards to Web Messenger. Our Product, Design and Engineering teams are actively working on the next major release and many of you have been involved in the conversation to help us make this update a killer one. We can’t spill the beans just yet, but here are some big themes that we are exploring: better ways to capture data from users (think capturing name or email before the conversation starts); making chat more prominent on the page by proactively engaging users; more configuration options to customize the UI; and a refreshed look in line with the top messengers on the market. Stay tuned for more in 2019!

Other API & SDK updates ⚙

  • AppUser Events: Further to the App User deletion feature we released earlier this year, we added an appUser:delete webhook that enables you to know when an appUser is deleted through the Delete App User API.
  • WhatsApp user names: Messages from WhatsApp now populate a user’s givenName and surname from their WhatsApp profile when available. We also put the raw profile info into the WhatsApp client’s raw field.
  • Dashboard update: We’ve made it easier for you to connect your WhatsApp API client (hosted by Smooch or yourself) to your Smooch app directly from the dashboard without having to make any calls to our API.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 November 2018

State of Messaging 2019: Industry report

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State of Messaging 2019: Industry report

To kick off 2019, we asked 34 senior product and CX professionals about the current state of conversational business and technology.

Our second annual State of Messaging report is packed with original infographics and exclusive insights from execs at software companies including Drift, Intercom, Google, HubSpot and Genesys, and brands like Uber, Jetblack, SnapTravel and LVMH.

You’ll learn about emerging business messaging channels like WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat and RCS and get the latest stats on chatbots, voice assistants and conversational commerce.

Check it out now:

State of Messaging 2019: Industry report

The team behind the report:

Huge thanks to all the experts quoted in the report and to Kevin Gauthier, Alexandra McKay, Warren Levitan, Mike Gozzo, Pascal Pettinicchio, Jesse Martin, Josh Stanbury and the rest of the Smooch team for their contributions, outreach and feedback.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 January 2019

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Smooch Product Update 🚀 January 2019

Smooch Product Update 🚀 January 2019

New in Smooch this month: Our State of Messaging 2019 report is out; we’ve launched a new status page that will allow you to more easily track Smooch’s current status and past incidents; an update to our Android SDK; changes around how integrations are surfaced in the API; a small tweak to our WhatsApp integration; and a roundup of recent news articles featuring Smooch and our customers.

What’s new 🎉

State of Messaging 2019

In case you missed it (how could you?!) our State of Messaging 2019 report is out. We talked to 34 CX experts from companies like Google, Drift, Intercom, Uber, Jetblack and LVMH about messaging, conversational commerce, voice assistants, and so much more. The report is filled with stats, facts, quotes, infographics, and original insights from our team. You don’t want to miss it. Check it out here.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 January 2019

The expert insight doesn't stop in our yearly reports. We're always covering emerging conversations about the messaging sphere in our biweekly newsletter. Sign up for The Message here.

A New Status Page

We’ve just launched our brand new status page so you can easily keep track of Smooch’s current status, historical updates and past incidents. We’ve switched over to statuspage.io which enables us to give you more ways to get updates on Smooch's health (opt to subscribe by email, SMS, webhook or feeds). Real-time updates are now easier to get and will help you meet your own commitments to your customers and your own SLAs.

If you’re already using statuspage.io for your own status page, you can even add Smooch as a component directly in your page to give real-time updates to your users (check out this handy how-to guide).

We’ll be running both versions of our status page in parallel (old one vs new one from February 5 to March 5, 2019. If you’ve built any custom processes to consume the RSS or Atom feeds of our existing status page, please make sure to adapt to the new status page before March 5, 2019.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 January 2019

Other API & SDK Updates ⚙

  • Android SDK: v5.16.0 includes several updates. Amongst those, a Google Maps API Key is now required to render location messages with a maps preview otherwise they are rendered as text messages. This change is due to Google’s requirement to provide an API key to use the Static Maps API. To set your API key, use Settings#setMapsApiKey(String) before calling Smooch.init(Application, Settings, SmoochCallback). Read our Android SDK release notes for the full list of updates.
  • WhatsApp: WhatsApp Business Profile information can now be retrieved via the Smooch API.
  • Integration API: We’ve made a series of changes around how integrations are surfaced in the API, exposing integrationId in more webhook events and API responses. See the full list of changes in our changelog.

Messaging News & Insights 🤓

Marketing Tech Awards 2019 - Vote for Smooch!

Hosted by ClickZ and Search Engine Watch, the Marketing Technology Awards celebrate innovation at the forefront of the industry. Smooch is represented under the Best Chat/Conversational Bot Tool. You can vote for us here!

Smooch in the News

We’ve been offering insights on major platform developments and convening with experts about bolstering CX strategies. Messaging is having a moment, and Smooch is honored to be at the forefront of these conversations.

Silver-tongued Argenta Launches Conversational Banking | BankingTech

Powered by Smooch and customer service platform Sparkcentral, read about how the Argenta banking app’s new feature allows customers to engage in a continuous conversation “much like they would using WhatsApp with their friends.”

Facebook Confirms Plans to Integrate Messaging Services on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp | AdWeek

Facebook is planning to reroute the back end of its biggest messaging platforms, but what does that mean for data privacy, user engagement, and competition? Smooch Co-Founder and CTO Mike Gozzo says Apple and Google’s efforts to onboard businesses to their messaging platforms pose “a big threat to Facebook and other messaging apps. This combination gives them a very viable shot to compete.”

Google’s Two-Pronged Plan to Dominate Consumer-to-Business Messaging | TheNextWeb

Smooch’s Editorial Director Dan Levy profiles Google’s bygone messaging platforms and the introduction of messaging to business profiles. How does Google My Business enable small businesses to better reach customers, and what about Apple Business Chat?

To Improve Customer Service, Stop Forcing Customers To Repeat Themselves | Forbes

How is Smooch changing the messaging space? This profile by Forbes shows how Smooch allows customers to maintain one unified conversation across many channels — a welcome respite from platforms where customers need to introduce themselves again and again. CEO Warren Levitan says, “It's frustrating for the customer; it's inefficient for the business; it's a waste of time for everybody.”

Why Microsoft Could Deflate Slack’s IPO, WhatsApp Top Messaging App, and More | CMS Wire

With insights gleaned from our State of Messaging 2019 report, CMS Wire emphasizes the fragmented nature of the messaging space. WhatsApp claims the largest user base, followed closely by Messenger. Not bad for Facebook, eh? Also highlighted are the “windfall of new opportunities for brands to engage and convert customers.” Changes are afoot.

Chinese messaging app Bullet bumps WeChat from App Store

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Chinese messaging app Bullet bumps WeChat from App Store

In a Cinderella story that Bloomberg is calling “David vs. Goliath — with emojis,” a new chat app is shaking up the Chinese messaging world.

Bullet reached 5 million users only two weeks after it debuted in August, temporarily bumping messaging giant WeChat from its perch in China's App Store.

Although it won’t be speeding past WeChat — which surpassed 1 billion users this year — anytime soon, Bullet’s impressive trajectory suggests Chinese consumers are thirsty for more messaging freedom.

Kidnapped for too long

Facebook Messenger (1.3 billion users) is the messaging app of choice in North America, while WhatsApp (1.5 billion users) dominates much of the rest of the world. But both are among the many tech platforms censored by the Chinese government.

