How chat bots are converting better than email with Andrew Warner

Founder of Mixergy – Andrew Warner

Andrew Warner is best known as the pushy interviewer who founded Mixergy, the place where proven entrepreneurs teach. Andrew came on to talk about chatbots. Specifically, why major companies are making chatbots a big part of their marketing and sales strategy.

Here are the 7 things to learn with Andrew Warner:

• He explains what the heck a chatbot is. And if you already know what it is, you’ll still discover some interesting (and profitable) uses for chatbots…
• Andrew invested in chatbot companies early on. He’ll reveal what he saw in chatbots that lots of other people missed.
• You’ll see the incredible response rates you can get with chatbots. Andrew is a numbers guy, and he shared the cold, hard data…
• He reveals the name of a huge company that’s secretly using chatbots right now. (You’ve definitely heard of them, you probably even own their products?)
• He’s taught people how to build bots as a service and they make $5,000+ per bot…
• Andrew is a serial entrepreneur. His first company was bootstrapped to over $35 million before he sold it…
• I made him feel uncomfortable because he’s usually the one asking the questions… 🙂

Andrew’s Websites:

BotAcademy.com/Masters
Mixergy.com

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I?m Jaime Masters and today on the show we have back the amazing Andrew Warner, now here on mixergy.com also, but right now he?s doing a new thing called Bot Academy. You can check it out on botacademy.com and I actually test one out at botacademy.com/masters. So, we?re gonna talk about that in just a second, in case you have o idea what I?m talking about. Andrew thanks for coming on the show today.

Andrew:	Thanks for having me on here.

Jaime:	So, I think it is an interesting thing when new technology moves so fast. People are probably like, ?Okay, what is a bot and a chatbot, and the difference between bots?? So please enlighten us.

Andrew:	It?s very similar to email but it happens via chat. Here?s what happened to us in my business. You were talking about how we have a company called Mixergy, we have proven on entrepreneurs on to teach and I love when my audience knows about it and comes and watches what we publish. And so, I do Twitter, I do Facebook, I do all that stuff, but the workhorse has always been email was just not grown for us. I would send out an email and it did okay, but I wanna do better than okay. 

So, I hired a better copywriter and she did great, and we still did okay. So, then I went to this company that helped us redo our funnel. I flew April, our copywriter, I flew myself, we sat two days in their office, we paid them for an intensive. And they helped us, and I?m really proud of the work that we did together, and it improved things, but, eh, just a little bit. It was still okay. Email basically was not growing. It wasn?t getting us more clicks; it wasn?t getting us more opens. 

And finally somebody showed me some stats from MailChimp that showed me we were actually ahead of the average: more open rates, more click rates. But average open rates are 25 percent; average clicks on email are 2 to 3 percent. So, that means 97 percent of the people you send your email to are not clicking. They are not taking any action. 97 percent! And so, I was wondering what?s wrong with it? Why? And to talk through things like this I would message my team and so I was chatting with my team, and then with my wife, and I would chat with other people. And then I realized, ?Ah, that?s why!? 

We?re using email to communicate with people we wanna sell to, but we?re using chat like Slack, Facebook Messenger, iMessages, Ping on Basecamp. We?re using all these chat apps to communicate with people we love and communicate with people who are in our world, and then I thought, maybe there?s a way to do it better, to reach our customers the way we love to communicate, which is chat. And it just happened that Facebook opened up a platform to allow people to send out messages via Facebook Messenger, the No.1 chat platform. And so, that?s what a bot is. A bot will let you send out messages to people on Facebook Messenger.
	
Jaime:	Like way back, when email was only for friends and family, and then got ? yeah, very, very ? So, it?s sort of a new space right now and a lot of people don?t ? they know what the baseline is but using it for business seems a little foreign. I mean, I created a bot a while ago and I was like, ?Let?s just play with this.? But my Facebook Messenger inbox is insane. But it does pop up and I really pay attention. 

So how are you guys using it in business so that it doesn?t just be annoying for people, and they hate you. Because I fell like that?s the other question that a lot of people are like, ?I just don?t like ? He?s just trying to sell me something.? Because I signed up on one, once, and I literally forever afterwards ? it was a good three weeks ? I got pinged, and pinged, and pinged ? now I hate him. I?m sorry. Now I hate him.

