The document outlines the lifecycle of chatbots, emphasizing the importance of user experience over technical challenges for successful bots. It details various stages including requirement gathering, user story creation, feature identification, testing, publishing, monitoring, and analyzing bot performance. Gupshup, a leader in messaging and bot development, provides resources and tools for creating and managing bots effectively.

1. The lifecycle of a
chatbot

2. Sohan Maheshwar
• Leads Developer Relations at Gupshup
• @soganmageshwar
• Likes comic books and frisbees

3. “The difficulty in building a chatbot is less a technical one and more an issue
of user experience. The most successful bots will be the ones that users want
to come back to regularly and that provide consistent value.”
- Matt Hartman, Director of Seed Investments at Betaworks

4. • Software, websites and apps have a dev. lifecycle
• Bot functionality is only going to get more complex
• Formal framework around the bot lifecycle

6. Requirement
• Gather market requirements
• Create user stories with
conversation in mind

7. Spec
• Identify the features and
functionality of the bot
• Choose your messaging
platform(s)
• NLP usage

8. Script
• The conversation is the interface
• Getting input from the user
• Variables in input
• Slot Filling
• Hand-crafting output
• Character
• Friendly
• Guide the user
• Script writers

9. Architect
• Engineering design for the
bot
• Data persistence -
Personalisation & Context
• Cross platform APIs

10. Develop
• Range of tools for bot
development
• Ready-to-publish templates
• Conversation editors
• Cloud-based IDEs
• Custom development
• Simplicity is control

11. Test
• Diversity in messaging apps
• Difference in rendering
messages
• Bot testing tools

12. Deploy
• Deployed to a hosted
environment.
• The hosted environment must
be stable & needs its own
monitoring and devops support

13. Publish
• Approval process for each
messaging platform
• Approval time ranges from
instant (Telegram) to a few days
(Facebook)
• Submissions require bot assets
(icons, videos)

14. Monitor
• Monitor using actual
conversational scripts.
• The bot may be unresponsive
to certain user conversations.

15. Promote
• Bot Store Optimisation
• Cross-platform bot stores
• Third party referrals

16. Analyze
• Messages/session
• Retention
• Location, gender
demographics
• Sentiment analysis

17. Requirement
• Infer new requirements from
analytics
• Create new user stories

18. Questions?

19. © Copyright Gupshup 2016
Gupshup has been a leader in messaging and bots
for many years
19
Cloud APIs for SMS
• Leading cloud
messaging platform
handling 3-4 billion
messages per month.
Launched 2010.
Teamchat messaging
app
• Pioneered structured
messages in chat. Built
and deployed
hundreds of bots.
Launched 2014.
Bot Platform
• Leverages prior
experience and
expertise. Since f8,
2500 bots created,
paying customers.
Launched 2016.
Gupshup has been enabling
advanced messaging-based
services (now called bots)
globally since 2010.

20. Happy Bot Building!