The Great Firewall has enabled WeChat to dominate not only messaging but social networking, electronic payments, ride-hailing, food delivery and other key aspects of modern Chinese life.

As one Beijing student expresses in the Bloomberg story, Bullet offers Chinese citizens a long-sought alternative:

A lot of my friends and I feel we’ve been kidnapped by WeChat for too long.

Voice of a generation 🙊

Bullet’s features are nowhere near as comprehensive as WeChat’s, but that’s sort of the point. As its name suggests, Bullet prioritizes speed — and its designers seem laser-focused on serving the unique messaging habits of Chinese consumers.

Unlike in the West, many people in China communicate by sending short voice messages back and forth, rather than text. WeChat popularized voice messaging in 2012 but its features in this area have fallen behind even international rivals like WhatsApp.

Bullet boasts a powerful voice recognition feature that instantly transcribes voice into text and sends it along with the audio message. As Fortune points out, this provides “a visible record of the conversation” — combining the intimacy of voice with the convenience and persistence of messaging.

Don’t call it a WeChat killer 😇

Despite concerns about privacy and porn on the platform (too little of the former, too much of the latter), Bullet has attracted a $90 million valuation and $22 million in funding from high-profile investors, including Chinese smartphone manufacturer Smartisan.

Smartisan’s founder, Luo Yonghao, is known for Steve Jobs-esque product announcements and public stunts like smashing refrigerators to protest poor design.

Some credit the buzz around Bullet to Luo’s cult of personality, though Luo has been quick to play down the company’s ambitions:

We are not challenging WeChat. We are creating a niche product for people who care about the efficiency of communication

For the past few years, WeChat has been held up as Exhibit A for the inevitable rise of conversational commerce in the west. A little competition at home may be a good thing — not just for WeChat, but for the future of messaging on a global scale.


This is an excerpt from The Message, Smooch’s biweekly newsletter about the messaging industry, chatbots and conversational commerce. Subscribe to get the next edition delivered straight to your inbox.

Google pays Apple billions for mobile search dominance

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Google pays Apple billions for mobile search dominance

Google will pay Apple $9 billion this year to remain the default search engine in the iPhone’s Safari browser, according to one Goldman Sachs analyst.

That’s a hefty expense for Google, but will Apple end up paying the price when it comes to business messaging?

Pay per search 💵

According to Goldman Sachs analyst Rod Hall, Apple charges Google based on the number of searches iPhone users perform using Safari or Siri.

If his $9 billion estimate is correct, it means Google is paying Apple roughly $10 a year for every iPhone user, as Cult of Mac reports. Hall predicts that number may climb as high as $12 billion next year, although other analysts have made lower estimates.

Whatever the exact price tag, iPhone users account for a substantial portion of Google searches. Safari has the second largest global market share after Google’s Chrome, with Safari delivering 30 percent of internet traffic in the U.S. compared to Chrome’s 49 percent, according to Search Engine Land:

We believe Apple is one of the biggest channels of traffic acquisition for Google.

Google My Business vs. Apple Business Chat

What none of these reports mention is that Google and Apple’s search partnership intersects with their business messaging rivalry.

Just this week Apple began rolling out its Business Chat platform outside the U.S., enabling global brands and customers to interact via iMessage. New brands announced on the platform, which is still in beta, include Four Seasons, West Elm and Burberry.

In the hotly contested business messaging space — WhatsApp's Business API being the latest entry— Apple’s advantage is discoverability. iPhone and iPad users searching via Safari, Spotlight or Apple Maps will be able to click a “message” button on a business’ profile to open iMessage and start a conversation, much like how they would initiate a phone call:

Google pays Apple billions for mobile search dominance

Google’s business messaging strategy is more confusing. We've talked about the company’s attempts to rally global businesses and telcos around RCS — the next generation text messaging standard — to compete with modern messaging platforms like iMessage, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

But in July Google made another messaging play that barely got noticed. It introduced a messaging feature within Google My Business, its search-based business directory.

As Search Engine Land reported, the platform enables customers to start a conversation with a business by clicking a call to action on Google’s search results page:

Google pays Apple billions for mobile search dominance

Look familiar? 🤔

For Android users, this will open their native text messaging app. On Apple devices, it will open the Messages app but default to SMS instead of iMessage (iPhone people: that means green speech bubbles instead of blue), potentially robbing Apple Business Chat of one of its key avenues of discovery.

Playing the long game ♜

For now, Google My Business seems to have taken a back seat to RCS business messaging on Google's product roadmap. Most enterprise brands, meanwhile, lack the tools to send and receive rich messages at scale — a reality that has kept adoption of (though not demand for) Apple Business Chat and WhatsApp Business at bay.

But it’s not hard to understand why Google is keeping a tight grip on its mobile search real estate, even on hostile territory.

Once businesses get set up with the business messaging tools they need and customers start clicking those buttons, $9 billion may seem like a bargain.


This is an excerpt from The Message, Smooch’s biweekly newsletter about the messaging industry, chatbots and conversational commerce. Subscribe to get the next edition delivered straight to your inbox.

California Law Targets Chatbots Posing as Humans

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California Law Targets Chatbots Posing as Humans

Earlier this month the State of California passed a law requiring companies to disclose when they’re using a bot to communicate with people online.

While the regulations don’t go into effect until next July, they serve as Exhibit A for how conversational technology is transforming law and politics on a global scale.

Fake news bot = the new robocall ☎️

California’s new law “specifically targets deceptive commercial and political bots, not those meant to help you, for example, pay a bill on a company’s website,” according to Quartz.

With Americans set to vote in midterm elections next week, there are growing concerns about the spread of false information via automated social media accounts and private messaging apps.

Robocalls (i.e. old-school telephone bots) meant to deter people from exercising their voting rights have been a mainstay of U.S. elections for decades, but the viral nature of digital communication channels makes them particularly effective propaganda tools.

It’s not just an American problem 🇺🇸

In the run-up to Brazil’s recent presidential elections, WhatsApp was flooded with rumors and viral misinformation by both supporters and opponents of far-right candidate (now President-elect) Jair Bolsonaro.

As Buzzfeed News points out, a 2016 study found that nearly 100% of Brazilian internet users are on WhatsApp, which translates to 40% of the country’s 207 million people.

WhatsApp’s ubiquity, in combination with the fact that it’s encrypted end-to-end, makes it incredibly difficult to control the spread of false and dangerous information on the platform.

In Brazil, WhatsApp partnered with a Harvard-backed group of journalists called Comprova, which used the new WhatsApp Business API to set up a tip line for users to flag suspicious information.

Back in America, USA Today is taking a “fight fire with fire” approach. The leading national newspaper rolled out a fleet of chatbots across its website and mobile apps to share regional election news and information, like where to vote.

Going against the grain of bot hysteria, USA Today is trumpeting its chatbots as a “safe, reliable” source of campaign info, and Engadget reporter Jon Fingas agrees:

" In theory, you won't have to wade through the web at large to become a politically informed member of society."

What if the bot is you? 👋

What California’s chatbot disclosure rules fail to consider is that the lines between what’s said by a bot and what’s said (or written) by a human are blurring.

The New York Times recently profiled a bestselling novelist who designed an AI program to help him write better sentences:

"It’s machine learning, facilitating and extending his own words, his own imagination."

Google has rolled out a number of features in Gmail to help automate the more mundane process of writing emails.