Andrew:	And so, what I do with that is, I just delete them. And usually, with email people subscribe me to so many freaking email lists because my email address is out there, and I have to go and find the link on the bottom, hit the unsubscribe. Sometimes I go to their forum on a website that says ?Enter the email address here, subscribe ?? I don?t remember. Because my inbox gets lots of different email addresses. I?m Andrew of Bot Academy, I?m Andrew of Mixergy, I?m ? my college email address is still active. 

And it all comes into ? And so, I go do homework and figure out which one. Or sometimes they have you check off of a bunch of boxes. Cora does this ? check off: Do you want alerts when your name is mentioned; Do you want alerts when the topic you?re interested in gets another ? No, I have to go. So, with email, you have to do all that work to unsubscribe. With chat what you do is you swipe, delete, and then it?s gone. They don?t even know that you?ve cancelled them. And they have no power to change that unsubscribe process. I don?t even use if they have an unsubscribe process within Facebook Messenger. They?ll say, ?Type in the word unsubscribe to cancel.? I don?t even type that in. I just swipe, delete, and they?re done. So, that?s one big advantage.

Jaime:	That?s way better. Because I was looking ? I guess I asked them for the unsubscribe. Because I didn?t realize ? he was a friend too, so I felt bad I think, just delete it. Well, actually, just delete the actual message?

Andrew:	You could archive the conversation. You could mute the conversation.

Jaime:	And then it will go away?

Andrew:	I delete it, it goes away completely.

Jaime:	Okay. And then they can message you again if they?re a friend or something like that and it won?t ?

Andrew:	So, the difference is between friends and businesses. Friends can message you as long as they?re your friends, they get to message you. And what you could do at that point is mute or block them. Businesses cannot message you unless you explicitly ask them to message you. So, there is no way. I?ve got thousands of followers on my personal page, on my business page; we have groups that have tens of thousands of followers, participants. I can?t message any of them from my business account. They have to explicitly click a link, or a button, like the one that we created at botacademy.com/masters. 

Unless they take that action and press the button, they cannot hear from me and I have no power to message them. Once they do, they could delete me completely and remove me and never hear from me again. So, there?s not that situation. So, then the question is: as a business if you have someone?s permission to go into their inbox, how do you avoid being annoying, how do you avoid being deleted? And we keep playing with that. What we?ve found works is: it used to be the daily messages were the best, that?s what people wanted. 

We?ve been looking at the data. I?ve invested in couple of companies that do chatbot software, so I got to see what?s going on behind the scenes. And what we?ve discovered is that you wanna back off and not do daily messages any more. Do once a week, maybe even as much as once a month. The most frequent that we?ll go is every three days we?ll send a message out. So, you wanna pace yourself. You also wanna have light messages that don?t overwhelm people. A lot of businesses say, ?Hey, I know email marketing, great. I?ll take my email copy, I?ll send ?? No. Just do a fun image, or a gif, a little bit of text, and then back off. And then if they want more they can press a button and then get more. We?ll see that.

Jaime:	I love how much data you love. Because to me the data doesn?t lie and so things change. If at the beginning you could do it once a day, that?s a huge thing for a business to know that they can?t do it once a day if they annoy their customers. How do you stay on top of that, though. Especially because that technology and what people are used to and like changes constantly.

Andrew:	So, the best software for creating bots makes it easy for anyone to create a chatbot, right. If you can send out email you should be able to send out messages via chatbot. And they should also give you data, lots of easy data. And that means that you should see: how many people are opening your message; how many people are clicking your message. If not enough people are opening your message then you should adjust it. If not enough people click you should adjust it. Like the one we set up for you. I wanna know how many people got it and then how many people clicked ?Yes? to continue. And then I?ll be able to follow them along the path. If it?s clearly visible then we?ll act on it. 

I forget who you did it with, but you did a podcast episode with someone where you said, ?Look there?s tons of data, how do you even organize it?? And he suggested this dashboard software which I?m now signing up for. But the point that you guys got to which is: there?s a lot of data, pick the one that matters, and focus on that, is important. And the best software for creating chatbots will do that for you. We?ll say, ?Look, we can give you all this data on your users, we?re just gonna tell you how many people see it, how many people open it for each message,? and then you could start to adjust.

Jaime:	So where do we start talking ? because this could be a vast amount of work that they could be doing in this arena, right? And so, when we look at their current funnels, or potentially they have something, they realize that email marketing is not what it used to be. I mean it?s quite sad. And I?ve been talking to a lot of people about this lately, and they?re like ?Eh.? So, what?s the simplest way for them to start. So, it sounds overwhelming too. Because I whole separate piece, to try and fit in your funnel already gets very complicated. What would suggest?

