In our previous blog we wrote about why businesses need a chatbot. Eight months later, we’re backing up that claim with a fantastic set of statistics from a Facebook chatbot we implemented for East Staffordshire Borough Council.
Before we reveal what these statistics are, let’s quickly recap on the definition of a chatbot. Chatbots combine artificial intelligence with automated chat response that can be embedded into messaging applications and websites to simulate conversation.
In East Staffordshire Borough Council’s case, we installed a chatbot in their Facebook messaging service to free up the sport and leisure marketing team from responding to customer queries. With three leisure centres and a theatre under their supervision, keeping up with the influx of incoming messages is no small feat.
Here’s an example of East Staffordshire’s fabulous Facebook chatbot in action:
We’ve even given people the opportunity to ask any pressing questions via their website:
The bot works by presenting a series of questions to customers to find the answer they’re looking for and can respond directly to any specific question that is asked of it. If it can’t be of assistance, it’ll put the customer in touch with a member of the team to follow up.
Customers found the answers they were looking for and promptly too. In the space of three months, East Staffordshire Borough Council has had:
- A 96% increase in inbound messages
- A 3.13-hour improvement in response time
- Just one incorrect response from the chatbot!
More importantly, responding to Facebook messages has almost become a thing of the past for the busy team.
Nathan Gallagher, Marketing Officer for East Staffordshire Borough Council, said:
“Developing a chatbot was a direct result of our ongoing work to enhance customer engagement and experience. Available on our Facebook page and website, the chatbot has become our 24/7 customer service representative, offering real-time assistance to customers. This allows our marketing team to concentrate their efforts in other areas or answering more complex customer queries.
Not only has the chatbot allowed us to improve our response times and engagement, but it’s also given us more insight into consumer behaviour, allowing us to continually develop the chatbot to answer more queries on more products and services.”