
Show HN: Choosify – Intercom Alternative with Auto Responses - jos-
https://choosify.chat/
======
jos-
Hi HN,

I'm launching Choosify ([https://choosify.chat](https://choosify.chat)), a
website plugin for live chat / customer support.

It allows you to chat with website visitors directly via Slack. Conversations
can be partially automated using a flow builder.

The main reasons for developing Choosify are:

1) Chatbot platforms like Dialogflow are too complicated for the average user
regarding input/output context.

2) Intercom is terribly expensive :)

Recently more Intercom alternatives have been launched ( _cough_ Papercups (YC
S20) _cough_ ). However, Choosify is unique in the way it allows you to set up
automated messages and responses.

I hope this will help you to talk to your customers. The free tier should be
sufficient for the average user. (Billing is not yet implemented, so it's 100%
free for now.)

Features:

\- Customizable lightweight plugin

\- Automated replies using code-free flow builder

\- Reply from Slack

\- Free tier and affordable pricing based on how many messages you
send/receive

\- Golang backend, Vue/Nuxt.js frontend

Please let me know your thoughts. Any feedback is welcome, thanks!

------
ktpsns
As a customer, I hate chatbots. They make it harder to look up information,
mainly because one has to guess the correct keywords to trigger the wanted
answer. I prefer any other UI over chatbots.

But since you are now into chatbots, here is a thing: What about exposing the
configuration to users? This way, you could offer customers an alternative way
of digging throught the informations encoded within the chatbot. I guess a lot
of people would prefer that.

~~~
jos-
You mean a 'Chatbot to FAQ page' exporter? Interesting idea, but the best way
to navigate such a page with nested questions would probably be something that
looks similar to a chat interface :)

What are the reasons why you hate chatbots most? Don't you think most them are
solved using hybrid human-bot responses?

~~~
ktpsns
Most chat windows are styled as if a human was sitting at the other end. It is
very annoying to learn just by the quality of answers that it is only a bot
answering.

I can scan information on a lengthy FAQ page or a knowledge database much
faster then I can interact with a chatbot. Just imagine the interface to the
Google search would be a chatbot. That's ridicolous. A well-done search page
which searches over on any kind of website is a better interface then a
chatbot.