Andrew:	I would suggest trying to create a chatbot that gets people to subscribe, and then sends out basic messages from time to time. And there are lots of different apps for doing that. The one that I like, the one that I always wanted the first users of, the one that I was the first customer of, the very first one, and then became an angel investor in, full disclosure, it?s ManyChat. M-A-N-Y ManyChat. And they make it easier to make a chatbot for free. They?ll give you the button that people can use to subscribe, they?ll make it easier to send messages, they?ll give you data. But there are tons of other apps out there if people wanna try something that I?m not connected with because they wanna just experiment. Go to ?
[Crosstalk]

Jaime:	No, we use ManyChat. Oh, I?m sorry.

Andrew:	You use it?

Jaime:	I do. And Molly Pitman I know has been working with them and stuff like that too. I mean anyway, just telling everybody. You can be diverse if you like, though. Go ahead.

Andrew:	You know what, there?s a company ? there?s a site called BotList, botlist.co is their URL, where you can see tons of different apps for creating chatbots or hire somebody from that site to create chatbots. It?s not as hard as it seems. If you know how to send out broadcast email, you?ll know how to send out broadcast chat messages. If you know how to get someone to subscribe to an email this is in some ways even easier. Because with an email you have to create a form, ask for their name; ask for their email address, right? 

Here you just have to get a button. The platforms like Facebook Messenger will give you the name and email address of the ? the name of the person who?s signing up, not the email address.

Jaime:	I remember way back when I just wanted to try it out and see how it goes, and I didn?t realize totally what I was doing, I was just clicking ?Yes.? It was super easy. And then I had set one up and it was actually going live, and I was like, ?Oh, crap!? I didn?t even realize that I went that far.

Andrew:	I did that too. You know what, only because of you, here?s why. Not like it?s your fault, I said, ?I?m coming on Jaime?s podcast. It?s really big. I wanna demonstrate how to collect an email address in our chatbot.? And I said, ?Okay, if we?re gonna do that for her audience we have to make it the first message within our sequence, so that it?s not weird coming in a month later.? So, I added it, and I said, ?I don?t need anyone else on my team to take a look at this, I?m just gonna add it in.? I put it in as a first message. Every single person Jaime, who ever subscribed, and will still subscribe to my ? got this thing. 

And thankfully, their response right on it was phenomenal because I was just in shock that I did this. And I kept saying to everyone on the team, ?I screwed up, I screwed up, I screwed up ?? I know you edit out the curses, so I won?t say it. ?I screwed up, I screwed up, I screwed up ?? And none of them were worried, and I said, ?Why?? And it turns out because they knew it?s fine. Some people are being asked for it. Let me see, so, I now have data on it ?

[Crosstalk]

Jaime:	Oh, nice.

Andrew:	? 73.8 percent of people opened it up. So, this is 73.8 percent of people who are even subscribed to my chatbot and still are subscribed. All right, let me see if I could get the response rate. Of all the people who I asked for their email address, how many ended up giving it to me delivered to ? Of all the people who opened that up, let me see. 18 percent gave their email address too. That was experimenting.

Jaime:	Wow! And how many days ago was that?

Andrew:	This screwup happened a couple of weeks ago, now at this point.

Jaime:	The screwup happened. Sorry.

Andrew:	I flew my whole team, my whole Bot Academy team to Austin to have a company retreat, to meet in person because we?re so ?

[Crosstalk]

Jaime:	You did? You know I live in Austin, right? Just saying.

Andrew:	Yeah.

Jaime:	You didn?t call, you didn?t text ?

Andrew:	When I realized ? I?m a systems person like you ? I realized there?s so much going on in Austin. Next time we do a company retreat, we need to do a couple of things. No. 1, we need to do a meetup for the Bot Academy customers and the Bot Academy users. So, the first day we should do a meetup for them. And then we should also ? we have friends who work in these different cities, who live in these different cities ? we should have some kind of event where we get together with them. 

Maybe it?s like a dinner one-on-one, maybe it?s something else. Maybe just invite them out to the house and show them what we?re working on. I don?t know. But something, because we missed that opportunity ?

[Crosstalk]

Jaime:	Get in touch with me and I?ll help you. Yes, definitely, times a million. And if you need event places we have systems for that in Austin also, just saying that.

Andrew:	You do?

