In the automation world, there is an increasing trend: the chatbot or virtual assistant. With technological development (advances in AI and cloud technologies), they are more and relevant (thanks to the rising comfort level) and a new marketing area (conversational marketing) have been built around it. And of course, WeChat provides brands and businesses with a framework to build bots in their ecosystem.
WeChat has paved the way to integrate chatbot interactions into the public account interface (first) as well as Mini Program.
1. Introduction to WeChat chatbot
What is WeChat virtual assistant?
Automatic reply for interaction happening the WeChat Official Account chat-like screen and a chat section in a Mini Program.
Similar to bots integration that can be found on Facebook Messenger
Use cases
- Customers services
How can bots be integrated? What is the framework?
With WeChat API, Wechat has been developed as a platform to be integrated with AI. WeChat has had a bot platform since 2013.
- WeChat Bots | [botnerds]
- China, WeChat, and the Origins of Chatbots | March 2017 [Medium – Chatbots Magazine]
- Introducing MiniBot – Chatbots in Mini Program | May 2018 [RikaiLabs]
- Levelling up Your WeChat Through Chatbots | March 2017 [Madjor]
2. How to develop a WeChat chatbots
- How to make chatbot your personal servant? | April 2019 [Medium David Yu]
- Build your WeChat chatbot | July 2018 [Medium – David Yu]
- Building Chatbots For WeChat — Part #1 | March 2017 [Medium – Chatbots Magazine]
3. Bots examples
Here is a list of case studies to leverage bot interaction on WeChat
Different chatbot interactions through the marketing funnel
- 247Tickets
- Xiaoice / 微软小冰
- Xiaobing, Microsoft’s Chinese chatbot, isn’t an assistant like Alexa or Siri. Microsoft says it’s a “virtual companion,” able to make conversation with users — usually with some sass thrown in. But now it’s been banned by Tencent for a third time. Tencent left a message on Xiaobing’s WeChat page saying that the chatbot had violated a regulation, one that targets public social media accounts. But they didn’t say what it actually did to violate that regulation
- TeacherBot
- AskJerry
If you think of some improvements or missing information…
Let’s build up the knowledge around WeChat bots collectively