9-MINUTE READ · By Misty Faucheux on March 5 2018.

Google recently publicly released Chatbase, an analytics platform designed to help users better understand the effectiveness of their chatbots. The platform had been in the testing phase for months with early adopters like HBO, Keller Williams and Ticketmaster. Now, everyone can take advantage of the new platform. But, the question becomes what is it and how does it work?

What does Chatbase do?

Created by Google’s internal research and development incubator, Area 120, it was developed by Hari Rajagopalan and Ofer Ronen. Chatbase is a free, cloud-based tool that integrates with your current Google account and allows you to integrate your bots into the analytics platform. It lets you both analyze and optimize your bots.

The purpose of this service is to help bot builders better understand the following:

How to improve the bot’s accuracy

How to enhance user experience

What best works for increasing conversions

The user interface is fairly straightforward. You are taken to a dashboard where you can see information like:

Active users

Retention cohorts

Sessions (daily sessions, daily sessions per user, session time per user and user messages per session)

If you’re familiar with Google Analytics, these metrics should be familiar to you. The goal of these stats is to provide you with information on how well the chatbot is working and to see overall trends in user behavior.

You can break the data down by the following time frames:

If you want more “real-time” feedback, then Today and Yesterday will provide you quick insights into how the bot is functioning. This is especially helpful if you just made updates. If you want to see longer-term trends, then use the Last 7 days and Last 30 days settings.

Further, you aren’t confined to a single platform with Chatbase. It’s designed to be a cross-platform bot analytics tool, so you can see how your bot is fairing across all of your different marketing channels. This helps you determine whether a particular platform needs to be better optimized. You can also review the platforms that are working well to determine if you are doing something different on them that might be contributing to overall success.

Getting started with the platform

It’s easy to sign up for the analytics platform. You simply need to go to Chatbase.com, and log in with the Google account that you want to use. Once in the dashboard, click Add Your Bot in the upper right-hand corner.

On the next screen, click Add a bot.

This will take you to a page where you’ll need to fill in the bot information.

This will create the API Key for your chatbot.

From here, however, you’re probably going to need to have your developer to assist you with setting up the code integration . Your developer will need this API key to finish the process. This person needs to connect the Chatbase Node.js library to the Chatbase REST API. You must have a Chatbase account before you can start building the code.

Note: If you’re part of a team that is working on data analytics, then you can add collaborators to monitor the data with you. Simply click Continue after the API key. This will take you to the below screen, where you can add users:

Why chatbot analytics

You can designate their permissions in this screen as well.

As mentioned, the information gathered by Chatbase is like what you see in your Google Analytics setup. So, why would you need more data similar to what you’re already collecting?

For one, you’re gathering more data – period. The more data that you can gather about your users, the more apt you are to better understand how they’re interacting with your marketing efforts and where you need to improve outreach and communications.

Two, this information can maximize the value of your data and help you make better decisions. Also, chatbots allow you to track user activity and get immediate feedback on their experience. You can figure out what “users want, how they behave and what works (or not) in a bot”. This provides a whole new way to understand your users, and if you understand user wants and needs, then you can dramatically enrich your messaging and promotions.

The session flow section is especially helpful here. You can determine where users are exiting your bots. The higher the exits on a particular bot, the more apt you are to find issues with how the bot functions or the overall user experience.

Using the data

This is similar to Behavior Flow in Google Analytics. And, just like Google Analytics, when you see a large number exit in the same spot, you want to investigate that to see if there’s an issue. You can follow the same path as most of your users and determine if there is a problem with the chatbox (bad answers, load time, etc.) that might be affecting user behavior.

We no longer live in a world where most people interact with other people to get the information that they need. Instead, we are more apt to be sent to an online forum or a chatbot that provides answers or self-service options. The problem is, however, if we as marketers don’t interact with people, we don’t know where they’re having issues or getting frustrated. And, we’ve all been to websites where they’re chatbots are a tad more than frustrating.

When users experience such poor working bots, they’re more likely to leave and go to a company where they can easily find the right answers. But, if we’re not tracking user interactions within the bots, then we’ll never know this.

While Chatbase has been tested by many large businesses, it’s designed for businesses of all sizes. Connect your bots, get your developers to finish the process, and monitor those statistics. Understand your users, and leverage the data to improve their experiences. Don’t let this be another set it and forget it tool. Use it to understand your audience, and get them what they need.

About Misty Faucheux

Misty Faucheux is an Integrated Online Marketing Specialist at Faucheux Enterprises and a guest writer for Supermetrics. She is a digital marketer, specializing in SEO, SEM, content marketing/writing and social ads. Misty helps companies develop a cohesive online marketing strategy that directly addresses their overall business goals and objectives. You can find her on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Flickr.