People have said for years that AI bots can (and should) open the door for new onboarding experiences, given their unique ability to appeal to our humanity. I had yet to see solid evidence of this until I stumbled across Poke, a new text message-based AI agent from Interaction.
To get started with Poke, you simply text it (1-650-422-9093). Poke’s responses to my initial text were so natural and human-like that I immediately knew Interaction was onto something. It asked for me to connect an email account (or two) and then the onboarding got started.
Poke’s onboarding process here is two fold:
- You have to convince Poke to let you use it. Sounds counter intuitive, but this provides an immediate challenge that hooks you while also giving you your first taste of the product itself.
- Then, once you’re in, there’s a period of haggling. Poke itself sets the price that you pay per month, allowing the user to chat with it and negotiate a lower price.
Both of these steps were seamless, natural, and a hell of a lot of fun. In the end, after nearly three days of arguing with it, I was a Poke convert (and am currently paying $0 a month).
Here’s how it went down.
Day 1: Poke insults me and wants my money
When you first text Poke, it’ll ask you to hook up at least one email. Once this is provided, it scans your content (and does some additional internet sleuthing) to get a good idea about who you are and what you do. Then, it starts being sassy.
This may come across as a bit mean, but in conversation it immediately feels like you’re shooting the breeze with a close friend. Poke’s informal lowercase sentences and casual verbiage also helps with this effect. It’s a few simple subtle changes from the stock conversation in things like ChatGPT, but they make Poke feel so much more human.
After convincing it that I would be a good mouthpiece for Poke among my non-techy friends and family, I got access to the next portion of the onboarding: haggling on price. It started at $75/mo.