We are often asked this by clients looking to start their first chatbot project. Like most software projects the price really depends on the scale and complexity of the project. This will govern the effort involved to build the bot and define whether it needs to be a custom chatbot or off the shelf solution.
So, let’s take a look at the key drivers impacting the price for custom chatbot development.
Channel
The first one is the channel in which the bot should function. By this, I mean where the bot will be used. It could be as a website widget implemented as a popup interface or webpage (You can learn more about webpage chatbots here) or deployed into existing messaging platforms. Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, Viber, Google Assitant are just a few examples with some providing more complex UI elements which can be utilised in your bot.
There are a number of really good bot building platforms for creating UI chatbot interfaces such as Botstar, Chatfuel and Manychat; these offer some free templates and the ability to create chatbots which can be deployed to websites and Facebook Messenger. These Bot building platforms offer some good features: Visual Flow Editors, APIs & Webhook Integrations, Templates, Broadcasting etc. In our experience, we have found that even with free templates there are some costs due to setup and minor customisation. So our minimum price is around £600 with some monthly costs for hosting and chatbot management and training.
Natural Language Ability
If a chatbot is required to support more complex natural language processing features and not just UI elements such as buttons then this will mean that additional effort is needed to train the bot and design and implement a more complex conversational flow. These sort of bots start at around £1500. We utilise Dialogflow Natural Language Processing to offer these types of solutions.
The complexity, scope and volume of the required conversational ability effects cost. This relates to specifics such as: Number of branches in the conversation tree. Quantity of questions that have to be handled by the chatbot which can often be in the 1000s. The complexity of conversational ability ie. support for complex user enquires. So chatbots which combine richer elements with complex conversational ability can be in the region of £1500 – £3000
Integration
The other area which will impact cost is dependent: what the chatbot will need to do carry out its role? Will the chatbot need to integrate with current systems to provide its responses? Will it need to hand over to live agents? Connect with CRM and ticketing solutions? Some chatbots may need to carry out complex interactions to provide answers to customer queries. Bots can even call systems utilising Artificial intelligence to provide relevant information based on historical chat data, for example using, https://www.tensorflow.org. With so many possibilities for bot features It’s hard to estimate the price here, but these types of chatbots cost from £4000. For each integration, we would suggest a cost of £1000-2000 it really depends on the amount of development effort required for each one.
Languages and Features
Chatbots are capable of supporting different languages, as long as these are supported by the NLP engine it’s possible to add different language permutations fairly easily. However, each language will need its own testing so costs can be in the region of £500-1000 for each language.
Finally, depending on which channel the bot will work in there is also scope to provide other functionality such as voice capability for web chatbots or enhanced chatbot interface features. Again costs depend on the amount of complexity and effort involved in building each feature. As an example adding voice interaction to a Web chatbot would be £500.
Flexibility
As you can see, the cost of a chatbot project can vary dependent on the features required. However, the cost of a capable chatbot does not have to be prohibitive and it’s often a good idea to start small and add features as business needs require them.
At The Bot Forge, whatever the cost we propose for your chatbot project our aim is to create value for your business and hopefully form a long-lasting relationship.
https://i0.wp.com/www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/how_much_does_it_cost_to_build_a_chatbot.png?fit=750%2C650&ssl=1650750ajwthompsonhttps://www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/thebotforgelogo@154x100-b.pngajwthompson2019-06-17 18:42:012020-01-27 19:39:07How Much Does It Cost To Build A Chatbot In 2019?
If you are looking to streamline certain operations of your business, implementing a chatbot is a great way to go about it. After all, you can use technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) so that it can follow different types of conversations with users and provide relevant responses where necessary.
Chatbots are no longer a gimmicky tool available on the internet, as they have gained popularity and sophistication many users are incorporating them into their digital strategy. For example, a large number of businesses now use bots as part of their customer service. As these chatbots never go offline, they are always available to assist users, at any given time of day.
It is a lot cheaper for a business to implement a bot as part of its customer service than hire employees. If you employ an individual, you have to train the person and provide a salary and vacation time. One example is one of our clients https://amicable.io who replaced call centre resource with a chatbot to book client meetings.
Chatbots have a lot of advantages, which explains why businesses want to make the most of them. However, while creating these bots, it is natural to make errors, which hampers the user experience. As this might be the first or nth time you are developing a chatbot, you want to make sure it functions as expected. Here are six common mistakes to avoid along with how you can overcome them:
Assuming every user wants to talk
You tend to believe that everyone who visits your page or installs the chatbot on Slack, or other popular messaging platforms wish to start talking to it immediately. However, most of the people on the internet don’t want to communicate with the bot, unless it is necessary.
One reason why chatbots are great marketing tools is that they can engage with prospects by answering important questions. As a result, it brings down the sales friction, making it simpler for the user to invest in what you have to offer.
If your bot starts to message the individual as soon as he/she opens it, there is a high chance the person will find it annoying. A better practice would be to wait for the user to respond or you can leave instructions in the description on how to start conversing with the chatbot. Our sports events Facebook Messenger chatbot Carly utilises this kind of functionality enabling users to set push notifications for their any new sports events based on their own criteria.