Jaime:	Yes. Okay, this is kind of a thing. Anyway, let?s talk about that later, but ? When we?re looking at having these people try it, No. 1 warning, because Andrew did it, and I did it. So, when you start at least you will have zero subscribers hopefully when you try and do your own yourself. But it is really easy, and that?s sort of the whole point. And it?s so easy to go through ? maybe too easy sometimes. So, getting your legs underneath you and go, ?Okay, get what it is.? Because I feel like that?s sort of the first step. 

So, when they do that ? because they will, they all will ? they?re listening. So, when they do that what then? Because this is what happened to me. So, I will be completely honest. I was like eh, kinda forgot all about that. And so, that?s what?s gonna happen with everybody else, so, let?s make sure they don?t do that, and they actually implement something or look a back at the metrics, or whatever. So, what are those next couple of steps, so they can really put it in place and we?ll see some ROI from it?

Andrew:	Here?s what I did when I was playing around with it. I just wanna try new technology to see what?s out there. I created a bot, I emailed it to my audience and said, ?Hey, I?m experimenting with this thing, would you give it a shot if you?re the type of person who wants to try new things, just click this link and go give it a shot.? And because of the way that I phrased it, and because I linked to the wrong thing ? I guess this was just me screwing around with it, I got a couple of hundred people. I didn?t send it to my whole list, I don?t think. But I got a couple of hundred people tops to sign up.

 And then I sent out some messages, and I thought a couple of hundred is not that much, nothing?s gonna happen, but let?s try to sell something, to see if it works. And I didn?t immediately sell. What I did instead was say, ?If I ever sold a service where I created a chatbot for you, would you pay for it? Yes, no, or maybe.? Anyone who said ?yes? was tagged, anyone who said ?no? and ?maybe? was also tagged. 

The following day, the people who said ?no? and ?maybe? got a follow-up response that said, ?Why not?? tell me, so that I could understand what the objections were. And the people who said ?yes? the following day said, ?Okay, go click here to go pay me for this and I?ll create a chatbot with you.? And what I wanted to see was could I get any sales from this, would anyone be interested? It was mostly research. And what I discovered was people would actually pay. They paid to see how to create a chatbot. And at the time I think I was charging $350.00 for 45 minutes of chatbot creation consulting, where I would get on a zoom screen chair and show them how to set it up.

 And by the end of the call they had a chatbot set up. And I?m used to 200 people in an email list being nothing. 200 people here meant that I had a couple of dozen customers strangely. But it was very specific, right? It was people who knew me because they were on my list, they wanted to try new things, and they saw this, and now many of them just wanted it. And so, it was an easy sell.

Jaime:	So impressive to see your Beta process then too. You?re like, ?Oh, I just try and sell this, and see if it works.? Is that how you got into ? were you already planning on selling that stuff on Bot Academy beforehand or you just like, ?Hey, I wonder if people wanna know about this too.?

Andrew:	I was just messing around with it. At the time I had a young kid ? I still have two kids, they?re still pretty young, but ? super young, and I was just exhausted, not finding any time to myself. And my wife said to me, ?Look, our friend Giovanni ? he and his wife are up here, they?re always travelling ? go see where he?s going with that because he?s travelling pretty well.? And he said, ?We?re going to see this musician in Vegas, come with us.? And they were hanging out the whole weekend, he and his friends, and I remember being there one morning just intellectually curious. 

Not so much about what?s happening in Vegas, but just wanted to try something and that?s when I sat down, and on my phone, I took a picture of myself and said, ?Would you pay for this?? And I put it into the chatbot. I did the whole thing on my phone. And that?s the kind of thing that I was doing. Just kind of playing because I had some time away from being a dad for a little bit.

Jaime:	Okay, I wanna go down this path a little. So, bots over here, we?ll come back to it. So, distraction versus opportunity in business ? So you said you were playing with it and then, now you have a whole company on it, right? But we?re also told as entrepreneurs: eliminate distraction, go towards the goal and focus as much as you can. So, where is the in-between of being able to play with the new stuff and potentially go down a whole new company path based on it, or cutting off all distractions?

Andrew:	I like to do 10 to 20 percent of my time trying something new. I?m the type of person who generally is ? is the word indistractable ? I stay pretty focused. My problem though is that I do saty so focused that I don?t look at outside options. I grew up in New York; I never would have thought to leave the island of Manhattan once I started working because everything was there. I wanted to go swimming, I could actually go swimming in pools that are top-rated pools. Or go swimming in the Hudson, which I would never do, but people do it. I wanted to go running, there?s a race to be ran, not just the New York City Marathon, but a race in Central Park. Why travel at all? 

