How and why we invented chatbot builder Botmother

About us and our origin story

The three founders of Botmother met back when Pavel Durov hadn't even invented Telegram yet. Together, the friends organized their first-ever business, an internet shop. But the business didn't work out, the shop was sold, and the guys went their separate ways. But after three years, they came up with the idea of creating bots at the same time while working in different spheres.

BOTMOTHER COMMAND FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:
CONSTANTIN TSUKANOV, VITALIY PRIKHODKO, SERGEY BUDYAKOV

Constantin and Vitaliy developed business software. They worked with legal entities, and they often had to check details of companies for billing purposes. To obtain extracts from the USRLE (Uniform State Register of Legal Entities, also known as EGRUL) in seconds, they created a bot on Telegram. @egrul_bot suddenly became the most popular business bot in Telegram.

Meanwhile, Sergey was working on Usedesk, a service for automating client support in different channels. At meetings, potential customers inquired about automated solutions for customer support in messengers. One company needed a bot in Telegram which would help users to understand their knowledge base. Then Sergey wrote to Constantin and Vitaliy, and they began to work together.

And that was how the project Usebots was started: the guys created bots for companies to order. There were a lot of orders, and soon they needed a tool that would expedite the process of bot development. Thus, they came up with the idea of a bot constructor, where you can quickly make a bot with pre-made building blocks.

After Facebook opened its platform, bots became a popular topic at IT and business conferences. Suddenly everyone wanted bots. It became clear that the idea for the bot constructor was relevant not only for developer teams. Businesses needed a way to create bots cheaply, quickly and without the help of programmers.

In August 2016, the team began to develop the Botmother platform, and three months later the constructor was ready.

About chatbot builder Botmother

Botmother has a serious advantage over other bot constructors: a bot which is constructed with Botmother can work in all messengers. In Botmother, any mortal can create a bot in an hour — knowledge of programming is optional.

We have two types of clients. The first is companies that need bots for their business but lack the time to communicate with contractors. The second is studios that create bots or just want to try creating them. Botmother helps them to create bots faster and thus earn more.

We are in favor of smart and useful bots. That's why we taught the constructor to connect to the APIs of external systems and collect the necessary information. With the help of such clever bots, users can manage orders, check account balances, buy plane tickets, etc. Or the bot can inform them about important events: bill due date, flight delay, mother-in-law's birthday, etc.

We believe that it's wrong to run bots only because "everyone else is doing it, so we have to". Bots must bring a profit to the business. We added stats in Botmother so you can evaluate the usefulness of a bot and quickly check hypotheses. You can see how many people interact with the bot, in which messenger the bot is more popular, how many times people have clicked the "Buy" button, etc. The analysis will give you insights into how you can modify the bot, or perhaps you'll even discover that it's not the best idea to have a bot. It may be strange to hear this from the creators of a bot constructor, but we admit that bots aren't necessarily for everyone :)

We understand that bots are still a new thing for businesses. To make it easier, we offer bots with prepared scripts for various industries. Just choose the appropriate script, see what components the bot consists of, and build your own bot on that basis.

About our mission

Five years ago, in order to submit the numbers on your electricity meter, you needed to visit the utility company's website and click a bunch of buttons in a bad interface. Now, at the desired date, a courteous bot asks how many kilowatts you've used that month. After the next step of development, the bot will withdraw the required sum from your card and advise you how to save electricity next month. Humans no longer have to adapt to the language of machines. Bots help you to communicate with computer programs in human language.

We believe that the future belongs to bots that will save us from routine tasks and simplify life for ordinary people, and we're planning to create new tools for the development of such bots. Probably text bots in their current form definitely aren't the last stage of development: there will be other bots soon, for smart glasses, smart contact lenses, and smart sperm with AI. But we're ready to adapt to all new technologies, and the constructor will be compatible with most bot platforms available in the future.

We will be glad to cooperate and discuss new ideas. Drop us a line to hi@botmother.com.The Botmother Team: Sergey, Vitaly, and Konstantin.