'Hi there, I'm [Wizbot/Capsbot].'
The Situation
Monumental Sports, which includes the Washington Capitals (NHL) and the Washington Wizards (NBA), realized they needed a better way to connect with their fans in a conversational way that also did not increase strain on the lean marketing team. The teams already had a strong Facebook presence, but their apps and web presence were lacking. Let's make a messenger bot? Woot woot!
The Final Technology
This was the engineering team's first foray into the chatbot space. Robust research was required to determine the best way to structure the bot responses and organize the data.
Since the main driver for the client was ensuring that we were able to serve ticket sales and scheduling needs, we structured the bot as primarily call-and-response with fuzzy matching on user inquiries. The bot does circle the user back through the conversational funnel, inquiring 'did I get that right?' to ensure users are able to find the information they are looking for.
iStrategyLabs
conversational v. call/response
Originally, we structured the bot as more conversational, allowing natural progression of the conversation through related topics, but this did not serve ticket sales well. This conversational version of the bot operated with a similar logical pattern as Alexa or Siri, which it was modeled after.
Personality
Lastly, we invested time at the conclusion of the project to give the bot a more robust personality. Sassy responses and emojis were added to round out the bot experience and be more engaging to users.
Check out more work
Beatbox
Rival Road
Generation Beyond