The most ubiquitous form of AI-based conversational experiences today are certainly chatbots. These can come in many forms, like the chat boxes that appear when you enter a website or the ones you are redirected to when you want to get in contact with customer support. Even the bots you can chat with to get information about a business or to place an order, via Facebook Messenger, Instagram or WhatsApp, fall under this category. 

In many cases, reflections about automation aren’t necessarily the priority of the business and rightfully so. These might start crawling into meetings at a later stage, when there is a more pressing need to, e.g., lift some weight off customer service, or support users in interacting with a complex UI.

The 3 apps we’ll be talking about today tell us another story. DoNotPay, Cleo, and Lark have built their products around chat. Their unique bots are the reason why customers prefer them over competitors and the reason they feel compelled to come back.

Looking at the feisty robot lawyer from DoNotPay, the sassy finance-savvy Cleo, and the friendly health coach Lark, we’ll see what chat-based products can bring to the table and how making chat the centerpiece of their offering has helped them reach audiences where they’re at.

Let’s start with DoNotPay.

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DoNotPay: Taking the hassle out of bureaucracy and litigations

Appealing toll booth tickets, breaking your lease, canceling any service or subscription, filing HR complaints, asking for hotel upgrades, and even annulling your marriage: these are all things DoNotPay can help you with. 

The app houses the world’s first robot lawyer, whose clients can chat with to explain their situation and instantly find solutions to their problems. DoNotPay takes the burden and cost out of getting legal advice, effectively allowing everyone to make their voices heard and obtain what they are entitled to.

Being able to chat with the bot, rather than having to sift through the thousands of resources and articles that the AI relies on, notably reduces the time and effort to access solutions. DoNotPay replicates the traditional lawyer-client dynamic, which is already familiar to the user and allows the bot to gradually collect all the needed information to bring their case forward.

Thanks to its new ChatGPT integration, leveraging GPT-3’s generative capabilities, the chatbot will also soon be able to take it all one step further. A first demo already showed how it’s already equipped to do things like obtaining better rates by directly interacting with any customer service agent, by referring to service problems the user has had to deal with in the past and threatening to take the phone company to court.

And that’s not the end of it, as CEO Joshua Browder has confidently announced on Twitter its plans to take DoNotPay in front of the US Supreme Court. In fact, they’re willing to “pay any lawyer or person $1,000,000 with an upcoming case to wear AirPods and let our robot lawyer argue the case by repeating exactly what it says”.

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Cleo: The sassy big sister that helps you figure out money

With 4 million users and over 78,000 reviews in the app store at a 4.6 out of 5 stars average, Cleo is improving its customers’ financial health one step at a time. Bringing empathy and fun to the infamously un-fun world of financial management tools, the AI empowers its users to learn more about their spending habits, to make better decisions about money.

Chatting with GIF-savvy Cleo feels very much like talking to your funny yet brutally honest big sisters. She’ll hype you up when you need it, but she’s equally not afraid to playfully roast you about spending all your savings in McDonald’s orders. It brings awareness to an area of life a lot of people would rather not think about, in an entertaining, jargon-free way.

Cleo has a personality that is unlike many products born out of the fintech world. The fact that it’s listening to the user and responding to their specific needs, in a uniquely sassy tone, takes the ick out of the “I need to take control of my money” equation, in a way that its non-conversational competitors haven’t yet been able to.

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Lark: Achieving health goals one step at a time

Providing expert knowledge about weight goals, stress, sleep, or managing specific health conditions related to blood pressure, or diabetes, isn’t necessarily an innovative idea in the world of digital health products. While many apps out there have been very good at guaranteeing the scientificity of the information they provide, the emotional needs of the user who’s hoping to improve their health have perhaps received less attention.

That’s what Lark seems to be fixing. Relying on the world’s best experts in chronic health management, patient wellness, research and technology, the bot also acts as a compassionate digital coach. Motivation and step-by-step personalized guidance on how to set up and stick to new healthier habits are its key driving forces, to support users in tracking their progress and keeping them accountable.

According to their website, almost 2 million people have already benefited from the Diabetes Prevention Program, Diabetes Care, Hypertension Care, and Wellness programs. Receiving insights on personal health trends, personalized encouragement, and bite-sized educational content is ultimately what makes it that much easier to follow the program.

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Inspired to explore a chat-forward strategy for your company? We can help.

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Feel free to spill out all your conversation-related needs and ideas via voice message or good old email.

And if you’re still hungry for knowledge, follow us on LinkedIn for weekly updates on the world of conversational AI, or check out our article where we discuss how Conversational Marketing is benefitting companies, like the German retail platform Snocks and global cybersecurity and compliance solution leader Proofpoint.