The Smart Reply feature allows you to select pat responses like “Thanks!” and “Sounds good to me,” while Smart Compose offers up whole words and phrases as you type, based on what it knows about you.

Reactions have ranged from creeped out to thrilled. Slate’s Heather Schwedel admits that, “as a writer sometimes accustomed to staring at a blank screen,” the assistance is most welcome. Then there’s the novelty factor:

"Isn’t it sort of addictive to see a machine’s portrait of yourself reflected back at you? It’s too weird and uncanny and new to ignore."

Chatbots have feelings too 🤗

With all this anxiety in the air about politics, technology and the nature of humanity itself (!), it’s not surprising that more startups are developing tools to help calm us down, keep us company or support us through difficult times.

What may be surprising is that many of these tools are bots themselves.

In my latest piece for Marketing Tech News, I cover the emergence of “emotional AI” — chatbots trained to converse with human-like emotion and empathy.

Some of these bots are being used for therapeutic purposes or to help individuals navigate fraught situations like sexual harassment in the workplace.

Others can identify when a prospective customer is going through a tough time and needs a little more hand-holding… or when they really have to go to the bathroom.

How’s that for disclosure? You can read my full article here.


This is an excerpt from The Message, Smooch’s biweekly newsletter about the messaging industry, chatbots and conversational commerce. Subscribe to get the next edition delivered straight to your inbox.


Conversations are Being Embedded into Ads with AdLingo

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Conversations are Being Embedded into Ads with AdLingo

Everybody loves messaging. It’s personal, it’s convenient, it’s a great way to keep in touch with the people we care about without having to — cringe— pick up the phone.

Advertising? Not so much. So how will consumers feel when marketers invade their sacred inboxes and start imploring them to “join the conversation”? We may be about to find out.

AdLingo was its name-o 🐶

A Google-incubated startup called AdLingo has launched a platform that allows advertisers to embed a conversational assistant within display ads.

AdLingo has been in development for two years within Google’s Area 120 incubator and, as VentureBeat reports, “essentially builds a Facebook Messenger-like experience within traditional web and mobile ad units.”

Clicking a Conversational Display Ad triggers a chatbot flow, which brands can build using a variety of tools, including Microsoft Bot Framework, LiveEngage, Blip, and Google’s own Dialogflow.

AdLingo is partnering with LivePerson to help brands manage conversations using a combination of humans and AI, and with digital marketing agency Valassis, whose VP of Strategy claims AdLingo’s conversational ads are 10 times more efficient than Facebook news feed ads:

"The conversation happens right there on the page."

Don Draper would be proud 🥃

AdLingo’s cofounder, Vic Fatnani, says the company is focused on solving a very specific problem for brands and software makers — discovery.

As more brands get on board with chatbots and business messaging platforms like Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp Business and Google My Business, they’ll be looking for ways to bring their conversational experiences to the masses.

For Fatnani, the solution is old fashioned (digital) advertising:

"People were building these amazing AI experiences, but no one was using them... We thought: ‘[What] if we combine the new school and the old school together?' "

Show me the money 🤑

If AdLingo’s bringing conversation to the people through advertising, WhatsApp’s challenge is how to bring advertising to the conversation without alienating its 1.5 billion people.

This week Himanshu Gupta, a former marketer at Chinese messaging juggernaut WeChat, published an in-depth piece in Factor Daily about WhatsApp’s advertising strategy and what it means for its parent company, Facebook.

Gupta outlines three ways Facebook intends to monetize the app it purchased for $19 billion in 2014, and whose founders swore would never contain ads.

The first is via WhatsApp Status, the Snapchat/Instagram Stories-like feature it launched last year. Because Status is a public feed as opposed to a private conversation, Gupta suggests running ads there won’t feel like an intrusion.

Indeed, the Status/Stories feature is growing in popularity across all Facebook apps (including Instagram) and may eventually eclipse the news feed in terms of engagement. The question is whether it will prove as attractive to advertisers, and as lucrative to Facebook.

WhatsApp’s second revenue stream is tied to its Business API, which I’ve written about extensively since it launched with limited availability in August.

Unlike Facebook Messenger, where a user needs to initiate the conversation, WhatsApp is allowing businesses to proactively send transactional messages to customers, such as receipts, boarding passes and shipping notifications.

As Gupta reports, WhatsApp is charging businesses a premium for these messages compared to SMS (as much as 7x), though delivery rates are also much higher.

For now, WhatsApp is maintaining a tight grip on what kinds of messages can be sent and which businesses can send them, though Gupta wonders whether the platform can ensure users’ inboxes remain spam-free once the floodgates open next year.

That brings us to the third WhatsApp advertising opp Facebook revealed in August. The company has started selling ads on Facebook and Instagram that prompt customers to message a business on WhatsApp.

Gupta likes how this approach relies on customers to initiate the conversation, but wonders if Facebook will end up cannibalizing its future ad revenue once businesses have a direct channel to the customer.

Proceed with caution ⚠️

No matter which tactics gain traction for WhatsApp in the short term, none will be successful if users’ inboxes become minefields of marketing spam.

The good news is that advertisers seem to get this. Marketing Land interviewed a handful of digital marketing professionals about their plans for WhatsApp.

Though they clearly appreciate the channel’s extraordinary reach, many, including the CMO of a company that specializes in digital ad retargeting, sounded a note of caution for brands:

"They will need to make sure they don’t contaminate the experience with ads that make users feel like someone uninvited has invaded their private conversations."

Everybody loves messaging. Let’s make sure to keep it that way.


This is an excerpt from The Message, Smooch’s biweekly newsletter about the messaging industry, chatbots and conversational commerce. Subscribe to get the next edition delivered straight to your inbox.

The New York Times Creates an Angry Uncle Chatbot for Thanksgiving

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The New York Times Creates an Angry Uncle Chatbot for Thanksgiving

Black Friday/Cyber Monday/binge-shopping week has come and gone and, according to LivePerson, customers messaged with brands 97% more than they did last year.

Yet amid the growing buzz around conversational commerce, the season's most-celebrated chat experience so far was published by a 167-year-old newspaper.

And the only thing it's selling is family harmony.

Say uncle 👴

In the run-up to American Thanksgiving, The New York Times ran an opinion piece by a former psychiatrist under the headline, “How to Have a Conversation with Your Angry Uncle Over the Holidays.”

The piece is essentially a web-based chatbot that asks a series of multiple choice questions designed to teach you how to have constructive conversations with opinionated relatives you disagree with politically:

The New York Times Creates an Angry Uncle Chatbot for Thanksgiving

In addition to being a great conversation starter (literally), the bot is a prime example of how conversational interfaces can be used to educate, inform and persuade.

While a traditional op-ed may have come off as preachy — or worse, passed by unnoticed — the Angry Uncle bot went viral. And maybe even opened some minds in the process.

Charlie’s angel investors 💸

Another bot making headlines — and dispensing free advice — this week is Charlie, an AI-enabled personal finance chatbot that just raised a $9 million Series A.

As Crowfund Insider reports, Charlie is designed to help people “save more, cut bills, take control of debt, and avoid fees.” It currently boasts around 250,000 users who interact with the bot over SMS and Facebook Messenger.

What makes Charlie different from most fintech startups is its demographics, which skew female, millennial and middle class. Charlie users are 80% women, with an average age of 27. Their most-frequented retailer? McDonald’s.

