The Bot Forge

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Help for Heroes is a UK-based charity that helps injured and sick veterans and their families. We offer full recovery, from physiotherapy to psychological support. We also have a recovery college.

I’m in charge of digital marketing for the organizations. Anything to do with social media, the site and online acquisitions falls under my remit.

What challenge were you trying to address with The Bot Forge?

Because of the lockdown in 2020, a lot of the face-to-face activities we were doing with veterans had to stop. More and more of them were coming to our site, and we had a challenge with navigation.

We wanted the ability to direct people in a quick, effective, and easy manner.

The other challenge we had was with our supporter care team. They were getting quite a lot of phone calls, asking questions about the site. We wanted to free up their time by making the site content a bit more accessible.

After a bit of analysis and research, we came to the idea that a site bot was what we needed. We spoke to quite a few suppliers and eventually chose The Bot Forge.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Bot Forge scoped, designed, and built a bot for us. They also helped with the scripting. They gave us example scripts explaining how it all worked, and they proofed the scripts we provided, making sure we were going down the right routes and weren’t wasting time.

The site is built on Umbraco. The Bot Forge provided us with a bit of code for the bot, which our developers added to the site.

What is the team composition?

We’ve only worked with Adrian (Director).

How did you come to work with The Bot Forge?

We looked at 6–7 bot providers, and I spoke to a few people responsible for digital at charities using bots.

I came up with a shortlist, looked at all their sites, and The Bot Forge seemed to be what we wanted. They’d worked with other charities and kept things really simple. I had calls with 3-4 providers, and Adrian made everything seem simple and pain-free.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent under £5,000 (approximately $6,000 USD) so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with The Bot Forge in June or July 2020, and they’re providing ongoing services.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

I’m really pleased with the bot and services we’re getting from The Bot Forge. Since we started working with Adrian, he completely lived up to his promises. The end-to-end process has been very slick.

On average, we’re having 15-18 people per day engaging with the bot. This isn’t just opening it up, but actually typing a question or pressing a button for one of the preset ones. We’re really pleased with how it’s going.

I’ve spoken to Adrian last Monday about the bot and a couple of other potential projects.

How did The Bot Forge perform from a project management standpoint?

Adrian was fantastic in explaining and managing the work. We’ve used Google Docs to collaborate, but this was a straightforward project.

There was no need for Asana or other big project management tools. We’d have probably spent more time loading things into something like that than actually getting them done.

That’s what I liked about The Bot Forge: there was no fluff in the cost, timeline, or anything else. The time we paid for went into actually building the bot, and it’s going into improving it on an ongoing basis, rather than into account or project management on their side.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team was very straightforward to deal with. It was very much about them looking at how they could deliver in the quickest amount of time, with the least amount of investment required.

The Bot Forge understood our pain as a charity with a small team, and they took away a lot of the mystery and fluff from the process.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think so. They were very good, and we’re still working with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d tell them to speak to The Bot Forge about the challenge rather than going in with a set of preconceived ideas. They’ll come back with a bespoke solution.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of Stitch AI, a startup that provides a number of digital engagement solutions. Essentially, we provide AI bots and messaging solutions to our clients.

What challenge were you trying to address with The Bot Forge?

We needed a partner to develop a web portal to allow us to sell multiple chatbots to our end clients. Our bot is based around linking calendar availability of team members to a bot, enabling quick website inquiry-lead allocation. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Bot Forge has worked on one main project—a platform to manage the chatbots for our customers. In the portal, we can set up a client’s chatbots, using a template that The Bot Forge created. The portal allows us to roll out similar bots for multiple clients without having to create them on an individual basis.

What is the team composition?

We have one main point of contact.

How did you come to work with The Bot Forge?

We met with a few different firms, but most of them required that we provide a detailed outline of what we wanted and how we wanted it built. The Bot Forge, on the other hand, just listened to our idea and said they had the technical capabilities to build the solution, so we hired them.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent about £10,000 (approximately $12,700 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We partnered in September 2018, and the work is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We haven’t started testing yet, so we don’t any metrics. However, we’re happy with their work, and they’ve fixed any bugs in a timely manner.

How did The Bot Forge perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re responsive and organized, providing all the necessary information to track project progress. The team is incredibly easy to work with.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They took our idea and made it into reality.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In reality, we'd love to have reduced the project timescales, but this would have come at an increased budget. It would be hard to mark The Bot Forge down on this matter. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

If you're working on a bot-related project, consider partnering with them.