Failing to track its performance
Since the chatbot makes use of the latest technological advancements in the industry, you might assume that you shouldn’t keep an eye on its performance. After all, you spent a considerable portion of your time training it, so that it can have a continuous conversation with your customers.
However, you will never know the effectiveness of your bot, if you don’t track the key performance indicators (KPI). These metrics provide a deeper insight into how you can continue to improve your chatbot. For example, you can see where most of the users tend to leave the conversation. With this data, you can think of different ways to keep them engaged so that they continue to talk to your bot. We feel that the history and training tools provided by Dialogflow enable us to track chatbot performance effectively.
Forgetting to list in directories
Once the chatbot is up and running on various messaging platforms or your website, you think you completed your job. All your visitors have to do is start talking to the bot, and it will help them in their tasks.
However, not everyone will know about the existence of your chatbot. Several messaging platforms may not have powerful search, which makes it harder to discover your bot. The best practice is to find third-party websites and lists your chatbot in it. As a result, if people look for your bot on Google or other search engines, the chances of it popping up in the first page of results goes up significantly. The best place to market your own new bot is on your website, why not write a blog post about your chatbot journey, you can guarantee other companies will be interested in your journey.
Impersonal conversations
The reason why people don’t like talking to bots is that the conversation tends to be boring and bland. As a result, they prefer to converse with human beings, as the experience is better in every way.
Think about it, would you like talking to a chatbot which sounds like it is speaking in a monotone? Rather than putting your bot in the same position, you should think of different ways to spice up the conversation. For example, you can ask the user what the chatbot should call the individual while talking to one another.
One thing is key here and we have seen this in our experience: to gain better customer satisfaction it’s better to explain to your users that your bot is a chatbot and not try and masquerade as a human. If users are aware they are talking to a chatbot from the off it will gain confidence and improve the customer experience as the user becomes more forgiving.
Not paying attention to its tone
Since the entire conversation between the chatbot and its users is going to take place via text, you need to pay close attention to its tone. Using the right type of communication will determine whether your bot performs well among its intended target audience.
While this tends to be challenging, there are several ways you can overcome this obstacle. For example, you can ask a small number of people from your target audience, what tone they would find appropriate. At the same time, you can also have a beta group, which allows you to experiment and see which one works well. Matching tone to the industry and subject matter is important to build a satisfying experience for your chatbot users.
Help and Live Agents
Since the purpose of the chatbot is to reduce the workload of your employees, you tend to assume that you don’t need a live agent. The problem with testing is that it may not take into account all the variables present in real-world scenarios. As a result, when you deploy your chatbot, it might not know how to handle a specific question.
Due to this reason, it can go on an endless loop, and the only way out of the conversation is to quit or restart the chatbot. An excellent way to overcome this problem is to allow your chatbot to ask a live agent to join the conversation during this situation. Once the employee helps out the user, he/she can provide information to the developers on how to improve the communication skills of the bot.
It’s also important to provide easy help for users to access during the bot conversation. At The Bot Forge we always implement a help feature for our chatbots so users know what they can do and how they get back on track our Facebook Messenger chatbot for the Fred Whitton Challenge is a perfect example.
Chatbots are becoming a great tool for businesses. You can use them to make life easier for your clients, by assisting them in various functions. By knowing what the common mistakes are, you can avoid them entirely and design the best bots in the industry
https://i1.wp.com/www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/developing_a_chatbot_6_common_mistakes_to_avoid.png?fit=750%2C650&ssl=1650750ajwthompsonhttps://www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/thebotforgelogo@154x100-b.pngajwthompson2019-05-02 08:08:372020-01-23 12:26:09Developing a Chatbot? 6 Common Mistakes to Avoid
The Bot Forge have been following the progress of the latest V2 api since its official launch in April this year, it’s no surprise that the Dialogflow team have made this announcement as they concentrate their efforts on the new API. However it does have some serious implications for existing chatbots utilising the v1 API.
Migration
You can see some more details about upgrading from V1 to V2 in the official guide here. We also aim to provide some more detailed information about carrying out an upgrade on this blog so watch out for that.
Anyone who already has built out their website chatbots using v1 API, then they should start planning for the migration sooner rather than later. Any new features should be added after the upgrade. The migration is potentially a non-trivial task, considering some chatbots have some fairly complex code driving their fulfilment. If you have a live bot in production our advice is to set up an upgrade chatbot as a copy of your existing bot project and then work through the upgrade there. You can guarantee that changing to V2 will mean that fulfilment and API calls may stop working. Once the upgrade is complete re-testing all bot functionality is strongly advised before setting live.
Chatbot Web Interfaces
We would recommend everyone who is creating custom website chatbots to do so using the v2 API. All our new chatbots are built using the v2API.
The big change for v2 is that it uses Google’s OAuth2 for its authentication, with v1 you could simply use the client access token when calling the v1 API. Implementing the features required to authenticate against the new v2 API means some significant extra development effort.
