How chatbots make events better – and increase ROI

The ‘Event Bot’ project is a fluid, evolving digital assistant which Oracle has deployed to support Cloud Day and Impact events, and is now forming part of the ongoing conversational support for Oracle OpenWorld events globally.

The challenge

• The digital assistant needed to deliver the following for Oracle:
• Longevity and ongoing relevance: Firstly, to help business professionals have a better on-site event experience, and then to give a deeper dive post-event into key technologies
• Be truly useful on a long-term basis (rather than being used for one-shot events, which by design have a short campaign length)
• Give users a great experience in a format they understand and use regularly
• Allow users to self-select to get the right event information
• Be interesting and engaging for users
• Convert event attendees into longer-term users.

The solution

We used conversational AI to give event attendees a richer experience, by using a platform they understand and use regularly, in this case, Facebook Messenger.

The Chabot was initially developed for events in 20 cities in EMEA, each having its own ‘node’ with information about the event, sessions, speakers and logistics. It was important that users could self-select to get the right information,  we did this through routing and promoting, using guided navigation to help them quickly gain access to their region and then city.

Users could access the bot through Facebook Messenger, and the latest Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA) bots on Webchat.

We ensured the bot was interesting for users by adding rich interaction through whitepapers, videos, downloads and key event content. The conversation was designed to support free text searching through natural language processing (NLP) as well as guided support using a variety of carousels, images, quick replies and buttons.

We did this to ensure users could get to the ‘happy path’ – leading to the information they wanted or needed – as quickly as possible and reduce the number of dead-ends or queries not
being understood.

To make the bot truly useful, and give it a life that would last way beyond a single event, we applied a strategy to convert event attendees into longer-term users. We did this by updating the bot post-event to showcase key learnings from the events in the form of a deeper dive into business-critical topics such as cyber security and Autonomous databases.

Bespoke broadcast functionality using Content and Experience Cloud was used to deliver this. For Impact events, we updated the bot with several personalised elements. This included a human live-chat ‘talk to a subject expert’ handover to augment and enhance the automated responses.

We also added a secret quiz for Impact attendees – where each event could have a localised quiz based on their event and subject matter – and these were sent to users over the course of the event.

The outcome

After they were originally deployed to support Cloud Day and Impact events, The event framework was rolled to support for Oracle OpenWorld events across EMEA and further afield. It was also used within SaaS upgrade assistants for ERP,  HCM and CX cross-sell opportunities.

One of the key strengths of digital assistants is that through conversation logs you can really understand how users are interacting and what their objectives are.

5 TIPS FOR BUILDING BOTS

1 Start with one conversational platform and learn from it: Facebook, WhatsApp, and Slack, are strong contenders, depending on your use case – and Webchat has also taken off in a big way.

2 Design for the future. It will take less time (and cost) in the long run. In our case, it was ensuring we built for the event and also for ease of post-event updates.

3 Failed inputs are your friend. Learn from what your bot can’t answer then use that to make your digital assistant smarter.

4 Web and bot technology can sometimes need additional time to bed in. Think about your website: where on your site are your social icons, screen help, etc? Ensure your digital assistant can be seen, or no one will use it.

5 Try to pick a particular domain–and ensure your use case is rock solid. Narrower domains like events, HR and customer service are great ones to start with.