Chatbots

How Does an Event Chatbot Benefit the Event Industry?

7 min read
Sep 5, 2023

If you ever planned or attended events, you understand the challenges organizers must overcome to deliver enjoyable experiences to attendees.

Planning and managing an event involves numerous things, like coordinating logistics and registrations, engaging attendees, and ensuring smooth communication. Providing updates, personalized experiences, and efficient customer support while delivering something unforgettable can often be overwhelming.

Event organizers must follow and implement the newest technical solutions that make their job easier to avoid being overcome by the competition. That is why implementing AI chatbots to simplify event execution while boosting attendee engagement and experiences is becoming increasingly popular.

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What is an event chatbot?

Let's start by understanding what an event chatbot is. We may think of a chatbot as a software program using innovative technology like artificial intelligence (AI) or natural language processing (NLP) to have conversations similar to humans. In simple words, chatbots understand what you say and give you an appropriate response.

Event chatbots can be like virtual assistants for event organizers and attendees. They can guide participants through the event schedules, provide 24/7 support, or automate tasks like ticket purchasing so event organization becomes easier to handle.

Before we move on to the chatbot's benefits, let's learn more about the event industry's challenges. It will allow us to understand better why introducing artificial intelligence in event management can be extremely helpful and profitable.

Challenges in the event industry

Organizing events takes a lot of work as you must pay attention and manage many areas:

Creating events is very complex, so we could continue to list more daily challenges that event managers must face. However, the key point is to balance these difficulties and ensure a successful event, which requires lots of knowledge, experience, and innovation. 

Regarding innovation, according to “5 Meeting Industry Trends That Are Changing the Face of Events”, Cvent states that using event technology can increase planners' productivity by 27% and increase attendance by 20%. Following this study, AI chatbots can be a perfect modern solution to handle and automate some tasks while your event team focuses on giving attendees a one-of-a-kind experience.

Event planning and management

Chatbots can influence event planning and management by taking care of your basic and time-consuming tasks and leaving space for more strategic actions and decisions. 

Administrative tasks and logistics

Event chatbots are like organizers that never get tired. Instead of you handling lots of paper and manual work while managing attendees' registration, these intelligent chatbots can collect the necessary data and send confirmations. They can manage logistics issues by providing people with the venue or parking details or sending event reminders. As a result, when virtual assistants care for these details, you can calmly shift your focus to decision-making and strategy creation.

Costs and time savings

One of the most significant benefits event chatbots can bring is saving time and costs. These intelligent tools can automate many of your tasks, like sending emails or answering numerous questions asked by people. Implementing an event chatbot can save you time, resources, and money.

Data collection and event improvements

Each interaction between your staff and attendees provides information about interests, behaviors, and people's likes or dislikes. However, with many tasks and responsibilities, your team has no time to note down and store all this useful knowledge. An event chatbot can understand people’s interests and preferences and use this data to offer them specific sessions or workshops happening during your event.

You can equip your chatbot with templates that fit precisely to your business needs. A good example can be a Customer Satisfaction Template by ChatBot that collects feedback and lets attendees rate your event.

All the data collected by your event chatbot can be analyzed and used to improve your future projects so they meet people’s needs and awaken their excitement.

Communication and customer support

Real-time communication and reliable support ensure attendees are well-informed and updated throughout your event. Let's see how artificial intelligence can help with this challenge.

Instant communication and updates

Imagine that the location of one of your workshops needs to be changed, and you need to inform all the participants about it immediately. This is the moment when an event chatbot can shine. It can immediately send updates to all attendees' messaging apps, and thanks to its integration possibilities, it can do it using the most popular platforms like Facebook Messenger.

24/7 customer support

The bigger the event, the more frequently asked questions. Imagine a situation when it's late at night and someone forgot the workshop's location, or many artists are performing on the same stage, and people want to know schedule details on the spot. Your event chatbot can always answer customer service questions without taking a break. Your attendees can be informed, guided, or supported at any time of the day, so their event experience never drops.

Attendee engagement and experience

It's crucial to point out that event chatbots not only automate tasks and handle customer support, but they also influence the attendee engagement and experience as they are usually the first, and very often only, point of contact for people. The Ortus Club, in their article about the most common event marketing challenges in 2023, says, “Marketers must find ways to hook attendees early with their digital talent and engage them with digital touchpoints to deliver a good experience and maintain the relationship.”

The role of chatbots starts way before the day of the event. Marketing campaigns are significant in gathering potential participants and making them interested in the occasion. You can use the event chatbot to conduct the registration process smoothly and engage people during the promotion time by gathering their preferences and providing sessions or workshop suggestions matched to each individual.

The event chatbot assists your participants before and during the big day. It guides them through ticket purchasing, answers all their questions, and informs them about all the changes and updates. However, thanks to all the data it collects during each interaction, a chatbot can go even further and, for example, promote introductions to like-minded people.

Natural language processing and artificial intelligence allow chatbots to create strong connections between attendees and your event. Personalized conversations create memories and long-lasting positive impressions about your brand.

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Conclusion

Event chatbots can benefit you, your team, and your attendees. The best part is that, if you implement them, you can get these advantages while cutting costs and moving the saved money to something that will make your event more spectacular.

Look at this guide if you need guidance on where and how to start. It will show you how to use chatbots in business.

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