ManyChat headquartered in San Francisco provides their chatbot building platform to deploy Facebook messenger chatbots for support and service.
$10
per month
Pypestream
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Founded in 2015, Pypestream created the Customer Engagement Center (CEC), a conversational AI solution where the core product, the Customer Engagement Center (CEC), is an all-in-one, cloud-based suite of 12 components designed to transform any business into a fully automated digital brand. With headquarters in New York, Pypestream has a customer base that includes Shell, Chase, Procter & Gamble, Google, Sling, and HBO Max. Pypestream provides customer engagement in several key industries,…
I found that ManyChat is a strong tool when receiving incoming messages, being able to create a tree of potential responses based on options given to the initiator. There is also a huge potential for complex automation (as long as the environment required by Facebook in order to send outgoing messages is maintained).
Pypestream is suited for standard chatbot and conversational flows versus more multi-departmental scenarios. They do very well with guided flow bot services which are great for agent bots within a contact center, but less so for those implementations that have a large document management implementation for FAQs. They do well with service integrations; however, at times troubleshooting edge cases that are impacting performance and adoption can take a while to remedy. I want to believe that better monitoring tools on the platform side would alleviate this for them.
Honestly, the only thing I don't like about ManyChat is their support. It seems to be almost non existent. However, that concern is negated by having a fantastic user base that helps each other out on Facebook.
ManyChat is a great tool, provides loads of features, integrations and just saves you a whole load of time once all set up. If you aren't tech-savvy or used to how digital marketing tools work, it can appear complicated. That's how I felt initially 2 years ago, and after watching tutorials online I had a better understanding of it. This is why I rated it a 7, as it's not a tool that you can just play around with and guess how it works. There's definitely a learning curve with it so I recommend doing the free training and watching video tutorials.
There is room for improvement but frankly, we haven't had the need to request for support. Everything is pretty easy to setup and there are very useful video explanation guides and walkthroughs on ManyChat's YouTube channel. The only challenge we have had was to integrate it with Zapier, it's a bit tricky because you need to do a setup workaround first, but nothing too complicated.
I've worked in the past with Chatfuel. However, I decided to switch to ManyChat due to a variety of reasons. Overall, ManyChat offers much more functionality out of the box (e.g., Facebook comments tool), sequence builders are much more intuitive. Also, they provide flexible pay as you go pricing plan, which is perfect for a startup like us.
In comparison to Microsoft Bot Framework or now Azure AI service structure, where Pypestream is better suited is in those organizations who want to truly have a partner in development. Pypestream allows the flexibility for your Dev teams to do it themselves, or to be in a managed service where you provide requirements and information and they build and allow you to test and give approvals. They are more willing to work directly with you versus a Microsoft where you will eventually get pushed off to a 3rd party partner to help with advanced implementations.
For the intended application, we experienced a negative ROI due to the inconsistency in the ability to maintain the automation without incoming responses. Since it is a free service that was meant to lead to paid services organically, the inconsistencies prevented the desired outcome.
We did experience a higher conversion rate with basic incoming messages with questions about services or products due to the ability to have pre-created responses and direction immediately supporting the prospect.