Charlie’s co-founder and CEO, Ilian Georgiev, says the company’s mission is to bring “empathy and simplicity” to the world of finance. Besides, as one investor points out:

"Affluent men already have enough access to financial services."


Is Google gaining ground in the business messaging wars?

A couple months ago I noted that Google had quietly launched a messaging service within its almighty search engine that threatened to derail Apple’s own business chat ambitions.

Well, it seems the cat is out of the bag.

Google my business chat 🔍

AdWeek reports that Google has overhauled its Google My Business app, enabling small businesses to message customers directly from the platform.

Back in July, Google quietly gave businesses the ability to add chat to their Google business profiles. This allowed customers searching on mobile to start a conversation with them, much like how they would initiate a phone call:

The New York Times Creates an Angry Uncle Chatbot for Thanksgiving Previously, businesses had to use their own devices’ messaging platforms to respond to customer inquiries. Google is rolling out the business app worldwide, while also adding the “message” button to business profiles in Google Maps on both Android and iOs.

As Google suggests in its announcement, Maps is a pretty intuitive place for customers to discover and connect with local businesses:

"With these messages in Maps, you’ll never have to worry about accidentally sending 'I love you, Mom' to that shoe store you’ve been sending messages to."

RC-yes!

Meanwhile, Google’s other business messaging play appears to be gaining momentum.

The Verge reports that Verizon will launch support for RCS messaging in “early 2019,” according to its SVP of consumer products.

RCS, of course, is the heir apparent to SMS, bringing group chats, read receipts, typing indicators, branded business profiles and other modern messaging features to old fashioned texting.

Google intends to make RCS the backbone of its native Chat app (Android's answer to Apple’s Messages), but needs device manufacturers and global telcos to support the new standard.

Verizon was one of the last major holdouts in the U.S., so this is a good sign for long-suffering RCS enthusiasts.

A recent report predicts that more than 1 billion people across 168 global carriers will use RCS every month by the end of 2019, and that brands will spend more than $18 billion messaging consumers over the channel by 2023.

As Android Police opines in a story about the Verizon news it seems business messaging may have been the kick in the pants Google and its partners needed to finally make RCS a thing:

"I think we can all be thankful that something has spurred the carrier to improve the current state of messaging." 


This is an excerpt from The Message, Smooch’s biweekly newsletter about the messaging industry, chatbots and conversational commerce. Subscribe to get the next edition delivered straight to your inbox.

Voice Messaging Rising in Popularity in Great Britain, China

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Voice Messaging Rising in Popularity in Great Britain, China

The holiday season has arrived in a flurry of flash sales, best-of-the-year lists and questionable Christmas-themed comeback albums (I’m looking at you, Eric Clapton).

On the darker side of the communications landscape, consumers also tend to report a surge in telephone scams during these festive weeks, according to The New York Times. The targets tend to be older people who are more easily confused and more likely to rely on the phone to keep in touch.

Despite the rise of messaging and the so-called death of the landline, phone-based frauds are increasing. A recent study found the number of fraudulent calls in 2018 had risen to 30 percent of all calls, up from 4 percent last year.

What’s more, nearly 70 percent of frauds reported to the FTC were perpetrated over the phone, compared to just 9 percent involving email, the Times reports.

The result?

"Fewer people are answering their phones."

A conversational newsletter by
Smooch.io

The holiday season has arrived in a flurry of flash sales, best-of-the-year lists and questionable Christmas-themed comeback albums (I’m looking at you, Eric Clapton).

On the darker side of the communications landscape, consumers also tend to report a surge in telephone scams during these festive weeks, according to The New York Times. The targets tend to be older people who are more easily confused and more likely to rely on the phone to keep in touch.

Despite the rise of messaging and the so-called death of the landline, phone-based frauds are increasing. A recent study found the number of fraudulent calls in 2018 had risen to 30 percent of all calls, up from 4 percent last year.

What’s more, nearly 70 percent of frauds reported to the FTC were perpetrated over the phone, compared to just 9 percent involving email, the Times reports.

The result?

"Fewer people are answering their phones."

No phone, who dis? 🤨

The death of the home telephone has been anticipated for years, of course. Now it looks like the office desk phone may have reached the end of the line.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the demise of those clunky, complicated desk phones with the “curly cord” that nobody seems to know how to use.

According to the Journal, even traditional firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers have been phasing out their desk phones, encouraging employees to rely on their company-issued cell phones instead.

But in offices where desk phones are still mandated, they’ve become a nuisance, as one employee laments:

"I was told to make an appointment with IT to get a training on it, but I just don’t have time for that."

Messaging apps, meanwhile, have become part of the office furniture. Computerworld reports that WhatsApp is the most widely-used mobile messaging app in U.K. workplaces, more prevalent than the mobile versions of actual workplace chat platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Given concerns about data privacy and the “wild west” nature of consumer chat apps — a recent study found that 20% of workers across the U.K. have been bullied by colleagues via messaging — companies are grappling with whether to ban them from the office outright, or embrace the channels people are already using to organize after-work drinks.

Voice of a generation 🙊

While picking up the phone may feel like a relic, communicating via voice will never get old.

As we’ve discussed before, sending short voice memos back and forth over chat is the messaging norm in China. More than 6 billion voice messages were sent over WeChat alone last year, according to the Chinese messaging giant.

The Guardian reports that voice messaging is now “having a moment” in the west as well. But as the piece points out, proper voice messaging etiquette has yet to be established.

Is it weird to "speak" them in public? How do you know if a message you receive is urgent enough to play aloud in the subway? As one critic contends:

" It’s very easy for the person sending... just done in a way that makes it much less convenient for the person receiving the message."

Call your mother 🤗

As convenient as visual and text-based conversational interfaces are, sometimes there’s no substitute for the human voice.

In a recent episode of the podcast Invisibilia, comedian Cord Jefferson shares a story about his mother, and how he still cherishes a mundane voice message — the old “leave a message at the beep” kind — she left him shortly before her death.

Jefferson explains that his sentimentality is supported by science. In a well-known study a group of girls was asked to take a stressful test and then contact their mothers for moral support. One group called their moms on the phone, while the other checked in via text message.

When they examined blood samples drawn before and after, researchers discovered that the girls who spoke to their moms on the phone had far lower levels of stress hormones and higher levels of oxytocin, a calming hormone. The girls who had simply messaged their moms demonstrated no hormonal change at all. As Jefferson puts it:

"It wasn’t the soothing words they wanted, it was the soothing voice."

In an omnichannel world, every conversation has its channel. That's as true in life as it is in business.


This is an excerpt from The Message, Smooch’s biweekly newsletter about the messaging industry, chatbots and conversational commerce. Subscribe to get the next edition delivered straight to your inbox.

Facebook is Unifying WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram Direct Messaging

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Facebook is Unifying WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram Direct Messaging

The New York Times broke the news last week that Facebook plans to unify the pipes of its three massively-popular messaging apps.

As the Times and other news outlets were quick to point out, the technical merger raises a myriad of questions about privacy, security, and government regulation. It also suggests that when it comes to staving off its messaging rivals, Facebook sees strength in numbers.

WhatsApp me on Instagram 📲

Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram boast 2.6 billion users between them. They will continue to exist as separate apps, but Facebook’s integration plan will make it possible for users to communicate with each other across all three channels.

It’s not yet clear what this means from a data privacy perspective. Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly “ordered” that all three apps incorporate end-to-end encryption, which only WhatsApp can claim at the moment.