And then I finally pushed myself out of my comfort zone and went to California, went to Santa Barbara, loved it, and then later on moved there. Now I live in California. I think that my issue is that I stay so focused that I forget that there are other options. And other options can actually be better for you. California has plenty of great entrepreneurs, plenty of drive, plenty of good conversations. I didn?t have to stay stuck on Manhattan Island. And as a result I ended up discovering things like chatbots because the software makers happen to be here. 

I?d suggest that everyone stay focused, really intensely on whatever it is that they?re doing. And I?ve noticed that that comes up a topic of conversation in your interviews too. I think there was even one entrepreneur who said he tattooed the word focus on his arm or something.

[Crosstalk]

Jaime:	? for doing your research by the way, Andrew.

Andrew:	I listen. But you know what, do you even run adds? I don?t know if I?m paying attention or there are no adds.

Jaime:	Oh, sometimes. But not much. You mean sponsorships on the podcast?

Andrew:	Yeah.

Jaime:	Occasionally.

Andrew:	Yeah. Everyone?s loading up. Not you.

Jaime:	I don?t like adds. I mean, if it?s a right fit, I will do it, otherwise, nope, not at all. Not worth it.

Andrew:	I think it kind of stood out for me. But sometimes I don?t pay attention to ? and I don?t notice it with some podcasts. All right. So, I think it makes sense to find a little bit of time and while you?re staying focused, look at something else. And here?s why.

 I had this ? The first business that I ran was an email marketing company. We got it to 30 plus million in sales, and I remember being curious about how other marketers work. And we had this guy who was in paper-based mail who was a superstar in in this base, coming to our office base and teach us. And he looked around our office base and he said, ?Whoa, this whole floor, 12th floor of this building is yours?? I said, ?Yeah. This is where we run our business of.? 

He said, ?How do you guys do? What do you do?? And we told him about email marketing. He said, ?Whoa, we totally missed out on that.? And I said, ?What do you mean?? He goes, ?You know, paper-based marketing was doing so well for us, that we just didn?t think to try email. Email seemed like something you do between friends or coworkers, and may be a little bit silly, so we never got into it. And we missed out and it?s a little late for us.? And I said, ?I don?t know f it?s too late for you, but there is a big opportunity there and yeah, we caught on it.? 

And then, we sat down, and we learned from him how they used to do these scratch-off offers, how they used to message people, where they would put people?s names, how they made their writing feel good that people would read two to twelve pages of material sometimes from strangers that happen to send them stuff in the mail. We learned a lot. The thing that I took away from that though was not what my copy should be in email, but ? Dude, don?t get so fixated on the one thing you do that you don?t pay attention to something else. Spend a little bit of time outside of your comfort zone. And so, that?s why I tried messing around with chatbots. And I told my audience, it?s a little experiment, it may go nowhere.

Jaime:	I love that you practice what you preach, though. I mean, that?s really, really important to actually do, what you say you?re gonna do, especially if you?re an email marketer, hard-core that entire time and then you see a trend, and then you?re like, ?I don?t wanna be that guy from paper,? right? Let?s see where else I can go. When we look at trends ? because that?s the other piece that I find very interesting. There can be trends and even, had this in your little piece ? is it a fad, is it not a fad? How do we know when it?s a train to jump on? Because he thought email marketing wasn?t the thing ? so how do we know what is and what isn?t?

Andrew:	It?s a little bit hard. I think there are some people who always live in the future and it?s interesting to watch what they do. If you see that there?s someone who?s living in the future always then they?re a really good indication of what?s to come. And frankly, what you see is that tech geeks and the high school kids are the ones that are always living in the future. And you get a sense, what are they doing right now, because that?s where the resto of the world is going. So, what are they doing now? They?re not watching TV as much as they?re watching YouTube. So, that?s a good indication that short videos, YouTube videos are doing better, right?

Jaime:	Yeah, I need to interrupt for just one second, because my son?s fifth grade graduation. There were probably 50 people in the class, probably of them wanted to be youtubers when they grow up. And I was like, ?What world are we living in?? Anyway, continue please.

