Tell users about your bot
Expected completion 20 minutes.
Your bot is live and ready for your users. Now it’s time to tell them about it. This session will teach you how to communicate the value of your bot, announce the launch of your bot and start driving traffic to your bot.
What should I say?
Being able to articulate the value of your bot in a concise manner is not always easy. That’s why we recommend having a customer value proposition statement ready.
A value proposition is a positioning statement that explains what benefit you provide for who, and how you do it uniquely well. This tool is extremely useful when communicating with your users — Frank Cespedes from Harvard Business School states:
“Any strategy lives or dies on the basis of its customer value proposition.”
No matter if your audience is your colleagues, the partners who need to approve your bot, a particular organisation or the general public, you need to be able to explain to them:
- How does your product solve or help address their problems?
- What specific benefits can they expect from your product?
- Why should they use your product over another?
The best value propositions can be read and understood in under five seconds. Here is an example from Uber:
“Uber is the smartest way to get around. One tap and a car comes directly to you. Your driver knows exactly where to go. And payment is completely cashless.”
Try generating your own value proposition now with our Customer Value Proposition (CVP) bot!
Where do I say it?
Now that you know how to communicate the value of your bot, where should you say it? What’s the best way to reach your intended users, and tell them about the great bot you just built and launched?
This will depend slightly on whether your bot is internal or external facing. We’ve drafted some guidance for how to create communications below depending on whether your bot is internal or external.
Internal comms
When launching a bot internally, you may need to send a few different communications to your users to get their attention. Your users are used to doing things a certain way, and may need some encouragement from you to use your bot instead. This is a form of change management!
We’ve created a list of the key types of communications that are most successful when launching a bot internally:
Intranet page:
- Does your organisation have an intranet or knowledge base where everyone goes to find information and resources? This could be a great place for your bot.
- Draft some content to sit around your bot that explains what it does, and articulates its value.
Pre-launch email:
- Let your users know that your bot is coming! Get them excited about it and articulate its value now so that when your bot is launched, they’re ready to use it.
Launch email:
- This is the exciting part — tell your users that your bot is live!
- Share the link or give instructions for how to access the bot, and where to go if they have questions or feedback.
Internal social post:
- If your organisation has an internal social channel like Yammer, consider launching your bot here too, to help reach more people.
- Include only the key information about your bot, and links to access more information, and of course the bot itself!
Redirect email:
- Is your bot replacing an existing process? Consider setting up an email or message that redirects the user to your bot when they try to complete that process using the old method.
Reminder & feedback email:
- It might take a few tries to get people to use your bot. Don’t be shy about sending a reminder.
- Also take this opportunity to ask people for feedback, and discover new ways to improve your bot.
Example launch email
Here is an example of an email you could send announcing the launch of the intake bot we built together in Module 3:
Subject line: Announcing the Intake Bot: Get legal help quickly!
Hi all,
I am excited to announce the official launch of the Intake Bot!
The Legal Team gets many more requests for help than we can keep up with, and as a result responses are often delayed or incomplete.
This bot can answer common legal questions, generate commonly requested legal documents and send legal enquiries directly to us. Using this bot to request legal help or complete legal tasks will make the process faster and easier, both for you and us!
You can access the bot here [link to bot], or on the Legal Team’s intranet page here [link to page]. Please use the bot for all future legal enquiries or requests, and the Legal Team will follow up with you if required.
If you have any questions about how to use the bot or this new process, please email [Legal Team contact].
We’re very excited to launch this new digital tool, and to continue to innovate we deliver legal services to [the organisation]. We hope you enjoy using the bot as much as we do!
Sincerely,
The Legal Team
Outside the (in)box
There are also some additional ways to communicate the launch of your bot with internal teams, other than email. Don’t forget about:
- Newsletters.
- Department emails.
- Town hall meeting announcement.
- Executive sponsor backing: statement, email, video to generate excitement.
External comms
If your bot is public-facing, it is your job to get it in front of your external users. Are you simply redirecting existing website traffic to your bot, or do you need to attract new visitors? This will largely determine the amount of work necessary for marketing your bot.
Consider embedding the bot in a prominent position on the homepage and use engaging copy and good design to ensure that new and returning visitors are compelled to use it. If new users are your primary target, consider leveraging your organisation’s existing marketing efforts, setting up paid ads for public-facing bots, and take advantage of public relations in order to get coverage on your bot to a wider audience within your trade.
Amplify your voice!
If you have a marketing and communications team or an external marketing advisor, this is where you should bring them in! They likely have a finger on the pulse of your target audience and how to best reach them. Leverage their knowledge along with your company’s existing network of clients and social media followers to help extend your reach to new users. Are you simply redirecting existing traffic, or do you need to attract new visitors? This will largely determine the amount of work necessary for marketing your bot.
Pull it all together
Now you’ve learned everything you need to know to launch your bot. If you’re feeling like there’s a lot to remember, interact with our launch checklist bot below. After you answer a series of questions it will generate a tailored pre-launch checklist for you to use as you finalise your bot. You can also generate the full checklist to use for future bot building projects.
Once you have your pre-launch checklist, get started ticking off the items so you can finally launch, and tell everyone about your bot!
Then, go to the next session to learn about what’s left to do after you launch your bot.