"ONE is a campaigning and advocacy organization focused on fighting extreme poverty and preventable diseases, particularly in Africa. ONE had been using mobile technologies to reach new audiences since 2012, leveraging SMS, USSD, IVR and mobile-optimized websites to provide a simple and easy for citizens across the African continent to take action. In 2018, an audience survey revealed that for the first time, as many ONE supporters preferred to be contacted via Messenger as via SMS – a tipping point catalyzed by the release of Messenger Lite in 2016. ONE, who had by this point accrued a mobile supporter base of 2 million users, has realized that regularly re-engaging with these users via SMS or IVR was prohibitively expensive, and saw chatbots as a potential channel for more effective long term relationship building. ONE also hoped that chatbots would be a way to bypass Facebook’s increasingly obscure newsfeed algorithm, sending meaningful content directly to users’ chat inboxes using a personable, conversational format. It was against this backdrop that the organization decided to experiment with chatbots and assess their merits against multiple objectives: reaching new and existing audiences, raising awareness of campaigns and activities, getting users to take action (for example, by signing a petition), and keeping users updated on campaign outcomes. ONE’s big questions were: Would users be interested in engaging with messaging based services? Would users understand and enjoy an automated experience, including an ‘on-rails’ one not supported by a sophisticated AI engine? Would chatbots perform better than other mobile channels in getting users to take repeat actions? Could ONE save time and money engaging users via a chatbot rather than continuing with our other mobile efforts? To answer these questions, ONE set out to design and test a chatbot in the Spring of 2019. Five years later, ONE has produced 5 iterations on its first MVP (Minimum Viable Product), and wants to share key learnings with the sector, so others can see what worked and what we’d do differently." (https://www.ictworks.org/lessons-learned-running-chatbot-social-good)