Alexander Fürer comes from the field of text and concept, was a copywriter in various agencies for a long time, but then wanted to do something of his own. Alexander has been a co-owner and core member of TKF Kommunikation und Design for 12 years. TKF has a very broad range of customers, such as Olma Messen St. Gallen, Migros Ostschweiz, but also increasingly customers from the health and prevention sector, such as Hepatitis Schweiz, BAG (in the area of vaccination prevention) and Aidshilfe. TKF works on an interdisciplinary basis.
Why use chatbots (for campaigns)?
Alexander has found chatbots very exciting for a while, but there have been three challenges for him in the past:
- Chatbots were not yet mainstream, which means that customers may have heard of chatbots, were unsure whether the technology could be trusted, etc.
- Customers shy away from the expense of implementing the new technology
- Many chatbot tools come from America, as it can be difficult with data protection and support issues and customers can be persuaded to come to the bot
Project Dr. Gay – Who or what is Dr. Gay?
Dr. Gay is the advice website for MSM (men who have sex with men) from the Swiss AIDS Federation. Dr. Gay is not an entertainment website, but deals with questions about sexually transmitted diseases and gay sexuality. The website has the task of providing advice and tips. Dr. Gay himself is a prevention expert in the background who can be asked a sensitive question anonymously, which he researches and then answers.
A chatbot for Dr. Gay – Chatbots for campaigns
TKF has been working for Aidshilfe Schweiz for several years. The website was due for a redesign, for which TKF applied and was awarded the contract. The focus was not on a chatbot, but on how to make the website new and tailored to needs.
During the discussion with the customer, the idea of using a chatbot was born. Visitors do not come to Dr.Gay.ch for entertainment, but because they have a burning question or an emergency situation. This developed into the main idea for the website. TKF was able to convince the customer that a chatbot can make sense here.
How was the customer selected for the campaign incl. Chatbot enthusiastic?
Talking helps. At the workshops and informal meetings, we exchanged ideas with the customer and suggested how the question tool could be designed to be low-threshold, fast, anonymous and modern in the future. The concept of a chatbot naturally offers a huge range of possibilities. They made the customer aware of these possibilities and thus ignited the spark for the chatbot.
How is the chatbot integrated into the campaign?
The design of the chatbot ran very closely together with the design of the website. From the very beginning of the information architecture, the team considered when questions arise that the chatbot can answer and where a further dialog with the chatbot makes sense. The stories were developed in parallel.
The implementation was quick and easy with the tool from aiaibot. In the first version, the chatbot “Dr. Gaybot” is still limited to the main dialog, but there are many ideas on how the “Dr.Gaybot” can continue in the future.
How do customers handle sensitive data?
The issue of data protection was a killer criterion. It was important to the Swiss AIDS Federation where the data was located. That’s why a lot of tools were dropped straight away. This was one of the strong arguments in favor of aiaibot.
Learnings
- If you want to make a bot, you should know exactly what this feature is supposed to do. It is important to check with the customer beforehand whether it is worthwhile.
- Make, test. You can’t do anything wrong, you can always change everything again.
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[vc_empty_space height=”40px”]And if you don’t want to miss any more podcast episodes, then sign up to the mailing list at the bottom of this page.[vc_empty_space height=”40px”]This video about the campaign is also very exciting.[vc_empty_space height=”40px”][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/6xIgOao0ooM”]
