Just took a trip to Microsoft's Pennsylvania HQ to learn about their Bot SDK and TBH I was very impressed. I currently do bot development for a fortune 50 company and was sent to learn about the advantages Microsoft had to offer. So here we go.
IMMEDIATE VALUE ADD:
The most important contribution I found was the Microsoft Translator function. Currently my bot exists within Slack, and the brains are very much tied in to Slack's API. Microsoft's framework makes the brains and the output quite modular. The brains of the bot output to Microsofts Translator API instead of any specific service API. Microsoft then takes that Translator res.send and can automagically translate that to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Twitter, FB Messenger, SMS, and a handful of other communication services. Immediately, this allows your bot to live in a multitude of services and ultimately reach more people.
DYNAMIC FAQ:
The simplest use case outlined at the meeting was the value lost in traditional FAQ pages. If I am a customer navigating to your FAQ page and the question I am looking for doesn't exist on the page, you, the company owner, will never know what that question was. And I, the customer, leave your page dissatisfied. So, by using a bot messenger as a FAQ solution, you can prompt the potential customer to ask their question. Either you will have an answer prepared for them, in which case the interaction is successful and hopefully helpful, or the question gets logged for you in a "not prepared" bucket. From that bucket, you can see what your customers are ACTUALLY looking for, and then tailor your FAQ to better service them.
WILL BE ADDING MORE INFORMATION ON THIS GREAT MEETING IN THE FUTURE! CHEERS!
