Square Appointments: Square assistant launch

Prior to Q1 2020, Square Appointments subscribers could turn on automatic text responses to confirm appointments with clients - but had no way to capture responses from customers who responded to these messages. This gap lead to many missed messages from clients and a 10x higher possibility of a no-show for the seller. To capture this audience, Square Appointments collaborated with our AI Conversations team to create Square Assistant.

For this launch, I worked across teams and disciplines to bring this feature to market. I partnered closest with the product team to determine our go-to-market strategy by identifying key value props to highlight in launch comms. Considering we were launching an AI bot to an audience of small businesses, my goal was to make the marketing language accessible and human. Incorporating the research from seller interviews, I was also mindful to draft the product itself and marketing materials to keep the seller in control. Like many, these sellers are wary of terms like “artificial intelligence” and have a fear that it would encroach on the way they run their business.

I also partnered with the AI Conversations team to draft the actual text messages. We went through over a dozen use cases and messaging types to create language that was direct and helpful. As depicted above, we also did a lot of initial work to cut down the number of touch points by mapping responses directly to the model’s answers.

We used empathy and feedback from sellers to think about when it was appropriate to have the bot prompt clients to contact the seller directly. For example, in text messages where the bot detects anger, we figured it might not be the best time to have them contact the store.

While we were unable to test within the scope of this launch, it was determined a great success by the Conversations team. The team (a custom AI chatbot company acquired by Square) marked a 15% lift in “successful” conversations from any of their previous client work. Within 1 week of launch, Square Assistant had responded to over 1000 client messages.

Square appointments: Processing time Launch

For this launch, I was the acting Product Marketing Manager for Square Appointments. I worked closely with the product team here to coordinate everything from launch comms and creative assets to feature nomenclature and support materials. We learned a lot along the way, adding in modules to help sellers in our beta find and use the feature, which we replicated for the broader roll out.

Initially, processing time was called gap time. Gap time was preferred by the team because it sounded simpler and was justified as one of our competitors was using it. However, interviews and app-store/search engine keyword research concluded that sellers were more familiar with processing time, making it the obvious choice.

Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, we were unable to launch our paid marketing efforts or social media marketing campaigns. While health and beauty sellers were some of the hardest hit by the pandemic and total appointment numbers are down, processing time increases in usage week-over-week and continues to be a reason sellers have switched to (or back to) Square Appointments.