Company
Date Published
Author
Brian Donohue, Debby Shepard
Word count
1299
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Our company recently released Custom Bots, a significant update to our chatbot platform Operator, which allows customers to create entirely customized bot experiences for their business. This move was made after realizing that our initial offerings were too simplistic and didn't meet the needs of our users. We had to embrace complexity to provide more flexibility and customization options. To contain this complexity, we reused existing patterns and components from within our system, creating a WYSIWYG editor for content and actions. This approach allows customers to easily engage with the feature and form their own ideas, while also providing stable and solid first steps to help them get started. The introduction of Custom Bots leverages the power of apps, enabling users to end flows with relevant and actionable results, and delivering massive benefit while minimizing complexity. Additionally, we've found that templates can smooth out the bumps of complexity by guiding customers through the process and providing a clear starting point for their custom bots. Overall, this update is about empowering our customers to fully program and control chatbot flows, and giving them tools to make automation more relevant and mutually useful.