Moreover, WhatsApp lets users sign up with only a phone number, while Facebook (and, by extension, Messenger) requires users to use a single “real-world” identity. Many Instagram users, meanwhile, have multiple accounts for different purposes.

Legislators were quick to raise alarm bells, with EU regulators seeking “early assurances” that the merger will be GDPR-compliant and U.S. Senator Ed Markey, a longtime Facebook critic, waxing poetic:

"We cannot allow platform integration to become privacy disintegration."

All in the family 👩‍👦‍👦

Axios notes that “Facebook’s integration plan is all about improving interoperability among its own 'family of apps.'"

Zuckerberg has called Apple Facebook’s biggest competitor in the messaging space, and bundling his messaging platforms together into one giant user base is a way to challenge iMessage’s ubiquity among iPhone users.

Apple, meanwhile, has been under increased pressure to bring iMessage to Android phones — and is reportedly “in discussions” to support RCS, the next generation text messaging standard backed by Google.

Of course, Google and Apple have their own beef over the future of business messaging, which you can read all about in my latest article for The Next Web.

But if any common enemy could unite these Big Tech rivals, it’s Facebook. That may be what’s prompted Zuckerberg to create a massive messaging ecosystem all his own.

As Smooch CTO Mike Gozzo told AdWeek:

"It’s a big threat to Facebook and other messaging apps. This combination gives them a very viable shot to compete."


New year, new messaging apps

Have you heard of TikTok? I must admit I hadn’t until a millennial colleague put me in my place.

Turns out the Vine-like video-sharing app has 500 million active users around the world, and recently unveiled a messaging-oriented spinoff.

Tech in Asia reports that the new app is called Duashon and looks a whole lot like Snapchat. It’s currently focused on China, where TikTok is based, prompting the usual speculation about whether it can lure young users from WeChat, the Tencent-owned app that dominates the Chinese messaging market.

Squad goals 🙌

TikTok, though, is so 2018. The newest messaging app on the block is called Squad, and it’s being billed as “the next teen sensation.”

Squad allows users to video chat with up to six people while sharing screens, so they can scroll Instagram, swipe through Tinder, or do whatever one might do on their mobile phone — together.

TechCrunch’s Josh Constine predicts that Squad may become a digital “third place” where teen girls can hang out outside school or each other’s homes, just as the viral online game Fortnite has become for adolescent boys.

Squad CEO Esther Crawford says Facebook and Snap employees have signed up in droves, presumably to spy on and copy the startup’s features. So it may not be long before this type of distracted hangout is as routine a part of the modern messaging experience as typing indicators.

Constine suggests that may not be a bad thing:

"A few people, alone in their houses, video chatting without looking at each other, still feel a sense of togetherness."


This is an excerpt from The Message, Smooch’s biweekly newsletter about the messaging industry, chatbots and conversational commerce. Subscribe to get the next edition delivered straight to your inbox.

Slack is Going Public, New Emojis Unveiled

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Slack is Going Public, New Emojis Unveiled

After months of rumors, Slack has made it official.

The team collaboration unicorn filed papers last week to go public — setting the stage for one of the biggest IPOs of 2019, and raising the stakes in the battle to dominate messaging in the workplace.

Cut me some Slack

Okay, so this wouldn’t technically be an IPO but a direct listing, meaning only current shareholders (rather than the company itself) can sell shares.

The company was valued at $7.1 billion in August and boasts more than 8 million active users and 3 million paid users. So it can afford to do things on its own terms, as an inside source suggested to Bloomberg:

"The company is choosing the unusual method for going public because it doesn’t need the cash or publicity of an IPO."

Trail of tears 😭

Slack was founded in 2009 but over the last five years “it managed to eclipse almost every major competitor in the space,” reports Quartz.

That list includes HipChat and Stride, which it acquired from Atlassian last summer, and also-rans like Skype, Google Hangouts Chat and Facebook’s Workplace, which haven’t gained much traction within the enterprise.

Then there’s Microsoft Teams. It comes bundled with Office 365, making it attractive to companies that already rely on Excel, Word and Powerpoint.

Microsoft tried and failed to acquire Slack for $8 billion in 2017 and in the last few months it's introduced a host of features to make Teams more competitive, prompting CMSWire to wonder if Microsoft may play the role of spoiler:

"It is possible that it could really rain on Slack’s IPO parade."

Bursting the bubble 💬

Workplace messaging apps don’t exist in a (speech) bubble.

Whether a company chooses Slack, Teams, or another tool, most employees will still have a handful of other apps on their phones to chat with their partners, friends, families and, yes — each other.

Computerworld reports that WhatsApp is the most widely-used mobile messaging app within U.K. offices, more prevalent than the mobile versions of either Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Given concerns about data privacy and the “wild west” nature of consumer chat apps — a recent study found that 20% of workers across the U.K. have been bullied by colleagues via messaging — companies are grappling with whether to ban their use outright, or embrace the channels people are already using to organize after-work drinks.

Slack may soon dominate workplace messaging, but that doesn’t mean it will dominate messaging in the workplace.


The Emoji Report

The Unicode Consortium — the High Church of emojis worldwide — has announced its Class of 2019.

59 new emojis will become available later this year (270 if you factor in variants for gender and skin tone). Along with more pedestrian additions like a waffle, an otter and an ice cube, are a slew of symbols meant to make the official emoji roster more diverse.

These include a falafel pita, a Hindu temple, a mechanical arm and a drop of blood — intended to represent a woman’s period — which was fought for by a UK girls’ rights organization, according to the BBC:

"The most popular choice was a pair of pants marked by blood but when that was rejected by the Unicode Consortium, the charity pushed for a blood drop instead."

Emojis matter 🤓

Fuelled by the meteoric rise of messaging, emojis have changed the way we communicate, with implications as far-reaching as law, science and education.

For Wired, linguist Gretchen McCulloch writes that kids are learning to text emojis before they can even read, and that this form of “digital babbling” may be a way of teaching them the art of conversation.

Here’s an adorable example from a 5-year-old with a penchant for “any animal that pinches:"

🦂🐊🐍🐛🐝🦇🐜🕷🦈🦎🐟🐬🦀🦑🦖🦕🐋🐢🐌🐞🐚🦋🦗🕸🦂🕷🐛🐝🐞🦀🦗🐜

Apple Insider reports that emoji use is causing confusion within the U.S. justice system, with courts unsure how to interpret them in evidence, and how to account for the fact that they can appear substantially different across channels and platforms:

"While Android users may see the 'grinning face with smiling eyes emoji' and understand it as being 'blissfully happy,'... iOS users instead interpreted the symbol as 'ready to fight,' and could take it as an intention to be violent."

Then there’s the time when Apple’s squid emoji had a butt on its forehead for like two years, until a marine biologist pointed it out.

Like I said, emojis matter.


This is an excerpt from The Message, Smooch’s biweekly newsletter about the messaging industry, chatbots and conversational commerce. Subscribe to get the next edition delivered straight to your inbox.

How do voice and video fit into an omnichannel CX strategy?

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How do voice and video fit into an omnichannel CX strategy?

I had no clue how to start this, so I went asking Wikipedia for help on Omnichannel. Here’s what I got:

Omnichannel is a cross-channel content strategy that organizations use to improve their user experience. Rather than working in parallel, communication channels and their supporting resources are designed and orchestrated to cooperate.

