Starting as an offseason project, the Washington Capitals kicked off this season by rolling out their brand new Facebook Messenger bot on opening night of their 2016 campaign.
The bot itself is built within the Facebook Messenger app, a technology that Facebook unveiled at one of its developer conferences by showing some examples that they created for some of the biggest brands in the world. This new technology creates infinite possibilities for customer integration, while also allowing for instantaneous replies to people messaging the company through the Messenger app.
“Hundreds of people were messaging us [the Washington Capitals] anywhere from every day to every week, depending on the time of year. It became a lot to handle,” said James Heuser, Director of Digital Media for the Washington Capitals. “The bot seemed like the perfect opportunity to expand our fan interaction, because now they don’t have to wait for a reply from us when they message the Capitals; it’s immediate.”
The Facebook bot, created in conjunction with a local D.C. company called Interactive Strategy Labs, works by prompting users to ask it a certain question, and based on the question asked by the user, the bot will respond from a certain amount of programmed “intents”, which are the different categories that the Capitals have installed into its software to respond to appropriately.
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Since the bot is still in its beginning stages, it will push the user towards those general areas that it can respond to, so as to improve its efficiency with helping the customer as the Capitals continue to advance their bot’s technology and reach. The general areas that the bot can answers questions about now are: FAQs, Trivia, and Tickets. FAQs cover a wide range of sub-categories, however, including links to the Capitals’ schedule, team stats and a layout of the arena that will pop up within the Messenger interface when prompted.
“We wanted to start with something that replied, allowed fans to have some interaction and drive them towards what they might be looking for, almost like an automated customer service assistant,” stated Heuser. “We are hoping to add more integration in the future, as right now it does a lot of linking out to the Capitals’ website, but we want to have more interaction inside the bot itself.”
For example, if a fan at the game asked the bot who scored that last goal, Heuser hopes to teach the bot to not only respond that, in fact, Alex Ovechkin scored the goal, but also be able to provide a video highlight that his media team has just cut together of the goal in real time, and immediately have it available for use by the bot.
Although the bot is not quite at the stage that Heuser and his team envision it reaching, they did teach it a very important ability for this age of Internet users: how to identify trollers.
“We’ve actually taught it really quickly to identify people who are trying to troll it, since most people’s first reaction is to try and break the bot’s brain,” said Heuser. “It has some sassy answers to it that we’ve allowed it to have and say to fans who are giving the bot a hard time.”
For those readers who are thinking that this bot is just another way for companies to get out of actually talking to fans and customers on the phone, the Capitals have built in a back door to monitor the bot and its responses, as well as the ability to go in and manually respond to a fan that is still confused by the automated responses.
“Everything that seems super important ends with contact information, so that the fan can call the Capitals directly for more information,” said Heuser.
Beyond the general enhancement of fan interaction, the Messenger bot improves the Capitals’ Facebook fan engagement tenfold. Responding to hundreds of comments and messages on Facebook is tiresome and hard to track, as there are way too many posts to keep an eye on and respond to on any given day. With the Messenger platform, fans have a proven, singular method of contacting the Capitals and ensuring that they will get an instant response that can help direct them in the right direction.
Additionally, the Capitals seem to have installed little “Easter Eggs”, as they call them, in the bot, mainly dealing with the in-app trivia that is available at any time when a fan messages the Capitals. The trivia feature is one of the main intents of the bot, so it will prompt the user to play trivia once it finishes solving his or her specific question, just as a way to keep the fan interacting with the Messenger bot.
The trivia game is very much in the infancy stages right now, simply asking a series of loaded questions that Heuser and his digital media team cycle through the bot every so often, updating the questions as the season goes along. However, Heuser sees much more potential for this “hidden gem” and many other ways to incorporate games into the bot.
“We have all these different theme nights and different events that surround our team, and we are looking to add trivia that is specific to that game,” Heuser said. “We are focusing on tying the bot into the in-game experience, where fans that are at the game can be prompted to play a game on the Bot during a certain night, and if they do well, they could win a prize at customer service.”
In addition to the trivia game, the Capitals plan on adding more intuitive aspects to the bot, including having a Capitals’ player sing “Happy Birthday” when it’s a user’s birthday on Facebook, or unlocking a special video or picture that can only be seen if you get a certain question right. Essentially, Heuser and his team’s goal is to allow users to have constantly updating content on the bot that will keep fans coming back to interact with the bot day in and day out.
One of the ways they plan on doing that is through the in-game experience that fans are craving in this social media and technology driven age.
“We haven’t tried to connect the in-game to the bot with the trivia, all it does right now is direct fans who are at the game to where they can eat, where the ATMs are, etc.,” said Heuser. “That in-game interactive element is certainly a next step for us.”
Regardless of where the bot is at in its development right now, the Washington Capitals have certainly ventured into unchartered waters, as they are the first NHL team to develop a bot like this for Facebook Messenger. Breaking ground into new areas of social media is nothing new for the Capitals, however, as they were the first team in the NHL to utilize Snapchat stories, which enhanced their following on that medium tremendously.
“If you look at anyone’s follower groups, you can see that Facebook has the biggest following, and that’s trending across the league. Besides posting content on Facebook, you can message on it,” said Heuser. “So, despite the market and the size, any team can definitely use this tool as something to interact with their fans on a more engaged basis, and Facebook is the only social media channel that offers this capability.”