SMS AutoNation Lex Bot

Lex saying hi!

What inspired us

Learning about machine learning and AI is likely what pushed us to completing this project. None of the team members had any experience creating a bot so it was an experience that all of us were eager to learn about.

What it does & how we built it

Our team project consists of an AutoNation SMS bot. The chatbot lets the costumer request basic dealership information. Additionally, we mainly focused on the idea that more often than not people aren't familiar on how to interact with bots, so we've made it so that Lex guides them on the correct path at the beginning of a session. The costumer can see their upcoming appointments and check the repair order status of their vehicles. Moreover, when requesting for repair orders the costumer can request their line items of different car parts and the price of the parts. Different vehicles are stored for the costumer. Finally, the bot is integrated with SMS Twilio to receive and send text messages.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was likely creating the main hub of the bot and displaying the frequently asked information. It took us a while to figure out how the bot would not only display information inherently, but also when a customer asks for it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I think we are most proud about the fact we managed to create a bot in less than 24 hours when none of us had ever worked on one before.

What we learned

The most valuable asset we learned from the project is likely that there are many ways you can ask a question. While creating utterances the bot could potentially input, we noticed that there are many ways to say the same thing in different ways and obtain the same output.

What's next for SMS AutoNation Lex Bot

It is likely that SMS AutoNation Lex Bot will remain how it is at the moment; however, with not doubt will we make our own projects using Lex in the future.