In layman’s terms, omnichannel is about being able to reach someone on their own terms.

If you’re here at Smooch, you know a thing or two about omnichannel messaging. It’s about maintaining a single conversation with users across any digital channel — be it a website widget, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat… you get the message.

Notice though that Wikipedia mentions “communication channels” and not simply messaging. There’s a broader view here than the asynchronous experience of messaging. That view includes video and voice.

If I had to make a quick comparison of the two channel types (voice/video and messaging), I’d get to this table:

Messaging Voice/Video
Conversation type Asynchronous; back and forth communications Synchronous; real time
History Stored; available to all sides Transient; here and now; sometimes recorded or transcribed, but usually not easily accessible to both sides of the interaction
Concurrency Single agent; multiple customers Single agent; single customer
Automation Chatbots IVRs, call queues and voice bots
“Legacy” channels SMS Phone calls
Modern channels Social chat apps; using IP messaging WebRTC; embedded in websites and apps


A few things to remember:

  • Different people prefer different modes of communication
  • The same person may prefer a different mode of communication for different types of interactions, such as support versus purchasing, for example
  • We want to be where the customer feels more comfortable
  • This isn’t an either/or decision. You can (and should) do both

At the bottom right part of that table? I wrote WebRTC.

WebRTC is an HTML5 technology that is available in all modern browsers. It enables web pages to incorporate voice and video communications (and much more). You can learn more about WebRTC here.

In our context, when someone is chatting with you on your website through a chat widget, you can “escalate” that chat into a voice or a video call — and things will be smooth. This is true for people sitting in front of their PC or on the go with their mobile device.

There are several added benefits to such an approach:

  • When text isn’t enough, we can easily move to voice or video, without sharing phone numbers, or getting stuck in a contact center’s call queue. Less friction = happy customers
  • Since this “lives” on websites and the internet and not on a separate telephony network, it makes it easier to store these conversations under a unified customer profile.
  • WebRTC also allows things like screen sharing, which makes it easy to troubleshoot or see things that are otherwise hard to share in a chat
  • If the customer is using some other channel to communicate with you, be it SMS or WhatsApp, you can still send them a web link to join that voice or video call with you

For you Smooch customers out there, rest assured that while Smooch is focused on “messaging” today, they recognize how real-time and synchronous channels like WebRTC are part of a complete omnichannel strategy (just like how they currently integrate with email)

Look out for when Smooch starts unifying voice and video transcripts into their existing conversation timeline so that businesses can have a unified, structured repository of all of their conversational data… let your AI feast on that!

In the meantime, check out this free report - WebRTC for Business People - it will get you up to speed with what other businesses are doing with WebRTC.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 September 2018

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Smooch Product Update 🚀 September 2018

Smooch Product Update 🚀 September 2018

New in Smooch this month: File type validation to help protect against harmful software; a new guide to help you use metadata to personalize conversations further; ICYMI our WhatsApp webinar recording; customer spotlight on Structurely; small updates to APIs; and oh yeah — we won an award!

What’s new 🎉

Safely send & receive files with file type validation

In order to protect you and your users against potential harmful software, the Smooch API now detects what types of files are uploaded by businesses and users and refuses files that are not on our whitelist. We’ve been closely monitoring file uploads for over a month to ensure legitimate files won’t be refused. If one of your files gets rejected when it shouldn't have, please get in touch with our Support team and we’ll update our whitelist. Learn more about our file validation logic in our new guide where we cover file types accepted, the rules for rejecting files and what happens when a file is rejected.

Personalize conversations based on context with metadata

What if a live agent or bot knew a user was one step away from checkout with a loaded shopping cart? Or that they recently complained about a product experience? Smooch gives you the tools to surface up proprietary behavioral and transactional data during a live customer interaction to help deliver a more personal experience.

Adding metadata to a user’s profile, to an action they took or to the message they sent and making it available in the agent’s UI can help answer questions faster, close more sales and provide an overall better customer experience.

For instance, you could provide information to the agent or bot about what page a user is on while they chat with the business, what’s in their shopping cart, how much they’ve spent over time, if they are part of a VIP or loyalty program, what their last purchase was and the date that it was made, the last time they visited the website or mobile app, what pricing plan they are on, etc. You can surface up this information in real time and as it changes throughout the conversation.

Learn about the custom properties that can be added to user profiles and check out our new Using Metadata guide that shows you how to leverage this information in your software. Note that our Web SDK 4.14.0 has just been updated to be able to attach metadata before the message leaves the SDK to reach the Smooch platform which will ensure updated metadata is available when the business receives the message.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 September 2018

Missed our WhatsApp webinar? Watch the recording!

Last week we teamed up with our friends at Sparkcentral and KBC Bank for an insider’s look at how to use WhatsApp Business for customer care and engagement. Our CEO, Warren Levitan, covered why omnichannel business messaging is the next frontier of CX and what makes WhatsApp a perfect channel for business communications. Sparkcentral shared some great insights and benchmark stats about how to forecast messaging volume and best use cases for messaging. Meanwhile, KBC Bank talked about their experience rolling out WhatsApp to their customers, how they scaled their program, trained their staff and their learnings so far.

If you weren’t able to attend the webinar, here’s the recording.

Customer spotlight 🌟 Structurely

Over the last two years, Iowa-based Structurely has developed a lightweight CRM for real estate agents that aggregates leads from multiple sources like Zillow and Realtor.com and engages them through messaging — with a little help from an AI-powered chatbot and Smooch.

In a world where top real estate teams can receive up to 600-700 leads per month, Structurely’s chatbot sorts through the noise and qualifies buyers and sellers for Realtors. Information on each lead gets stored in the platform which can later be used to nurture unresponsive leads over time. Realtors are able to monitor the bot’s conversations across any channel and take over when necessary thanks to Structurely’s agent-facing apps. Their platform also leverages NLP to listen for key words and phrases that indicate when a conversation is going off the rails, and automatically bring a human agent into the loop.

As a result, Realtors are converting more leads, growing their teams faster, and freeing themselves up to focus on the parts of their job that require a human touch. Check out how Structurely is changing the game for the real estate industry.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 September 2018

Industry news 📰

Smooch named CIX Top 20 company

We are proud to have recently been named Top 20 most innovative Canadian technology companies of 2018 by the Canadian Innovation Exchange. For our CEO Warren Levitan, this was the perfect occasion to reflect on the past year and to highlight the capabilities we have added to our platform, the new channels that we have made available to you and some of our customers who have been doing amazing things with Smooch. His blog post is a handy recap of our major releases and a good way to make sure you’re fully in the loop with what’s new at Smooch.

Other API & SDK updates ⚙

  • Node.js API library: We shipped a new update to our Node.js API library with new function signatures for appUsers.create and appUsers.update.
  • Anonymous user naming: Last month we changed the logic we use to assign a name to anonymous users and stopped using auto-generated animal names for them. However, if you’d still like to use animal names, we’ve updated our App API with a new useAnimalNames setting.

Google pays billions to Apple for mobile search dominance

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Google pays billions to Apple for mobile search dominance

Google will pay Apple $9 billion this year to remain the default search engine in the iPhone’s Safari browser, according to one Goldman Sachs analyst.

That’s a hefty expense for Google, but will Apple end up paying the price when it comes to business messaging?