If you need assistance or advice with your own chatbot v2 upgrade please get in touch, we are Dialogflow experts and would be happy to help!
At the Bot Forge, we specialise in building chatbots so you feel free to contact us if you want to discuss further.
https://i1.wp.com/www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/dialogflow_announce_v1API_will_be_deprecated_in_October2019.jpg?fit=750%2C650&ssl=1650750ajwthompsonhttps://www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/thebotforgelogo@154x100-b.pngajwthompson2018-10-30 09:24:572018-10-30 09:26:02Dialogflow Announce v1 API will be deprecated in October 2019
The business landscape is evolving faster and faster, we look at using chatbots for business to help you remain competitive.
There is so much coverage of artificial intelligence technology and chatbots these days There is no doubt that chatbots are big news for many different industries, from e-commerce and fashion to healthcare and banking.
Whilst many big brands have already jumped at the opportunity to leverage the technology for others it’s challenging to see where they can be a benefit to your company and whether the cost and effort involved is worthwhile. Some of you may remember many years ago when you were approached by someone selling a shiny website and then later on a new app? You probably asked yourself a similar set of questions..that’s nice and shiny but why do I want it? is it right for us? First things first let’s look at some of the basics.
The chatbot lowdown
What is a chatbot?
Briefly put a chatbot is a service, powered by natural language processing rules and artificial intelligence (AI), that you interact with via a voice or text-based chat interface. AI technology is used to enable the service to respond to specific user interaction. For example, a user could ask a chatbot a question or give it an instruction and the bot could respond or perform an action as appropriate.
This chat service can take on any number of roles, providing answers, collecting customer information, suggesting products and making sales. They can live in any major chat product (Facebook Messenger, Skype, SMS, Slack, Telegram, Viber, Twitter, Website). They can also be deployed into voice-enabled assistants such as Amazon Echo or Google home. Chatbots can also be developed to include multiple language capability.
Where can a chatbot be used?
Chatbots have been deployed in many different guises as they are extremely flexible and able to take on whatever business need arises.
You could say the possibilities are endless, here are some examples:
Celebrity
www.m.me/katyperry Katy Perry’s official Facebook Messenger bot.
Customer Service
Vodafone TOBi Vodafone’s customer service chatbot is based on IBM’s Watson & provides a fully integrated webchat for customers.
For many businesses, the biggest challenge to serving your customers in several communication channels is responding quickly all of the time.
Constantly available
One of the great benefits of a chatbot is the constant availability. Customer expectations are high expecting a quick response to enquiries. With a chatbot, you can offer your customers a service which is available 24 hours a day even when there are no employees in the office. You can rely on your bot no matter what time of the day or day of the week or timezone the enquiry is coming from.
One example from my own personal experience was with a SAAS which had charged me incorrectly for an amount of money which caused my bank account to go overdrawn. I contacted the customer support chatbot via a web interface at 1 AM and the problem was rectified and money returned promptly the next day. I went from disgruntled to a satisfied customer in a 5-minute chatbot interaction, incidentally, I’m still a customer!
It’s also worth noting that chatbots can be enabled to understand multiple languages. NLP technology will understand queries in different languages and respond appropriately. So if you support a global customer base needing to support multiple language enquiries this does not have to be a problem.
System integration
With the correct integration development, a chatbot is able to answer complex enquiries by integrating with existing CRM, ERP, CMS, and other business-critical applications. Connect your chatbot seamlessly with your entire business ecosystem.
Scalable
Chatbots are scalable and capable of handling multiple enquiries, ready to step up when enquiry demands are at their peak.
A well implemented and executed chatbot can give businesses the ability to have more conversations and help more people at once than other alternatives, for example, live chat applications on websites.
This ability to handle the frequent enquires where the responses are often similar facilitates businesses in freeing up staff to deal with the more complex issues.
Although a chatbot cannot handle all customer queries, it can be used to deal with a large number of the routine business enquiries which most companies deal with on a day to day basis.
They improve customer satisfaction
To avoid frustration, a chatbot can be developed to use a “sentiment” function to pass users onto a real advisor if the bot can’t help or if they are not satisfied. Other benefits can be seen in customer service gains. According to Jon Davies, head of digital at Vodafone, their customer service chatbot, TOBI provides “a far more engaging and personal” customer experience, as well as improving completion rates and reducing transaction times. These types of successes are highlighted in improved net promoter scores (NPS).
Overall chatbots for business can excel in supporting customer service teams in their communications with customers. Providing accessible information 24/7 saves businesses money and time. By 2022 chatbots are expected to save $8 billion7.
Drive sales, engagement, reach
These days customers are savvier and demand an intuitive and seamless customer experience. Businesses need to consider using technology to fit in with their communication habits.
