Dashbot now helps bot developers building on Google Assistant measure what works

Dashbot announced on Thursday that it has integrated itself with Google to provide the analytics backend for bot developers building on top of Google Assistant. This comes on the heels of Google launching conversational actions for its virtual assistant.

When implemented, Dashbot promises its bot analytics service will provide not only sentiment analysis, but also help developers better understand the conversations, the AI responsiveness, and more. What makes this significant is that since its launch this summer, Dashbot’s primary focus was Facebook Messenger, Slack, Kik, and similar apps. The tie-in with Google Assistant, and especially Google Home, highlights its appeal to more voice-enabled devices.

“We’re excited to power analytics for all of Google’s conversational interface products and to provide developers with the most powerful insights and tools,” remarked Dashbot CEO Arte Merritt. “Conversational interfaces are the future, this makes them smarter, faster.”

Launched on Thursday, Actions on Google is the equivalent of Alexa Skills, only specific to Google Assistant. More than 50 startups and brands have already signed up to launch skills for the platform, including Netflix, CNN, and Quora, with Google establishing initial priorities around purchases, reservations, and appointment bookings.

It’s one thing to build a skill for Google Assistant, but you won’t really know how successful your interactions are without the right analytics. In the bot realm it’s still very much the wild, wild west when it comes to measuring metrics, but Dashbot believes its solution will work.

Although unveiled today, Google’s conversational actions aren’t going to be available in SDK form until early 2017. So Dashbot’s announcement is mainly an effort to get ahead of the chatter so developers think about what they need to build on the Google Assistant platform.

Dashbot currently supports more than 1,100 bots on its platform and has processed more than 230 million messages so far. The company recently raised $2 million in a seed round led by ff Venture Capital.