Pay per search 💵

According to Goldman Sachs analyst Rod Hall, Apple charges Google based on the number of searches iPhone users perform using Safari or Siri.

If his $9 billion estimate is correct, it means Google is paying Apple roughly $10 a year for every iPhone user, as Cult of Mac reports. Hall predicts that number may climb as high as $12 billion next year, although other analysts have made lower estimates.

Whatever the exact price tag, iPhone users account for a substantial portion of Google searches. Safari has the second largest global market share after Google’s Chrome, with Safari delivering 30 percent of internet traffic in the U.S. compared to Chrome’s 49 percent, according to Search Engine Land:

We believe Apple is one of the biggest channels of traffic acquisition for Google.

Google My Business vs. Apple Business Chat

What none of these reports mention is that Google and Apple’s search partnership intersects with their business messaging rivalry.

Just this week Apple began rolling out its Business Chat platform outside the U.S., enabling global brands and customers to interact via iMessage. New brands announced on the platform, which is still in beta, include Four Seasons, West Elm and Burberry.

In the hotly contested business messaging space — WhatsApp's Business API being the latest entry— Apple’s advantage is discoverability. iPhone and iPad users searching via Safari, Spotlight or Apple Maps will be able to click a “message” button on a business’ profile to open iMessage and start a conversation, much like how they would initiate a phone call:

Google pays billions to Apple for mobile search dominance

Google’s business messaging strategy is more confusing. We've talked about the company’s attempts to rally global businesses and telcos around RCS — the next generation text messaging standard — to compete with modern messaging platforms like iMessage, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

But in July Google made another messaging play that barely got noticed. It introduced a messaging feature within Google My Business, its search-based business directory.

As Search Engine Land reported, the platform enables customers to start a conversation with a business by clicking a call to action on Google’s search results page:

Google pays billions to Apple for mobile search dominance

Look familiar? 🤔

For Android users, this will open their native text messaging app. On Apple devices, it will open the Messages app but default to SMS instead of iMessage (iPhone people: that means green speech bubbles instead of blue), potentially robbing Apple Business Chat of one of its key avenues of discovery.

Playing the long game ♜

For now, Google My Business seems to have taken a back seat to RCS business messaging on Google's product roadmap. Most enterprise brands, meanwhile, lack the tools to send and receive rich messages at scale — a reality that has kept adoption of (though not demand for) Apple Business Chat and WhatsApp Business at bay.

But it’s not hard to understand why Google is keeping a tight grip on its mobile search real estate, even on hostile territory.

Once businesses get set up with the business messaging tools they need and customers start clicking those buttons, $9 billion may seem like a bargain.


This is an excerpt from The Message, Smooch’s biweekly newsletter about the messaging industry, chatbots and conversational commerce. Subscribe to get the next edition delivered straight to your inbox.

Why Twilio is Acquiring SendGrid for $2 Billion

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Why Twilio is Acquiring SendGrid  for $2 Billion

Last week Twilio announced it was expanding its communications platform beyond voice and text messaging by snapping up email delivery specialists SendGrid.

The $2 billion all-stock deal, which is expected to close next year, comes in the run-up to Twilio’s annual developer conference and represents the company’s biggest acquisition to date.

It also signals that email — which has been pronounced dead as often as the web itself — is still very much alive.

Aren’t you the messaging people? 🤔

You may be surprised to see me tip my hat to a channel apart from messaging — but then again, this is an email newsletter.

People will send and receive 281 billion emails per day in 2018, according to the latest email statistics report, and that includes teenagers.

It’s no surprise that email remains the dominant digital marketing channel, but
marketing emails make up only a portion of those we receive from businesses every day.

Far more ubiquitous are what’s known as “transactional emails” — shipping updates, password resets, boarding passes, receipts and other boring but vital notifications.

These are the emails SendGrid specializes in getting delivered.

The new inbox 📭

Of course, these kinds of notifications aren’t just sent via email anymore. As I’ve noted before, the A2P SMS market is a $70 billion industry. A2P stands for “application to person” because these messages are sent programmatically from a business’ notification system, as opposed to a human agent or chatbot.

With the recently-released WhatsApp Business API, Facebook is looking to take a slice of the A2P messaging pie away from SMS and the telcos who profit off it.

This in turn has led global telcos to join forces with Google in its campaign to make RCS (Rich Communication Services) the new text messaging standard and heir apparent to SMS (which stands for Short Message Service).

The theory is that if they can offer a more modern messaging experience through RCS, businesses and consumers will be less likely to choose third-party messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Apple Business Chat (which is linked to iMessage) for their business messaging needs.

Assuming that ship hasn’t already sailed.

No more noreply ⛔️

There’s one major difference between business notifications sent via email or SMS and those sent via WhatsApp.

When a business emails or texts a boarding pass, for example, no one is going to respond to that automated and anonymous message. But because notifications sent on WhatsApp will come from a verified business identity they know and trust, users will have a natural tendency to reply.

Indeed, if the user has already interacted with the business over chat, it will appear in the very same conversation thread. Question is, will businesses have the context and tools they need to respond?

In the business messaging world, a notification is no longer just a notification — it's an invitation to an ongoing conversation with customers. They better be ready when customers accept the invite.

Introducing Smooch’s New API Versioning Framework

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Introducing Smooch’s New API Versioning Framework

Interacting with third-party APIs is part of our DNA at Smooch. Whether it’s for a short-term hackathon project or to create a robust new integration within the Smooch platform, talking to APIs is what we do best.

We value stability, predictability and consistency in third-party APIs and those same attributes sit at the top of our priorities when developing our own API. Since the introduction of the Smooch API, we’ve been able to add new concepts and features while keeping the interface backwards compatible. However, there comes a point in the life of an API where backward incompatible changes need to be introduced so that considerable new capabilities can see the light.

We are excited to introduce a new API versioning mechanism on the Smooch platform. This new mechanism allows us to launch new features and make API improvements that require backwards incompatible changes while allowing you to opt in to these new capabilities on your own schedule.

How it works

There is no broadly adopted standard for API versioning so we’ve taken inspiration from other long-time API providers who have had to face similar challenges to us, such as Stripe and Facebook.

When making calls to the Smooch API you simply specify the version in the endpoint URL. For example: POST /v1/apps will call the v1 Create App API whereas POST /v1.1/apps will call the v1.1 version.

Webhook payloads are also versioned, following the same version progression as the API. You can specify which version Smooch should be using when calling your server during the webhook creation. This can be done in the Smooch dashboard or by calling the corresponding Create Webhook API.

Introducing Smooch’s New API Versioning Framework

When will new API versions be introduced?

New API versions will only be released when backwards incompatible changes necessitate them. We make frequent changes to the Smooch platform to improve functionality, support new use cases and improve performance. The vast majority of those changes can be done in a backwards compatible way and your code must be ready to gracefully handle these changes.

In order to help you prepare, we’ve published a new guide that thoroughly documents changes that are considered backwards compatible. You can also read more about how our versioning scheme works so that you can adopt new versions of our platform as they become available.

v1.1 is now available

Our first version update introduces a few API enhancements and new message delivery webhooks including delivery confirmation events from third-party channels. You can read up about changes introduced to v1.1 and follow our upgrade guide to adopt this new API version. You can also find more details about our new delivery confirmation webhooks in our guide.

At the moment, we have no plans to deprecate v1 and we may support it indefinitely. In the event where we would decide to sunset this version, rest assured you will receive multiple communications prior to the v1 API becoming unavailable.