Familiar messaging technology
Many users prefer social media and mobile platforms for communication and expect businesses to be online when they are. If users are having a conversation with a chatbot in Facebook Messenger, they are using a conversation channel they are familiar with and they are already using the technology and don’t need to install a new app. The numbers of messenger app users have been steadily rising. As of April 2017 Facebook Messenger had 1.2 billion monthly active users worldwide
Use these channels to reach new and existing customers.
Voice assistant technology and it’s adoption has gathered serious momentum over the past couple of years. User expectations are rising as they become educated in what it can do. As customers realise that its capabilities go beyond setting a timer, turning down the lights or playing some music; they will look to this channel to make purchases, contact customer support or use as a tool for business specific tasks.
As an effective marketing tool chatbots can give your company an edge as they can enter into personalized and automated communication with your customers.
Using platforms such as Facebook messenger, substituting emails with push notifications can obtain much higher click-through rates. Used wisely opt-in targeted messages or push notifications have 90% read rates and a 40% click-through rate. Chatbots can be used to send users personalised tips, greetings and information, generating leads, harvesting reviews and forging stronger customer relationships.
Utilising these techniques a chatbot is able to reach participants wherever they are, regardless of where the chat session was initiated, whether on a mobile app, a website and even from social platforms such as Facebook Messenger.
Chatbots are ideal to answer first customer questions. if the chatbot decides that it can not effectively serve the customer, it can pass those customers to human agents. High value, responsive leads will be called by live agents increasing sales effectiveness.
Chatbots can be used to answer customer’s questions and promote products. Engage with the right customer by analyzing their profile and historical data and user characteristics. A bot can provide a channel for purchasing easily and quickly if requested.
Conclusion
I’ve really only scratched the surface of chatbot and voice interface technology capabilities and what can be achieved and how it can help your business be more competitive. However, it’s important to consider them carefully. It’s up to the business to decide if a chatbot is a right move for them, for some the business case may not be there or something to consider in the future. Building a chatbot because you think you should or because its the latest thing can only result in wasted time, money and effort.
I hope you find this post helpful in considering how using chatbots for business can help you to achieve a competitive edge.
If you already have a chatbot idea and want to look into this further have a look at our post planning the best chatbot
At the Bot Forge, we specialise in building chatbots so you feel free to contact us if you want to discuss further.
https://i1.wp.com/www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/why_using_chatbots_for_business_canl_help_you_remain_competitive_blog.jpg?fit=750%2C650&ssl=1650750ajwthompsonhttps://www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/thebotforgelogo@154x100-b.pngajwthompson2018-06-28 11:51:302020-12-30 12:42:42Why using chatbots for business can help you remain competitive
Congratulations you’ve had that lightbulb moment and you have an idea to create the best chatbot, or maybe you’ve heard so much about chatbots lately you feel you should explore the idea of using one for your company. If you want to read more about how a chatbot can help your company read our Why using chatbots for business can help you remain competitive blog post
Whatever the reason now its time to start looking at your idea in more detail to plan the best chatbot..but wait that can be hard. Don’t worry, we can help!
Chatbots have progressed rapidly over the past couple of years with advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) utilised used across voice and text driven interfaces. There has never been a better time to start a conversational UI project. However its still vitally important to plan your project carefully.
At The Bot Forge, we like to ask our clients the following questions to ensure we have a clear understanding of what they want to achieve with their chatbot project.
So whether you are looking at creating your own bot, or commisioning a team of chatbot experts like ourselves 😉 then it’s important to ask yourself the following 10 questions before you start building the best chatbot.
1. What is the purpose of your chatbot?
Why do you want to create a chatbot? What do you want the chatbot to do for your business and how will it achieve your business goals?
Right from the beginning of the project, it? s important for yourself and team to have a clear understanding about what your chatbot will do
2. What are the key goals of your chatbot?
What are the main aims of your chatbot? It could be to drive sales, provide 24/7 customer support or engage with new and existing customers by gathering customer feedback and delivering new product information.
3. How will you measure your chatbot’s success
How will you determine the success of your chatbot? What will your Key Performance Indicators (KPI) be?
For example, you could look at click-through rates, the numbers of enquiries handled correctly or feedback statistics gathered.
4. Who is going to use your chatbot?
Have a clear idea about who is going to use your chatbot, what will be the user demographic? This may influence your chatbot’s persona.
5. Where will your chatbot be deployed?
Your audience should drive your chatbot platform choice if possible. If you can collect information on which messenger platforms your audience use then this should assist your decision. Now is also a good time to consider voice platforms such as Alexa or Google Home. With over 1 billion active users Facebook Messenger is our favourite messaging platform.
6. What will your chatbot do?
Here you can really start to consider what sort of functionality the chatbot needs to provide and most importantly the conversations it will be able to support. A good way to capture chatbot requirements is by looking at them as user stories. The story is in the same format: As a , I want , so that: for example: – I?m a participant, I want to check what time I can start my event, so that I can be ready to leave in good time. – As a business, I want to collect customer reviews, so that I can improve their experience. – As a customer, I want to access my account details quickly and receive an account update through my personal assistant.
7. Will the chatbot have a character?
Will the chatbot have its own persona, will it have a character? Is the chatbot going to just be a polite assistant or does it need a character to carry through your brand?
