These are the lessons Trulia learned from building a chatbot

It's a competitive real-estate rental market out there, and Trulia wanted to capitalize on the interest with a new Facebook Messenger bot it launched earlier this month.

The bot lets users search for rental properties and keep up to date on new properties when they become available. 

Trulia's bot came out of a quarterly hackathon project hosted by at real estate tech firm this past May, and the company learned a lot about bot-building. The experience showed that businesses should give bot-making a shot, even if they're not tech companies, said Yardley Ip, general manager for Trulia Rentals.

"Given that the tools are so easy to use, and it's so lightweight to develop [a bot], I think businesses should try it," Ip said. "At least, at minimum, from the customer service angle. Because there are frequently asked questions that users and customers have, and why not use a bot as a way to respond to your users quickly?"

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