How Boost.ai’s AI Bot Exceeded Expectations at a European Tech Event
January 7, 2020
As more companies begin implementing virtual customer service agents to assist attendees at events, tech companies specializing in conversational artificial intelligence software are getting busier. Case in point: Boost.ai, which recently supplied an AI bot to Slush — a leading international startup and technology event held each year in Helsinki, Finland — to positive results.
Nicknamed Botzilla, the virtual assistant tapped Boost.ai’s proprietary conversational AI technology to offer personalized information and assistance for the more than 25,000 conference attendees who converged Nov. 21-22 at Helsinki Exhibition Center.
According to Boost.ai officials, 89 percent of the conversations attendees engaged in with the bot were either fully or partially solved, a number that far exceeded both the company and the event’s expectations.
“We were excited to put Boost.ai’s artificially intelligent virtual agent to the test in a new way as we helped Slush 2019 event-goers navigate one of the world’s most prestigious, global tech events.” said Lars Selsås, co-founder and CEO of Boost.ai, a Norwegian software company headquartered in Santa Monica, Ca. “The results were beyond what we even expected with the 75 percent resolve rate.”
During Slush, Botzilla achieved the following engagement results:
- Handled almost 10,000 messages and more than 3,500 conversations
- Only 101 of those conversations triggered a human chat interaction
- 75 percent of the conversations on AI were fully solved
While this wasn’t the first time Slush had used a virtual agent, it was the first time the event had worked with Boost.ai. According to Selsås, Slush not only wanted to reduce the amount of incoming traffic to its live human agents, particularly from first-time attendees, but also offer its audience the latest in cutting-edge customer service technology.
Besides answering typical attendee questions, such as where to find the event and how to purchase tickets, Botzilla also answered humorous questions such as, “Are you a dinosaur?” and “Do you need to be naked in the sauna?” with clever responses.
Meanwhile, 12 human customer service reps from Santeri, the company tasked with handling on-site customer service for Slush, found themselves with little to do thanks to Botzilla’s high resolve rate. The number of reps brought to the event had been based on the chatbot the event had used in 2018, but Boost.ai’s technology proved to be so effective that the over-staffing of human reps turned out to be unnecessary, according to Boost.ai officials.
“Slush engaged Boost.ai to take their virtual conference agent to the next level after some discussions with [us] as to what we could do for them with such a large influx of new attendees,” Selsås explained. “In deploying Botzilla for Slush, Boost.ai was able to achieve a [high] resolution rate of all inquiries from Slush attendees with less human contact while [increasing engagement traffic from last year].”
He added, “As Slush is an event with cutting-edge technology, we look forward to using our technology to make Botzilla even more engaging in the future.”
Check out Botzilla live on the Slush home page here.
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