One of the largest Customer Service and HR conferences in Hungary was held in November 2019, for which we did prepare not only with a presentation but also with a greatly versatile chatbot.

In our unique chatbot for the CONTACT Conference, we have developed several useful and well-designed chatbot features that were nicely complemented by a modern graphical user interface that opens in a WebView window.

Agenda

Within the chatbot, a WebView window provided the full conference program broken down into days.

On the pages of the individual programs the most important information was published, and users could ask the presenters about their presentation.

The questions appeared on the admin interface and, after moderation, in the WebView.

The presenters were then able to answer questions from viewers at the end of their presentation.

Users were able to follow programs that they found interesting. The chatbot sent a reminder 15 minutes before the start of each program, so if someone was not around, they could take their place in time.

“The following presentation begins in 15 minutes:”

The chatbot, among other things, could be asked about:

• a specific day’s program (e.g. “What kind of programs will be on Friday?”)
• list of presentations for the day or the next day (“Show tomorrow’s presentations”)
• or even upcoming programs.

In the latter case, the bot sent the cards of the three presentations following the running program. The Generic Template image was generated on a server, here we show the presenter(s)’ image and the time when the program starts.

We also prepared the bot if there were no more programs that day by informing the user about this fact and sending the card for the next day’s program list.

“The following programs will begin shortly:”

Presenters

The presenters’ profiles were listed in the WebView window. In addition to their business information (company, role, title, etc.), the presenters’ profile included their introduction and a link to their social networking sites.

The profiles also included programs assigned to the presenter, where, of course, the presentations could be followed immediately.

At the bottom of the profile, users could also rate presenters from 1 to 5. on the admin interface, these ratings were listed at the presenters’ list, and the average of their ratings was also displayed. This provided the organizers with useful feedback on the performance of some artists.

Networking

An important part of the chatbot was the networking module, where participants could create their own networking profiles and browse others’. This way they could contact each other at the conference or even after the event.

Since no registration was required, the creation of the networking profile was remarkably simple and quick.

(The profile was created by the chatbot assigned to our Messenger account.)

On each profile, a Wave button could be found. This allowed users to signal the other person that they would be happy to get connected.

When someone waved to us, the chatbot sent us a notification in the form of a card. The individually generated image of the card featured the profile picture of the person who has waved, and a button, which navigated directly to the other user’s profile, where we could wave back.

“Anna has waved to you!”

Information about the venue

The chatbot also tried to reply to questions about the venue. For example, when asked where the restroom or the cloakroom is, the bot sent directions in a message and a map that marked the desired location.

If someone was curious about the wi-fi password, the chatbot sent the network name and password as well. This data could be changed in the admin interface, so the bot always sent the actual, correct information.

“How can I get to the hotel?” “What is the wi-fi password?” “Where’s the toilet?” and many more!

Organizer functions

As we are speaking of a Customer Service conference, it was highly important for users to be able to get help even if the chatbot was not able to provide the right answer for some reason. These are cases such as — which actually happened — when a visitor loses something.

For these cases, we also built in a customer service module, which allowed the user to connect to a live agent right in the chatbot. The assistants of the organizing team were able to communicate with the guests through a chat window on the admin interface.

It was also possible to send Push messages in the admin. The organizers were able to directly send Public Service Announcements to chatbot users. This includes, for example, delay in the schedule or information about the evening program.

If you are curious about how the chatbot worked live, we recommend our demo video uploaded to Linkedin!

Disclaimer: this is a translated version of an article originally posted on our own botblog.hu, on December 09, 2019.