If you have any questions or feedback on versioning or need help in the upgrade process please let us know, we’re always happy to help.

California Law Targets Chatbots Posing as Humans

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California Law Targets Chatbots Posing as Humans

Earlier this month the State of California passed a law requiring companies to disclose when they’re using a bot to communicate with people online.

While the regulations don’t go into effect until next July, they serve as Exhibit A for how conversational technology is transforming law and politics on a global scale.

Fake news bot = the new robocall ☎️

California’s new law “specifically targets deceptive commercial and political bots, not those meant to help you, for example, pay a bill on a company’s website,” according to Quartz.

With Americans set to vote in midterm elections next week, there are growing concerns about the spread of false information via automated social media accounts and private messaging apps.

Robocalls (i.e. old-school telephone bots) meant to deter people from exercising their voting rights have been a mainstay of U.S. elections for decades, but the viral nature of digital communication channels makes them particularly effective propaganda tools.

It’s not just an American problem 🇺🇸

In the run-up to Brazil’s recent presidential elections, WhatsApp was flooded with rumors and viral misinformation by both supporters and opponents of far-right candidate (now President-elect) Jair Bolsonaro.

As Buzzfeed News points out, a 2016 study found that nearly 100% of Brazilian internet users are on WhatsApp, which translates to 40% of the country’s 207 million people.

WhatsApp’s ubiquity, in combination with the fact that it’s encrypted end-to-end, makes it incredibly difficult to control the spread of false and dangerous information on the platform.

In Brazil, WhatsApp partnered with a Harvard-backed group of journalists called Comprova, which used the new WhatsApp Business API to set up a tip line for users to flag suspicious information.

Back in America, USA Today is taking a “fight fire with fire” approach. The leading national newspaper rolled out a fleet of chatbots across its website and mobile apps to share regional election news and information, like where to vote.

Going against the grain of bot hysteria, USA Today is trumpeting its chatbots as a “safe, reliable” source of campaign info, and Engadget reporter Jon Fingas agrees:

" In theory, you won't have to wade through the web at large to become a politically informed member of society."

What if the bot is you? 👋

What California’s chatbot disclosure rules fail to consider is that the lines between what’s said by a bot and what’s said (or written) by a human are blurring.

The New York Times recently profiled a bestselling novelist who designed an AI program to help him write better sentences:

"It’s machine learning, facilitating and extending his own words, his own imagination."

Google has rolled out a number of features in Gmail to help automate the more mundane process of writing emails.

The Smart Reply feature allows you to select pat responses like “Thanks!” and “Sounds good to me,” while Smart Compose offers up whole words and phrases as you type, based on what it knows about you.

Reactions have ranged from creeped out to thrilled. Slate’s Heather Schwedel admits that, “as a writer sometimes accustomed to staring at a blank screen,” the assistance is most welcome. Then there’s the novelty factor:

"Isn’t it sort of addictive to see a machine’s portrait of yourself reflected back at you? It’s too weird and uncanny and new to ignore."

Chatbots have feelings too 🤗

With all this anxiety in the air about politics, technology and the nature of humanity itself (!), it’s not surprising that more startups are developing tools to help calm us down, keep us company or support us through difficult times.

What may be surprising is that many of these tools are bots themselves.

In my latest piece for Marketing Tech News, I cover the emergence of “emotional AI” — chatbots trained to converse with human-like emotion and empathy.

Some of these bots are being used for therapeutic purposes or to help individuals navigate fraught situations like sexual harassment in the workplace.

Others can identify when a prospective customer is going through a tough time and needs a little more hand-holding… or when they really have to go to the bathroom.

How’s that for disclosure? You can read my full article here.


This is an excerpt from The Message, Smooch’s biweekly newsletter about the messaging industry, chatbots and conversational commerce. Subscribe to get the next edition delivered straight to your inbox.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 October 2018

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Smooch Product Update 🚀 October 2018

Smooch Product Update 🚀 October 2018

New in Smooch this month: Smooch API v1.1 is here along with our new API versioning framework. The first major release of this new API version includes new delivery events to provide you with more details around message delivery. We’ve also made some tweaks to our SDKs and APIs.

What’s new 🎉

API versioning is here!

Interacting with third-party APIs is part of our DNA at Smooch. We value stability, predictability and consistency in APIs and those same attributes sit at the top of our priorities when developing our own. Since the introduction of the Smooch API, we’ve been able to add new concepts and features while keeping the interface backwards compatible. However, there comes a point in the life of an API where backward incompatible changes need to be introduced so that considerable new capabilities can see the light.

Today, we are excited to introduce a new API versioning mechanism on the Smooch platform. This new mechanism allows us to launch new features and make API improvements that require backwards incompatible changes while allowing you to opt in to these new capabilities on your own schedule.

How it works

When making calls to the Smooch API you simply specify the version in the endpoint URL. Webhook payloads are also versioned, following the same version progression as the API. You can specify which version Smooch should be using when calling your server during the webhook creation.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 October 2018

v1.1 is now available

Our first version update introduces a few API enhancements and new message delivery webhooks including delivery confirmation events from third-party channels (more on that 👇). You can read up about changes introduced to v1.1 and follow our upgrade guide to adopt this new API version.

Learn more about how our API versioning framework works on our blog.

New delivery confirmation events

The Smooch API v1.1 introduces new delivery confirmation webhook triggers. Whereas v1 simply indicated if a message was successfully delivered to a channel or had failed, v1.1 allows for a more complete delivery trace when made available by the channel where the message is being delivered.

A message delivery can now emit three possible webhook events:

  • message:delivery:channel indicates the message was delivered to the channel (eg. WhatsApp), but may not have been received by the user yet.
  • message:delivery:user indicates the message was successfully delivered to the end-user (note that this delivery confirmation is only supported by certain channels).
  • In case a message can’t be delivered to a channel or an end-user, message:delivery:failure will be fired and will include all the details about the failure.

These three events can be integrated into a conversation user interface to provide in-depth delivery information or they can be used for troubleshooting purposes. The message:delivery:user trigger is useful to detect failures where the delivery flow of a channel is more complex.

For example, SMS providers might accept a message (triggering a message:delivery:channel event), but then fail to deliver the message to the end-user because a carrier rejected the message later on. In that case, this would trigger a subsequent message:delivery:failure event.

Smooch Product Update 🚀 October 2018

*Message delivery events flow*

Check out our Delivery Events Guide where we cover how we handle differences between channels and how delivery events behave for end-users connected to multiple channels. You’ll also notice that we’ve updated each of our channel guides with a section on delivery events. Here’s an example for WhatsApp.

Other API & SDK updates ⚙

  • WhatsApp channel update: WhatsApp API Clients can now be integrated with Smooch Apps via the Integration API. This can be done whether Smooch is hosting API Clients for you or you’re hosting your own. A quick reminder that the WhatsApp Business API is still in limited availability and that brands and customer service platforms need to be approved by the WhatsApp team. We’ve also released a business profile API enabling you to configure key business information, including a profile picture for each of your approved WhatsApp numbers.
  • File size limit for attachments: The size limit for files hosted by Smooch has been raised from 10MB to 25MB.
  • iOS SDK: We shipped v6.11.0 which adds support for the metadata field in SKTMessageItem. This will help those of you who need a way to attach and process metadata on individual message items.
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