A bot named Charlie is giving away a free vacation!
Project context
M-Budget is a proprietary brand of Migros, Swiss supermarket chain (including groceries, cosmetics, clothing, mobile network). The main group of its buyers are older people. In order to attract and activate younger consumers, pupils and students aged 18-25, the brand launched activities in social media and the broadly understood digital communication channel under the slogan "Thank God it's Monday!". Everything revolves around Mondays, considered by many to be the worst day of the week. M-budget wants to change this using for example, memes, shopping vouchers or concert tickets given out in competitions..
Challenge
Chatbot that we programmed was to actively engage users and, in addition to providing entertainment, familiarize them with the M-Budget offer. The chatbot programming itself using German, but with Switzerland-specific influences, was also a challenge. .
Implementation
Charlie that we created, embedded on a dedicated landing page, is available to users one Monday a month. He is confident, sometimes a bit cheeky, has a sharp tongue and irresistible personal charm, and his main task is to give away free vouchers for holiday trips. It's hard to convince him; he hates when someone wastes his time or is boring. His clear about it, but at the same time he is being friendly / cultural. He values original ideas only, he is interested in very different topics. Thanks to the use of natural language processing - NLP - Charlie not only understands what he is talking about with other users, but is able to react appropriately and assess the motivation of the interlocutor.
The bot reacts to the entered text, can understand whole sentences, i.e.: "I need a vacation because ..." The user must hit the right keywords to convince the bot. These words are nouns and verbs, which are determined by the administrator before each Monday start of the bot.Charlie is able to pick up typical language and spelling mistakes and still understand the user's statement; does not accept profanity, and if someone uses a different language or his statement is incomprehensible - he informs about it. He also answers questions about mood and weather. He also adds to his lines popular memes, gifs or links to M-Budget products. Thanks to these functionalities he is able to engage the user in a long conversation..
Results
So far, nearly 5,000 users have used the bot (during the first activation it was over 1,200 people!). The average amount of time spent in chatting is 7 minutes. 22% of users returned to the bot at least once. Originally, Charlie was to operate for six months (until February 2018) but he aroused such an interest among young people that his activity was extended until the end of 2018, and from April, in addition to the German version, French language was also available
Modules and functionalities
Chatbot has been equipped with elements of artificial intelligence, thanks to which its response is not limited to simple answering to questions, as in bots functioning a few years ago. Charlie conducts a dialogue with the user, asks him questions. His responses are cutting and interesting. The database, which forms Charlie's brain, is responsible for the proper functioning of the conversation. To capture the context, Charlie searches in real time all available phrases and responds to the user using exact or fuzzy matches.
Charlie
talks in one predefined language. However, the backend has been designed in such a way that would allow to support any number of languages without much time spent on preparing. In addition to the original German language, Charlie has also been implemented in the French version.
The extensive and optimally designed database allows you to save every conversation that chatbot made with users. This functionality allows the customer to trace all conversations and use historical dialogues to gather knowledge about the services or product modifications.
In addition to text dialogues, Chatbot can also conduct pictorial style conversations. Graphics are downloaded from the database, and the administrator can easily program Charlie using CMS to respond with any graphic, audio or video format when a specific word or phrase appears.
Chatbot has a multifunctionality module. This means that it not only conducts conversations with the user, but also using a simple form in the administrative panel can be programmed to perform virtually any action after the user has met one or several conditions. During the conversation, Charlie's brain registers the words used by the user and when a defined phrase appears, he can perform appropriate actions, e.g. take him to the webpage with the registration form.
Charlie has been expanded with lead generation functionality. It allows displaying any configured lead, registration and sales form. Thanks to this functionality, the entire conversation with the bot can be treated as user engaging/leading element, which in the end translates into increased conversion to form filling.
Chatbot is equipped with a useful and easy-to-manage CMS system, thanks to which people without programming knowledge can expand the system with another language version, enter a dictionary of terms, specify keyword ratings and determine what actions should be offered by Charlie during the conversations. It also allows you to easily create responsive forms and view historical conversations and data entered by users using contact forms.
Project scope
- ppreparation of solution prototypes
- concept development and programming chatbot logic
- simple cms + analytics
- frontend and embedding chatbot on www