8. How will the chatbot create value?
Think about the overall chatbot experience for users. How will the chatbot ensure that users come back? For example by providing a simple and well executed personal assistant then customers are going to use this as their first port of call to find information and/or contact your company.
9. How will people find the chatbot?
How are you going to drive people to find and use your chatbot? Links on your website and also advertising on Facebook can be great places to start as well as content on your Facebook page.
10. How will you look after your chatbot?
How will you monitor the chatbots performance after its launch? In comparison to other projects, it’s important to note that once the chatbot is launched this is just the start of your journey. Essentially you are at the start of the optimization phase. You will need to provide resources to get the most out of your chatbot after it’s launch. You will need to monitor user interactions, reactions, unanswered requests: so you can train your chatbot and improve overall user experience, training your chatbot is key!
Conclusion
After working through these 10 questions you should be well on your way to understanding your chatbot concept.
With all our new clients at The Bot Forge chatbot agency, we ask them to fill out our chatbot checklist, feel free to download and work through with other members of your team.
We hope you find this post helpful in getting to grips with your chatbot project, feel free to share if you find the 10 questions useful.
At the Bot Forge, we specialise in building chatbots so you feel free to contact usif you want to discuss further.
https://i0.wp.com/www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/planning_the_best_chatbot_blog.jpg?fit=750%2C650&ssl=1650750ajwthompsonhttps://www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/thebotforgelogo@154x100-b.pngajwthompson2018-06-15 10:31:212018-06-29 14:02:13Planning the best chatbot
Lets look at how chatbots can be used for sports events
As chatbots have become more powerful this has enabled them to take on more complex roles. Using chatbots for sports events can provide an effective tool for mass participation events organisers, sports clubs, race promoters and charity event coordinators to handle participant enquiries 24/7, aid in event organisation and provide an effective marketing tool for event promotion.
Advancements in conversational UIs and AI in sports events management may not be as fast and impactful yet as in some other sectors, but these technologies have the potential to redefine participant experiences and enable smarter event management for the organisers.
Whether you organise Triathlons, Cycling, Swimming, Running or Motorsports events, we are going to cover 6 of the reasons why you should be employing chatbots to support your event.
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1Familiar Technology
These days sportive, triathlon, marathon participants and entrants are savvier and demand an intuitive and seamless customer experience, using technology to fit in with their communication habits.
Every day 1.4 billion people around the world send over 50 billion messages to communicate with each other. Many prefer social media and mobile platforms for communication and expect organisers to be on-line when they are.
If users are having a conversation with a chatbot in Facebook Messenger, they are using a conversation channel they are familiar with and they are already using the technology and don’t need to install a new app. The numbers of messenger app users have been steadily rising. 2 billion messages are sent on Messenger every month (Facebook data, January 2018).
2Improve Participant Communication
Event organisers can struggle to provide easy contact points to participants, event attendees are often dogged by problems with contacting anyone running the event. Traditional channels such as email and organic posts on websites and social media are not performing well enough to rely on completely. Using chatbots for sports events provides the perfect tool for organisers to send and receive information to/from their entrants.
A chatbot can enter into personalized and automated communication with entrants pre and post event. Using push notifications to send new event information or gaining valuable entrant feedback for post-event evaluation. Using these techniques a chatbot is able to reach participants wherever they are, regardless of where the chat session was initiated, whether on a mobile app, a website and even from social platforms such as Facebook Messenger.
As a result of using this, a chatbot can be an ideal tool for last-minute event notifications to be broadcast to participants, ensuring that entrants receive the information on time and when it’s relevant. Your event chatbot can also be programmed to respond to users requests to speak to event organisers so that users are always able to converse with real people if needed, ensuring the optimal customer experience.
3Provide Fast Event Information
From an event participants point of view, as we all know, the morning of an event can be stressful and this is often the time when participants need to get to event information as quickly as possible. Participants spend months training, meticulously buying the correct gear and hours pouring over their training stats and their training routine but it’s surprising how often they forget about the more simple things:
“What time is the event parking open?”
“what do I need to bring for registration tomorrow?”
“does the shop at the event start sell inner tubes?”
A chatbot gives them an easy way to get the right event information fast. Entrants may still have questions that an event website itself does not answer or does not answer quickly enough. Entrants often find it easier to ask than to search a website. In that case, the chatbot acts as a super navigation assistant to the current information. With AI working in the background the ability to train a chatbot means that the information it provides is always relevant and up to date:
what food is available at the feed stations do you know if they provide gels, I’ve forgotten mine?
“I’m in Wave 2 what time do I set off?”
“whats the water temperature like, do I need to wear a wetsuit today?”
“At what distance is the first feed station?”
“you won’t believe this but I’ve forgotten my spds can I buy any at the event start?” Sounds far-fetched but it does happen!
For organisers, this gives them peace of mind that entrants have all the required information as well as reducing the costs involved in dealing with each individual enquiry.
