In today’s Whiteboard Wednesday, we tackle the question: What is an event chatbot? Chatbots and digital assistants have become our trusted companions at home and at work. They help us manage our schedules, fulfill our requests, and instantly answer questions we might have about the weather, the news, – and events.
In this 12-minute video, Brandt Krueger goes over the event chatbot basics. What they are, how to implement them, and their benefits. Consider adding one to your upcoming event and automate some of your event communications.
A Chatbot: Your Digital Assistant
A chatbot is a type of digital assistant, and as Brandt says, they have started to ‘invade’ homes in a form of Siri, Alexa, and other chatbot-based applications and virtual assistants. Contrary to popular belief, chatbots are not artificial intelligence. They rely on natural language processing. When you ask them a question, they instantly send you back the answer.
Chatbot Statistics
- in 2017, the number of voice-activated assistants went up 128%, to over 35 million.
- by 2022, 55% of US homes have voice-activated assistants,
- 60% of millennials have used a chatbot, with 70% of them having a positive experience,
- 50% of those who haven’t tried using chatbots are open to trying them.
What Is An Event Chatbot?
An event chatbot is designed to answer questions about events and offer support to attendees. Event planners can implement them in various ways:
- embed them into your instant messaging apps, such as WhatsApp or Messenger,
- use SMS texting,
- embed them on your event website.
Event chatbot answers the most commonly asked questions at events. You can use the event chatbot to answer various questions about the event’s agenda, speakers, layout, and more.
The pros of event chatbots:
- provide a quick answer to straight-forward questions,
- save attendees time as they do not have to go through event apps, looking for specific information about the event,
- can reduce the number of your event staff or make their job less stressful,
- offer insights into the most frequently asked question at the event in real-time.
When Event Chatbots Don’t Know The Answer
Chatbots can only answer questions that they have been taught, but what if attendees start asking questions planners didn’t anticipate? Most event chatbots have the ability to pass that question on to a real person who answers the question for them.
Event chatbots can identify blind spots in attendee communication in advance before they grow into a bigger problem. For example, if many attendees are asking where is the mothers’ room, you can react to that quickly, teaching the chatbot how to answer instantly. Event technology, therefore, helps event planners learn what the attendee experience was. If there were no chatbots involved in a situation like this, and only on-site staff would help confused guests, planners might never find out that many couldn’t find the mothers’ room in the first place.
Are Event Chatbots Going To Replace Humans?
Event chatbots have many perks, but they will not replace humans, Brandt says. This is just another tool in the event planning toolkit, at best. It can help reduce your staff crew by one or two people, or better yet, staff can focus more on other areas of the event.
