AiC Episode 73

In this episode, Teri welcomes Obaid Ahmed, the founder and CEO of Botmock, a Canadian company that is all about making voice design easy for all.

Welcome, Obaid Ahmed!

Obaid is an entrepreneur, mentor, technologist at heart, and an expert in building technology, UX/product design, and large scale software design and business models. He has been a mentor for early stage startups, providing them with advice and insights on their business models and get-to-market plans. He was the creator of UmmahHuba, a project that gives Muslim communities around the world access to crowd-funding opportunities. He was awarded the Youth Business Entrepreneur in 2012 and was also involved in YoungMaker project which introduced the concept of technology to the youth via a 3D printer.

Botmock not only allows the publishing of voice skills to Alexa but also to many other platforms. Botmock lets people create conversation flows and interactive prototypes from a simple drag-and-drop editor, then share or test those prototypes and get feedback in one centralized location.

Getting into Voice

  • Voice came into the picture for him when he bought his first Echo device in 2016. The device piqued his curiosity. It also frustrated him because it wasn’t working the way they were advertising it, so he started looking into how to develop better voice applications and use the device better in his daily life.

Botmock

  • It is a wire-framing tool for anybody who is building conversational apps. They help companies, brands, individuals and designers build better experiences for consumers/users of conversational apps.
  • They design for 10 different platforms, not just Alexa. The platforms include Slack and Facebook Messenger.
  • It’s built in a way that it can be used for simple as well as complicated use cases.

The Key Principles for Botmock users

  • When a user starts a project on Botmock, they should start by writing down some of their scripts and flow charts on the experience that they want their users to have. They shouldn’t worry about delivery at this point.
  • Botmock recommends focusing on getting users to the point and the wow factor quickly. They advise enabling multi-modal capabilities.
  • They should then test out the preview of the skill in audio in order to improve on the experience.

Voice Design with Obaid Ahmed of Botmock

The Platforms

  • When users want to switch from one platform to another, for example when they are designing for Facebook Messenger and want to switch to voice, they try to apply the same conversational principles, but that doesn’t usually work.
  • That is because people on Facebook Messenger will have a different sense of urgency, demographics and needs. The skill designer has to design the conversation to fit that mental model for the user.
  • With enterprise modes like Microsoft Teams or Slack, there might be users who are okay with getting a lot of information at the same time because they understand the business use case.
  • Botmock is suitable for people who have intermediate skills in chatbots and voice design in general.

Actual Use Cases

  • Botmock has a breadth of customers including healthcare, entertainment, travel, and other enterprise customers.
  • One example is the Canadian Blood Services that used Botmock to build a bot on their Facebook page. They were struggling with what to build on Facebook Messenger. When they were trying to find out what the experience could look like if they were to implement a bot, they realized that people just wanted information so they built an information delivery mechanism through Facebook Messenger. People can message the bot and learn things like where they can donate blood or ask questions around when they can donate blood, how they can donate blood, how old they have to be, and much more. It also includes very interactive FAQs.
  • Sometimes content has to be vetted before it’s put out.
  • Chatbots are becoming more and more mainstream.

Data Storage

  • Botmock stores all the customers’ data on their end. They don’t connect with the end platforms at all.
  • Everything is done through their own proprietary systems and is safe and secure in the cloud.
  • They don’t share any content with third parties.
  • They have servers in Canada, Europe, and the US. They can customize servers for enterprise customers.

The Future for Botmock

  • They are doubling down on the design side of things. They are improving on visibility testing capabilities, including enabling other ways of testing other than within teams.
  • They are also focusing on multi-modal support where designers can create their voice experiences for more than just Alexa, Google and voice assistant devices. They want to support voice design for all devices and platforms where voice will play a big role.
  • They are building the next phase of their technology to help designers work in a multi-modal environment.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

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