The real challenge is building natural language technology that supports the range of questions that entrants ask — for example, all the different ways that people might ask whether they can use tri-bars: The Aktivebot smart automated events assistant can help here.
4Multi Language Customer Support 24/7
For event organisers, the biggest challenge to serving your customers in several communication channels is responding quickly on the run-up to an event and on the event day itself. Although a chatbot cannot handle all customer queries, it can be used to deal with many of the routine event queries that typically make up most enquiries. One of the great benefits of a chatbot is the constant availability. Customer expectations are high and event participants are no different in expecting a quick response to enquiries. Particularly when it’s race or event day it becomes vital to provide the relevant information at any time of the day. With a chatbot, you can offer your entrants a customer service which is available 24 hours a day even when there are no employees in the office. You can rely on your bot no matter what time of the day or day of the week or timezone the enquiry is coming from.
Chatbots can be enabled to understand multiple languages. This can be very useful if you are organising global sporting events and want to be able to answer all your entrants without the costs of employing multilingual customer support.
Chatbots are scalable and capable of handling multiple enquiries at any one time, ready to step up when event day enquiry demands are at their peak. A chatbot can give organisers the ability to have more conversations and help more people at once than other alternatives, for example, live chat applications on websites.
This ability to handle the frequent enquires where the responses are often similar facilitates organisers in freeing up event staff to deal with the more complex issues
5Results and Entrant Data Integration
Event registration, deferment and results processes can still be a headache for many events organisers. Difficulties for entrants contacting organisers about their places can often cause them to look elsewhere and this is a sure fire way to create a loss of confidence in your sports event.
With the correct integration development, a chatbot is able to answer complex enquiries by integrating with existing event registration and participant management solutions to immediately look up the correct information. For example, a participant enquiry asking to defer their place due to injury can be actioned and a refund provided easily. A chatbot can also provide information about event availability and direct entrants to alternative options if there are no places. Event results are an important part of sporting events. Chatbots can integrate with your results data systems to provide participants with an easy way to look up their results. Chatbots can also be used to notify participants when their results are available via opt-in notifications. Using chatbots for sports events enables you to connect your chatbot seamlessly with your entire event ecosystem- CRM, ERP, CMS, and other key events applications.
6Events Promotion Using Facebook Messenger Marketing
There is a lot of competition for events companies these days. Sporting events happen on a daily basis meaning the choice for triathlons, sportives and marathons almost seem endless. With all the noise and excitement competing for attendees, it’s imperative that your event stands out. Your event needs to ensure it’s the one that people repeatedly flock to ensuring a good turn out of entrants and supporters.
Using a chatbot for messenger marketing can help to achieve this.
Traditional ways of promoting events are becoming less effective. Email marketing rates have 5-10% open rates, FB news feeds 0-1% visibility and mobile conversion rates flagging at 1-2%. In contract through a chatbot opt-in targeted messages or push notifications in Facebook Messenger have up to 90% read rates and a 40% click-through rate.
Event organisers can leverage messenger marketing to:
Promote new events
Create noise for your sponsors
Request valuable participant feedback
Provide training suggestions
Drive fundraising
Creating a Buzz For Entrants and Supporters
One of the reasons we love sports events is the anticipation, in the run-up to the event itself, waking up on the day of an event with a spring in our step, and then the palpable rush when we reach the start itself, checking our gear and attaching our rider/runner number. As an outdoor events promoter, building the hype is an important task ahead of mass participation events; this is not just to build entrants excitement, but to sell places and secure a healthy return on investment.
Maximise Sponsorship Exposure At Your Event
Sponsors are a vital part of an event. Using Messenger marketing to provide exposure to your sponsors ensures they get max ROI and helps to gain new sponsors in the future. If you’re in it for the long-haul, and plan on running your event many more times in the future, then it’s worth keeping all of your current and potential sponsors engaged.
Conclusion
These are just 6 reasons we’ve covered
It’s clear that using chatbots for sports events is an ideal tool to add to your event management toolbox. Chatbots can significantly improve entrant satisfaction and provides the ideal promotional tool to grow and ensure your events run smoothly at maximum attendance.
Feel free to comment if can think of any other reasons to use a chatbot to support your sports event.
https://i2.wp.com/www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/6_reasons_you_need_a_chatbot_to_support_-your_sports_event_blog.jpg?fit=750%2C650&ssl=1650750ajwthompsonhttps://www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/thebotforgelogo@154x100-b.pngajwthompson2018-06-08 10:39:312018-06-29 14:24:486 Reasons you need a chatbot to support your sports event
A Sports Software Chatbot Case Study: The Fred Whitton Challenge Sportive automated assistant, advanced
We report on our AI chatbot sports software project to aid the organisers of one of the UK’s most well-known cycling events.
Leverageing ai powered sports software with our core Aktivebot chatbot the goal was to create an automated assistant available 24/7 to reduce time and effort needed by event organisers to respond to event enquiries whilst still providing an easy way to contact the events team if necessary.
