Contactually had been hearing a lot about how their users are on Facebook Messenger or Slack for most of their work day, making it harder for them to make time to use Contactually. So, at the D.C.-based startup's quarterly brainstorming day in September, they came up with an idea to bring the Contactually software to the user instead.
On Tuesday, Contactually rolled out its new chatbot integration for Facebook Messenger and Slack. (UPDATE: The chatbot integration has been discontinued.)
Contactually's software is designed to make it easier for people to stay in touch with professional connections. A user logs into Contactually, imports a list of contacts and then Contactually reminds the user every so often when to ping your contact so you don't forget to keep in touch.
Now, with the new chatbots, users can skip heading to the Contactually site and network from the comfort of their Facebook messages and Slack private messages. Premium users can send a note to the Contactually bot when they have a new contact to add, or when they need help remembering who that one person is who they just ran into at a happy hour — without having to leave Facebook Messenger or Slack.
Zvi Band, CEO of Contactually, told DC Inno that the team was intrigued by the idea of being an application that users literally talk with everyday, rather than just a normal web application.
"A lot of our real estate customers, they are on Facebook and Slack all day long," Band said. "One of the challenges that people face is that they spend so much time doing other things that they don’t have time to use Contactually."
The new chatbots are available to premium users and are still in beta testing. Band said he hopes this helps those customers who were running out of time to use Contactually, but also he's not going to fret if the chatbots go unused.
"We may drop it. But if this is something that every Contactually user uses then we’ll focus on that," he said. "It’s a very big experiment that we’re beginning to explore."
