10 Smart examples of the use of chatbots

For many, the following is a familiar scenario: you’re travelling by public transport but in your haste you forgot your bag, jacket or umbrella. What do you do now? The Hague transport company HTM has had a chatbot developed for this (and for other frequently asked questions).

Forgetful travelers by tram are helped quickly by the virtual assistant, who provides them with a form in which the necessary information gets filled out. This then automatically gets passed on by the chatbot to a live employee who then quickly helps the customer with the correct information. In a stressful situation like this, you as a customer want nothing more than to be helped quickly and efficiently. Great work, HTM! Want to know more about this chatbot example? Read an interview with Zinho Parisius, the customer service manager of the transport company here.

Chatbots are often used to answer customer questions, but they can also be extremely helpful for the employees of an organisation. PostNL has built a chatbot that answers employees’ HR questions. With an employee base of more than 30,000 members, you can imagine that this chatbot handles a lot of questions. For example, the bot can help the IT service desk with resetting a password or reporting a malfunction. While HR often only comes to the rescue during office hours, the chatbot is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is a great example of a chatbot that contributes to efficiency, as well happy employees!

“What are we eating tonight?” is the most frequently asked question on Google. As soon as you type this in, a world of culinary delights opens up for you. HelloFresh, the international company that delivers meal boxes, is cleverly responding to this great online need by developing a chatbot that serves delicious dishes. As soon as it’s time to order a new meal box, Freddy will discuss daily eating preferences with you. To make the ordering process even more fun, Freddy asks fun food-related questions in the form of a challenging quiz.

Curio offers more than 300 training courses on their website. Sometimes students and their parents can get overwhelmed by all the choices. Of course, a choice of study is a decision that can be for life, which can be quite stressful. Can you leave this important decision up to a chatbot? Of course not! But Pienter can help students and parents in the right direction. Pienter stimulates and inspires students and their parents to think about a specific course of study. Something with animals? Something with people? Pienter is well-informed. With this virtual advisor, Curio sets a good example for schools with an innovative view on the future! Click to learn more about this online vocational trainer’s smart chatbot.

Does alcohol protect you against the coronavirus? Is the virus spread through the 5G network? These and other myths are debunked by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) chatbot. Is your COVID-19 knowledge up-to-date? Send a message to the WHO and get informed. In these turbulent times, it is extremely important that fake news is completely eliminated and that relevant information is available to everyone. The WHO chatbot communicates in various languages and brings important information and news about the virus to the people, in a fun and playful way.

Is building a chatbot just for IT nerds? Certainly not! Nowadays you no longer need programming knowledge to build a chatbot yourself. You can do it easily with user-friendly platforms. Chatbot Noa of the insurance company Aon is (digital) proof of this. This organisation gets a high volume of customer inquiries by phone. With the help of channel management, the organisation ensures that some of the questions reach the virtual service employee. Chatbot Noa is the first point of contact and handles frequently asked questions, so that the service employees can focus on the more complex questions. This also allows for more pleasure in the agents’ work.

Aon employees know better than anyone what the customer expects. By building the bot themselves, Aon was able to tailor it completely to their customers’ wishes. And, adjustments to the chatbot don’t have to be made by an external party. The employees of Aon simply do that themselves. Thanks to this, the organisation retains control!

Domino’s wants to keep everything as convenient as possible for their customers. With the chatbot you can easily place, repeat, and track an order. The entire ordering process is automated by the bot. Domino’s remembers your data, so that you don’t have to re-enter it for a follow-up order. Moreover, “Dom” can tempt you at another time to order again via Facebook Messenger: “Feel like another margarita pizza? Order it here!”

HEMA is known for its excellent customer service. With growing volumes of customer requests, the organisation was looking for scalable solutions in order to be able to continue to offer excellent service, in the future as well. The chatbot as a conversational agent was the solution! HEMA receives tens of thousands of messages per month, many of them via messaging channels. The chatbot eases the pressure on customer service by handling common questions about products, stores, or the “More HEMA” loyalty program. The service agents therefore have more time to focus on the more complicated questions. The chatbot also serves as a work planner. It asks for the necessary customer information so that the live agent can help the customer quickly and effectively. HEMA is a wonderful example of an organisation that optimally combines the power of people and technology!

American news channel CNN doesn’t use a chatbot for sales, but to promote content smartly. This cool example of a chatbot recommends articles based on your interests and you’ll automatically receive a message when a news article is published. The chat is in the messenger channels between chats of family and friends. CNN believes it is important to not make the chatbot too intrusive, so that it fits nicely into the context of the surrounding personal chats. The chatbot has to seem almost human and give control to the user. So don’t expect pushy notifications that you can’t turn off.

Alex Wellen CNN’s Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer, defines a successful chatbot as follows: “What we’ve learned is that the most effective chatbots provide the right mix of editorial curation and technology automation. It’s an art and a science”.

Emirates Airlines uses a chatbot to recommend and sell vacations. In principle, this is nothing new, but the way in which they integrate the chatbot is quite innovative. This organisation integrates AI technology into the display advertisements on their website. The chatbot asks what kind of trip you are looking for and uses personal data and the context of the page you are on to make a personalised suggestion. This AI ad was found to generate 87% more interaction than the standard display ad. The integrated chatbot in the display advertisements is hugely successful because of its effectiveness, relevance in the customer journey and the “effortless” experience that the organisation offers its customers. This is a good chatbot example in which optimal use is made of AI technology in combination with smart marketing!

We’ve seen various chatbots along the way that provide a variety of functions. Chatbots that do preparatory work, chatbots that answer frequently asked questions, help employees, offer information, advise, and place orders. Sometimes smart marketing tricks are used, so that chatbots can even assist with the sale of a product. Have you ever thought about the role that a chatbot can play in your organisation? Can you ease the pressure that’s on the customer service department? Or can you interact with your customers in a fun way? The experts at Spotler Engage are happy to discuss all the functions that a chatbot can fulfill for your organisation.