The Saddleback Fred Whitton Challenge is a charity event in honour of the late Fred Whitton consisting of a 112-mile charity sportive around the Lake District and is arguably one of the UK’s most well known and hardest sportives with over 2000 riders and 5000 applications this year.
The Fred Whitton Challenge has been running since 1999 and as a result is extremely popular with over 4000 followers on their Facebook page where a large number of ride questions were being asked via the message me button there. We wanted the AI chatbot to assist the event organisers in answering ride and registration queries and reduce the amount of time spent answering routine questions. We also wanted to provide the ability for users to look up their time for this year and previous years.
The chatbot we created is integrated within the “Facebook Messenger app” of the Fred Whitton page and users can contact it through the private “Messages” feature of their page, or directly through the Messenger App.
The sports software project
The project brief was for The Bot Forge to create an AI powered chatbot capable of handling event enquiries 24/7 which could be deployed into the Facebook Messenger framework and utilise rich ui elements. Future deployments could be aimed at website integration.
For such a long-running event, Human Race and the Fred Whitton organisers wanted to provide the optimum user experience and still make it easy for participants to message organisers directly through the chatbot if they wanted to contact a real person by messaging them directly.
The chatbot understands human language, leveraging advanced Natural Language Processing and answers questions such as “what is the fred whitton?”, “ I’ve injured myself at the weekend I need to defer till next year”,“ when can I get my race pack?”, “ help I need the GPS files for the route”, “ Is there any way to buy a jersey post-event?”,”I want to contact an organiser”, and “when will the results be available?” The chatbot replies to a question based on it’s own programmed data or points to the specific information on the Fred Whitton Website so that it works in tandem with the website itself.
Press the play button to watch a real conversation with The Fred Whitton Chatbot
The technology
We used Google Dialogflow to provide the NLP engine and Google Firebase for the fulfilment hosting. The fulfilment or web-hook is where we were able to compute more complex answers for the AI chatbot to give to users and create the correct responses for. For example when looking up users past ride times, the web-hook was able to look up past results for users from a results database. Facebook ui elements added rich content, particularly useful when asked about merchandise details and availability; linking directly through to the official shop.
The conversations
The real challenge in creating the chatbot was leveraging natural language technology that can support the range of questions that event participants might ask: for example, all the different ways that people might ask about the route. We are helped in this process by our own Aktivebotpre-created sports events intents.
Small talk
The chatbot includes the ability to provide small talk, which is used to provide responses to casual conversation. This feature greatly improved user experience when talking to the agent.
Initial question data
Initially, we imported the pre-created sports eventsintents (an intent represents a mapping between what a user says and what action should be taken by the chatbot).
We then looked at FAQ data provided by the Fred Whitton steering committee and historical questions to their facebook page which gave us some invaluable insight. Using this information we were able to create the conversational scripts and then implement the conversation ability with each question matching an intent
This was an iterative process. Matching user intents to core functionality and features and training the natural language processor to understand users and handle conversation failure scenarios gracefully.
The conversational UI was then fine-tuned, with rich elements implemented where necessary.
What were the questions?
Most asked questions by participants match the questions that the event chatbot is able to answer, i.e.:
Questions about registration: deferring places, available places, waiting list enquiries.
Questions regarding merchandise: jerseys for sale on the day.
Questions about the ride: route details, information about closed roads, clothing enquiries.
Questions after the event: results, photos availability, the next ride date.
Top Intents handled by the conversational agent
The training
The questions were often related to ride specific information. This meant that for an optimal intent matching rate, it was necessary to work closely with the event organisers to provide answers to specific questions. The capabilities of an ai sports software chatbot will improve over time, the more messaging transcript data the better so the more it’s used the better and more accurate it will get. Hence the training logs were checked multiple times a day and improvements made where necessary. By focusing on all questions answered it is possible to greatly improve the intent matching rate of the chatbot over time.
The training data was invaluable for perfecting the bot conversations. The process highlights any need for new responses as a continuous cycle of continuous learning.
The “training” of the chatbot can then be used from one year to the next. Any event detail changes can be carried out easily.
Results
The sports software chatbot was launched on 21st March with the scope constrained to Facebook Messenger with no advertising whilst the chatbot was evaluated.
Activity
The high number of participants using the chatbot can be explained by the fact that visitors still have questions that the website itself does not answer or does not answer quickly enough. The chatbot was, therefore, a great place to provide up to the minute event information, such as information about closed roads and the slight route change which resulted in one more hill showing.
The chatbot was not heavily advertised so we envisage activity levels will improve as participants get used to the chatbot as a resource they can use and other strategies to engage users are utilised.
The chatbot was answering questions on the run-up to the event and also during and after.
Success rate
The success rate of the chatbot to answer queries was overall around 60%. With more focused training over a longer period with another event in 2019 we expect this figure to rise until our aim of an 80% success rate is reached.
Chatbot Success Rate Over the Past 30 days
Feedback
The chatbot worked well in Facebook Messenger as its one of the preferred channels for chatbots in general. Deploying the chatbot in a chat widget as part of the website itself would undoubtedly result in more engagement and something to consider for the future.