Andrew:	I get it. I watch this couple that lives out of a Scamp. This is this 13-foot camper that they attach to their car and I can?t stop watching them, and Casey Neistat, and MKBHD, all the ? But you get a sense. All right, this is where things are going, could you create something for that medium? You also start to see that both they and tech people are sending out chat messages. How many videos do we see? How many gifs do we see of people walking through a mall falling into a fountain? What are they doing when they?re doing that? If you look, they?re texting, right? And so, you can start to see that this stuff ? that shifts like this are happening. 

And the question then is: will you laugh at those people, or will you say what can I do to take advantage of this shift? And so, I do both. I?m gonna laugh at the people who fall into fountains because they text, and I?m also gonna see: can we get into that space?

Jaime:	I love this, okay. This is my question, right. Because I love text, and chat, and Facebook Messenger ? And there?s no aggregate, though. So now, I have instead of one email inbox that we used to have, I have a thousand things to check. Do you know of anything that will aggregate it, or prioritize, or are we just having 17 different inboxes now?

Andrew:	Unfortunately, we?re having 17 different inboxes. But here?s the big aggregator that I?m noticing again going back into the text base. I?m the type of person who turns off all notifications. But I?m noticing that people who are hard-core techies, they use the notification screen ? I was gonna try to show it to you on camera, but I think it?s got too much ? too many personal messages in it ? On Android, and iPhone, you can bring down all the past messages and you can start to see them. 

What I think is gonna start happening is: the phone-makers are going to start to sort them together, and that will be your inbox. Those alerts, that are not the ones that pop-up while you?re doing something else, but are saved for when you?re ready for them will be there, and I think you?re gonna start to be able to sort them based on chats versus app messages etc. And that I think is the future. It?s been an issue forever. Even the founder of Tinder was on Mixergy years ago, back when I would allow people to say, ?No, don?t publish the interview.? And he told me how he created this one piece of software that would aggregate all the different chat places where people are getting messages. And back then, it was places like Facebook, which had it only on their site, Myspace, your email inbox, and all these other ? and LinkedIn, right. And he said, ?I?m gonna create a site which brings it all in together. It didn?t work out. He had all these arguments with people on his team, that?s why he didn?t want me to publish the interview. 

But it?s an issue that?s been going on as far back as then. Software makers like him had no power over those networks, so they couldn?t really say we?re gonna aggregate it. But, app makers have full power over them. And I think you?re gonna start to see that that becomes the inbox for people. The other thing, though, is we?re gonna have to learn to let a lot of things go. That we come from an environment of I have to tidy everything, I?m gonna leave after today. This is my last scheduled call, and then I?m gonna go fly off to Lisabon. I want everything cleaned off my desk, I want every ? I?m such and anal organized person ? 

We?re gonna have to let go of being that kind of anal and understand that the world is letting go of that too. You don?t have to get to inbox zero. And in fact, if you look at your Facebook Messenger little bubble ? it says how many messages are available. If you don?t check the ten that are sitting there for a week, Facebook will just send you down to zero. It?s like, forget about it, it happened, it?s fine.

Jaime:	That?s why I never see any ? but that?s also why I lose lots of amazing conversations because it just keeps piling up, and I?m not n top of it. Which maybe is a blessing? I don?t know ?

Andrew:	It?s the only way to live in an environment like that. It?s the only way to live in an environment like that.

[Crosstalk]

Jaime:	But there are some important people. I?m getting a little passionate because I think it?s really important to know ? as soon as we have marketers that are starting to get in that box too, and into everything else, then we don?t have any sacred communication any more, right? It?s everywhere. And if we have an aggregator then we?ve got that too. So how do we ?

Andrew:	It does keep moving to ? I?m noticing that the really sacred communication ends up going into a Slack community, or Telegram now is becoming ? That?s the way that the world is going and it kinda stinks in some ways, but it?s the reality, and I?ve gotta deal with that reality. The reality is people are using all these different channels. And partially they?re using it because they wanna get away from everyone and go get their private space.

Jaime:	Seriously. So, for Facebook I know for a while there was no ? they put a pause on all this stuff. And that?s scary, I?m sure as somebody that?s going down this path. Tell us a little bit about what?s going on right now with that piece, and if we can create bots, if we can?t, and what it was all about?

Andrew:	You can create a bot. I?m glad that they put a pause. I think their problem was that so many people are creating chatbots that did things that they shouldn?t be allowed to do. You could do incredible stuff. I could find out the names and emails ? yeah, the names and email address of anyone who?s subscribed. I could see where they went to school; I could see where they were married. There?s a lot of data that comes in there. There are some people who are misusing it. 

