Is anyone building SMS bots for people who don’t have internet connectivity?
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Do they need bots?
Some services are more intuitive via SMS/USSD than mobile apps/ web apps
Isn’t USSD already catering for that?
Isn’t this particularly expensive for the service provider?
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A dedicated USSD is very expensive to set up and takes 6 months for approval. And its actually more expensive because you pay for user sessions.
An SMS bot can be used for anything from providing customer service to providing automated responses to user queries when hooked up to APIs. This is crazily useful in areas where people have no internet access, use dumb phones or are not literate enough to use your newfangled mobile/web app.
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If it takes off you can then hook it up to a shortcode.
Would love this question to be answered, anyone ? 
Some people are building some pretty interesting things with “old school tech” like sms. Bots inclusive
This is an SMS Weather Bot.
Here is how it works:
Send weather related queries to 09060279005.
Example include:
“What is the weather in Asokoro, Abuja?”
“How’s the weather in Surulere, Lagos?”
“Would I need an umbrella in London today?”
The weather forecast of these areas will be returned to you as a text message.
SMS bots can be used for anything from responding to FAQs of a service or website to querying a database for information. The use cases are endless.
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@pystar don’t forget that SMS charges increase with the number of pages. And thus, a good number of people do not speak “proper English” like you posted here in their SMS.
It can be taught to understand " broken English" too
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Pystar thanks for your views. I totally agree that for Africa, apps need to incorporate SMS solutions as we are a bit of a way from full smartphone adoption. Don’t Bots need some kind of AI interface so that they recognize questions? I am interested in how Bots can be used for my business. can we speak? I can pay for your time
Bots are everywhere and can be integrated with popular messaging like FB message, kik, slack, telegram, SMS and even integrate with existing website or apps. I wonder why as low cost as it is to use bots, businesses in Africa are slow to adapt and use it. Am a bot builder that makes use of NLP to build conversational interface and I can attest to the effectiveness and simplicity of bots to customers.
DM me if u interested to deploy one for your business.
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