Help intents and the handover protocol were also very successful. If a user did not get a correct response and/or wanted to get help or contact an organiser directly this worked really well. The overall feedback from users was positive. There were always some intents which the bot would struggle to match the first time which would be handled gracefully; however, due to the ability to train the chatbot, leveraging AI the correct response would be prepared for next time.
I’m impressed with the chatbot it seemed to work well. I think it is a good source of help and with it learning as it goes along it would answer lots of questions going forward. If it cannot help it still contacts the organisers where we can answer.
The Fred Whitton Challenge chatbot still has many areas where it can be developed and improved, particularly by providing more integration with existing systems and utilising push notifications: this will be something carried out in the future.
Overall the success of the chatbot hightlights the benefits of deploying this type of ai sports software in sporting events and is definitely something to consider to give event organisers an advantage in a competitive market
INBUSINESS COVERS OUR AI CHATBOT IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SPOTLIGHT
It was great to have our AI Chatbot featured in the inBusiness magazine issue spotlight this month. You can read the feature here
Image: https://chambermk.co.uk/profile/inbusiness
Inbusiness is a bi-monthly publication and digital magazine created by distributed to over 3,000 business contacts in and around Milton Keynes. TheJune/July 2018 issue spotlight was science and technology so it was great that the editors of the magazine wanted to cover our Fred Whitton Challenge ai chatbot, particularly when the ai chatbot was created to assist the organisers of a charity ride.
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GOOGLE HAS STARTED OFF ITS ANNUAL 3 DAY I/O DEVELOPER CONFERENCE AT SHORELINE AMPHITHEATER IN MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA.
In the first day, they have shown some of the amazing new capabilities of Google Assistant. One of them is being able to make phone calls on your behalf. You ask Google Assistant to make an appointment and it makes the call in the background. The demo has to be seen to be believed.
CEO Sundar Pichai played back a phone call recording that he said was placed by the Assistant to a hair salon to book an appointment.
With a voice which sounded totally natural; the person at the salon had no idea they were talking to an automated AI assistant. The Assistant even managed some small talk; dropping “mmhmmm” into the conversation.
Pichai reiterated that this was a real call using Assistant and not some staged demo. “The amazing thing is that Assistant can actually understand the nuances of conversation,” he said. “We’ve been working on this technology for many years. It’s called Google Duplex.” Pichai also made the point that Duplex was still under development and that Google plans to conduct early testing of Duplex inside Assistant this summer. Their aim is “The technology is directed towards completing specific tasks, such as scheduling certain types of appointments”
Google again states that these are real-world examples.:
“While sounding natural, these and other examples are conversations between a fully automatic computer system and real businesses.”
This post also does a good job of highlighting some of the real complexities of having a conversation successfully. With many sentences having different meanings depending on the current context. In the same conversation early on the assistant also handles misinterpretation when the person called mentions a table number taken from what she has misheard. Google Assistant seems to handle this perfectly.
This looks set to be groundbreaking technology:
For users, Google Duplex is making supported tasks easier. Instead of making a phone call, the user simply interacts with the Google Assistant, and the call happens completely in the background without any user involvement.
We are looking forward to seeing more of it in summer and using the technology in our projects.
With Google also announcing their rebranding of its Google Research division to Google AI. The move shows how Google has increasingly focused R&D on natural language processing and neural networks.
It looks like Google are setting their sights on being the world’s biggest artificial intelligence (AI) company.
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In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal Facebook announced late in March that it was pausing its app review process, which meant developers were no longer able to launch new apps or chatbots on the Facebook ecosystem. It was an abrupt halt and although temporary was not ideal for any developers planning to unleash a shiny new Facebook Messenger chatbot into the wild. We were lucky ourselves that we had got one of our own bots The Fred Whitton Challenge Chatbot live a few days earlier
True to their word the pause has only been a few weeks so its great news to hear that Facebook has re-enabled the app review process so that new chatbots can now be connected to pages and set live.
App Review is Back
Today we are re-opening our app review process. The process has changed a bit as we now require business verification for apps that need access to specialized APIs or extended Login permissions. Apps that ask for basic public profile or additional permissions, such as birthday or user friends, are not subject to business verification.
The point has to be made however that this is a helpful reminder to not be reliant on a single platform. Particularly as Facebook has a habit of changing things. Facebook executives Campbell Brown and Adam Mosseri have also stressed the idea that publishers, at least, should not be too tied to Facebook while speaking at Recode’s Code Media conference. If users find the whole experience too unsettling then Facebooks answer is “If anyone feels that this isn’t the right platform for them, then they should not be on Facebook,” Brown told Recode.
Here at The Bot Forge its good news and we are pleased to be able to get cracking building some fantastic new bots.
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It’s clear that using chatbots for sports events is an ideal tool to add to your event management toolbox. Chatbots can significantly improve entrant satisfaction and provides the ideal promotional tool to grow and ensure your events run smoothly at maximum attendance.