There was a therapy bot that said, ?No one can see what you?re talking to this chatbot about. Tell us your secrets.? And I messaged the founder, I said, ?You can absolutely see it. This is a violation. Forget Facebook?s rules, it?s a violation of people?s privacy. You have to tell them this is what?s going on. If they wanna take it to a private section, move them somewhere else.? So, there was a lot of stuff like that going on. There were people who said, ?Hey, I could sell. If I only have a 100 subscribers I could sell and make money.? And so, what they did was they would do these bots that did nothing but sell. And they were making money, and they were just killing it with that.

And I think that Facebook needed to pause the while back and look at some of their stuff, because it was just wrong. And Facebook I think believes in this base a lot. They added when they came back. They said, ?Not only are we back, but we?re gonna give the chatbot makers all this extra power. Here?s what they could do with it. But we?re gonna watch you guys to make sure you don?t do things that are wrong.?

Jaime:	Which we definitely appreciate. Spam, and stuff like that for email. But Facebook we don?t pay for, and they could take it away at any point because we don?t have the control. How do you feel about all that stuff?

Andrew:	I don?t like having the platform risk, which is why mu chatbot does ask for an email address and people can see it now. Frankly just because I?m here with you. And it?s kind of a cool way to do it too. I could say what is your email address. And then there?s a single button that prepopulates with their email address as they gave it to Facebook ? it?s just amazing! So, as they gave it to Facebook, it prepopulates, they hit the button and I get it. And then if Facebook for some reason goes away tomorrow, or they remove chatbots ? I don?t think they?re doing that, they?re not going away, not removing chatbots ? but if they do, I have their email address I could connect with them and tell them about another platform. 

The thing is, though, that we?re gonna find that more and more platforms are allowing chatbots. So, Slack of course has one and people use chatbots in Slack all the time. I think you?re gonna start to see it being brought into LinkedIn. I think you?re gonna start to see it being brought into all these other platforms. And the reason for that is chat is how people prefer to talk to everyone, including to businesses. Businesses can?t keep up with chats. 

So, quietly Apple launched the ability for businesses to chat with customers. It used be that if I type Marriott into the search ? and everyone who owns an iPhone can do this right now ? go to the search bar on Safari type in Marriott. It used to be that they would bring up a button that would let you press it to make a phone call to Marriott. They got rid of that button in the suggested result and they replaced it with a chat bubble. Now if you hit that, you can ask Marriott: Do you have a room for me? Do you have a location in San Diego, I?m gonna go visit? Do you have a pool at the location in San Diego? You can ask all those questions. 

But you know what? If you ask in the evening here?s what you?re gonna get: Sorry, there?s nobody here to answer your text message. We?ll get back to you tomorrow when the team comes in. Which means even Marriott can?t keep a human being there. So, what do they need? A bot. A bot could respond to questions like ? the common questions that come up a billion times. Do you have a location in San Diego? The bot knows. Do you have a pool in your San Diego location? The bot knows. So, we need to enable that.

Jaime:	A million times, yes. And that?s exactly where I was going for the next question because as soon as we have this back and forth chat then we have even more to manage as a small business owner. And crazier pieces. Even for the chatbot that I had. I got people asking me out all the time. Again, I?m like, ?I?m not talking to you. It?s not ?? You know what I mean? Or who?s going to ?

Andrew:	You know what? I gotta bring that up. That?s a huge issue actually that I didn?t realize. We used to have chat on our website and I got great questions, great ? I would respond personally, and I would close sales. Guy David did the same thing closed sales. Ari on our team went in there and she said, ?I?ll do this too.? And she wasn?t, and she kept complaining. I said, ?What?s wrong with you Ari?? This was before I knew her. ?Maybe you don?t know how to do this.? And I got back, I said, ?Come one, let me help you.? So, we did a screen share. 

And I see the freaking things that people message her and I realize, oh, this is a real problem. And I think people don?t know that when it comes to chat, we know who you are. Yeah, it?s a definite problem. What we do is use our company icon instead of me, because I don?t wanna give people the impression that I?m personally responding. And I do think that it?s an issue for bots. Women definitely are having issues.

