gther case study

Introduction

gther is a B2B event management platform built to reduce the stress associated with organizing conferences, events, meetings, and tradeshows - whether live, virtual or hybrid. Because communication to and among attendees is a critical piece of event engagement, gther partnered with Sendbird to leverage its Chat and AI chatbot APIs to embed two-way and autonomous communications in its platform.

Supporting conversations in the event app

An important benefit and appeal of attending events is the people you meet and network with. For virtual and hybrid events, event organizers need a way to connect the audience with each other and the speakers. That’s why gther incorporated a way to facilitate conversations between sales teams of exhibitors and delegates to build community and drive lead gen at events. gther used Sendbird’s Chat API to build a seamless chat interface in its event app and hybrid platform to support both public and private online chats. “Our event app uses the same chat system as our hybrid platform, so it's all powered by Sendbird Chat,” says Nick Rosier, Managing Director of gther. “It shows the versatility of Sendbird as we use Flutter for the app, and Vue.js for the web platform, and it works seamlessly.”

Boosting event registration with AI chatbot

The success of events is measured by the number of attendees, so event managers closely track the conversion rates of registration page visitors to event registrants. Event registration can be a challenging process for both event organizers and attendees. Event attendees often wait until the last minute to register for an event, which makes it difficult for organizers to plan the event. Organizers want a way to nudge visitors to the event website to register, while visitors often have many questions about the event before they want to commit to registering for it.

“Typically what happens is that you have a couple of event managers behind the scenes desperately answering emails and inquiries submitted last minute right before an event. And 9 times out of 10, the questions that are answered are contained in the website itself, but people haven't found it,” says Rosier. “And so we figured an AI chatbot could handle 70% of those simple queries to give that time back to event managers.”

If visitors to the event registration page drop off, it could be because they lack the information they need to commit to attending the event. Rosier and his team hypothesized that an AI chatbot could provide the information needed to help convert these visitors. Hence, gther’s product team decided to embed a customized AI chatbot experience into its event management solution using Sendbird’s UI Kit. The team named the AI event assistant GeniePT.

Using Sendbird to build an AI chatbot

gther’s developer team first thought about building the AI chatbot themselves using their ChatGPT subscription with access to Open AI’s APIs, but then learned about Sendbird’s AI chatbot solution. Since gther’s developer team was familiar with Sendbird for its Chat SDK, when the team learned about the release of Sendbird AI chatbot, they jumped on it with the idea of developing the first AI-powered event assistant.

During the implementation, gther’s team worked to ensure the AI chatbot's responses were accurate and contextually relevant. The team had to train the bot to handle a wide range of inquiries and maintain the balance between automated and human interaction to ensure a personal touch. Rosier claims that Sendbird’s dashboard made the process of training and fine tuning the bot relatively easy. “It's super easy to put a few conditions in the system prompt to make sure the chatbot speaks in their voice and doesn't answer off-topic questions and things like that. Then, the AI chatbot becomes an expert in that specific event, or even products and services that that client might be offering as part of that event.”

How gther trained its AI chatbot

gther tweaked the starting system prompt to keep the AI chatbot on topic. The team instructed the system to limit the response length to a couple of sentences and not answer topics that are not related to the event. In the beginning, gther found that the AI chatbot would go off topic. “We asked the bot to tell us about cats and the chatbot would actually answer about cats, but then interestingly end with ‘But I’m an event assistant and should focus on events, so can you ask me something about that?’ This was cute in a way, so it really didn’t bother us,” laughed Rosier.

Through trial and error, the gther team learned to instruct the bot to invite the user to register using the registration link after every second question they ask. “It acts as a proactive salesperson as much as it is answering questions. Otherwise you can go into a black hole of Q&A and never convert that user to a registrant. Event registration conversions are what we are ultimately after,” says Rosier.

Measuring the performance of the AI chatbot

gther’s team leveraged the analytics available in Sendbird's dashboard to monitor chats and gain insights into user interactions. “We love the analytics available in Sendbird’s dashboard. It’s great to get stats on usage across the day and then process the data to find trends,” states Rosier. “That's where we can really add value for our event manager clients. Not having to build all that ourselves was a massive time saver for our team.”

Benefits of Sendbird’s AI chatbot as an event assistant

The implementation of Sendbird's AI chatbot brought several key benefits to gther:

• Process efficiencies in registration: The automation of common inquiries and registration steps through the AI chatbot streamlined the process, reducing manual effort and improving accuracy. The efficiency and user engagement have seen notable enhancements, contributing to higher satisfaction rates among event attendees.

• Improved productivity: The AI chatbot saves event managers several hours per week leading up to event answering basic questions, which allows them to focus more of their time planning and preparing for the event itself.

• Increased user engagement: gther’s AI chatbot facilitated more interactive and responsive communication with event attendees, enhancing their experience from registration through to event completion.

• Analytics and insights for process optimizations: With Sendbird's analytics, gther gained valuable insights into user behavior, preferences, and engagement levels, allowing for data-driven decisions to further refine the event registration process.

“Our AI chatbot has already been used for 15 events and we’ve seen the number of conversations across those events in the triple digits, so we know people are actively using the AI chatbot. The usage is actually significant relative to the size of the events the AI chatbot is servicing. The AI chatbot is taking a non-trivial amount of work off the desks of really busy event managers,” explains Rosier.

Innovating the events industry with generative AI

gther's unique implementation of Sendbird's AI chatbot represents a forward-thinking approach to event management, prioritizing efficiency, user experience, and data-driven decision-making. gther’s GeniePT demonstrates the potential of AI in transforming the event industry. “The first time we showed the AI chatbot being used as an event assistant at ETL Vegas, people who saw it were stunned,” recalls Rosier. “They had never seen anything like it, so it was fun for us to showcase something so innovative."