Jaime:	Isn?t that insane to start thinking about it too. I?m making ? and long-term they?ll just be bots and they?ll be robots and it won?t really matter, long-term. And if somebody keeps going down asking her out, that?s totally fine. Maybe they?ll send a robot to him, right? But when we look at what, thankfully, what the future is on this, we don?t really have to worry about that. But in the short term, it?s a lot more work even for my team to go into all of the different places and all of the different chats and go back-and-forth. Especially because you sort of have to be on at the ? whole time. Because they?ll send one and then it?s not ? it?s delayed typically also. 

And so, how do you guys manage that? I mean, I know it?s your shtick so it?s helpful. But how do you manage it? Are you just in it all the time and helping people? 

Andrew:	You could be. And I know that there are many businesses that do. We just say, ?Look, our one inbox that we check, if you need to readjust right now ? I?ll be honest, if you need a human being email?s gonna be the best way to do it.? What we?re finding is that ? we don?t even do it on Twitter. If you have an issue with Twitter ? I know T-Mobile responds to you with a human being and help you out. We?re saying we?re going to try to respond everywhere, but the one place, if you need an issue answered, is going to be email. 

We?re seeing thought that the bot can respond to a lot of questions in real time, and then eventually pass the best, or the ones that can?t be answered by the bot, to a human being. Right now, to a human being in email. In the future I can see it ? us, actually putting a human being into chat.

Jaime:	I love that though. Because eventually I feel like it will free up our time. Right now, it?s kind of that in-between stage, where it?s kind of annoying. But if you guys get in on it soon ? Yeah, go ahead.

Andrew:	What we?ve seen our clients do is this ? because people will hire our graduates from Bot Academy to build bots for them. And what we see is this: Sometimes they actually want the person to respond. 

What they?ll start doing is tagging what people click on within the bot, how they interact with the bot, and if someone is a really good lead, they will email, Ping, Slack, whatever it takes, they?ll make a phone call to the person on the team and say, ?Hey, hey there?s a hot lead right now. This is worth $10,000.00 to us,? or whatever ? we?re talking about law-firms using this ? law-firms for, what?s it called ? for immigration law firm ? ?Here?s someone especially important for us to talk to.? We?re gonna Ping someone on the team, they?re gonna jump in to chat, and they?re gonna respond. It doesn?t have to be instantaneous because whenever the human being comes in, the clients phone will buzz, they?ll get a message, and they?ll see that they could jump back in the conversation.

Jaime:	Oh, that?s awesome. So, we can rise to the top of the things that do matter most for the potential prospects. Because nobody wants to lose out on money either waiting in there forever. Okay, that?s amazing. I know we have to start wrapping up for at least you. And you?re apparently flying to Lisbon right after this, which is amazing. Have fun. I?m gonna still ask a question that I always do: What?s one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million.

Andrew:	So, we talked about how you should take 10 to 20 percent of your time and go try something brand new. I suggest you do something like ? maybe you see VR as interesting, go do VR. Maybe you hear crypto currency ? It?s always been interesting to you but you?re not sure, you?ve been laughing at it, go and spend $10.00, or a 50, or a $100.00 buying some crypto currency to get a sense of it. 

You?re hearing me talk about chatbots ? maybe you spend your 10 percent time, just going and setting up a chatbot and seeing what that?s like. Or, you?ve heard a bunch of interviews on Eventual Millionaire, maybe there?s someone who did something. Spend 10 percent of your time doing something that seems a little silly, but you?re genuinely curious about it, and see if it can actually change your business. I didn?t expect to get into chatbots. I thought I would just do Mixergy and nothing but. Sometimes those 10 percent things end up changing not just your business but your life.

Jaime:	And so, you?re not the paper-guy that?s got stuck with [inaudible] [00:34:27]

Andrew:	That?s exactly true, yeah.

Jaime:	Andrew?s allowing you to play guys. So, go play and it could turn into something even more amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. And give them the link one more time to chatbot to test it.

Andrew:	Oh, I got a photo of the two of us here on Skype, that I?m gonna put on there. It?s gonna be at botacademy.com/masters. You?ll se a big blue button where you can press and try my chatbot. And if you don?t like it, just hit delete. I have no power to stop you.

Jaime:	Thank you so much for coming on the show today Andrew, I appreciate it.

Tags: Andrew Warner, Business Owner, chatbot open rates, chatbot small business, chatbots, entrepreneur podcast, eventual millionaire, facebook chatbots, how does chatbots work, jaime masters, millionaire entrepreneurs, podcast, start-ups / startups, startup entrepreneur, top entrepreneurs

Categories: All, Customer Service, Featured Millionaire Interview, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

Learn More