The story of Ticketpoint
Chatbot Kees strengthens Ticketpoint’s customer service team
Chatbot Kees has really become part of Ticketpoint’s customer service team. The virtual employee was ready to answer customers’ questions three weeks after kick-off. Working in our customer service department has become a lot calmer. More importantly: thanks to Chatbot Kees, customers are always addressed immediately!
Ticketpoint is one of The Netherlands’ largest ticket providers. Ticketing entails more than just selling tickets; there are a lot of service activities involved for both consumer and provider. 200,000 tickets are sold for a Toppers concert. A chatbot supports the customer service team with these and other types of events. Director Marcel explains how he and his customer service team deal with customer inquiries at these types of events with support from Chatbot Kees.
The speed of customer service
It’s important to keep service relatively quick when dealing with ticket sales. Everyone wants to enjoy a concert at ease, but how do you ensure that you attain the desired speed when it comes to customer service? This was one of the questions that Marcel had on his mind. After reading an article about chatbots, he decided to find the right provider. ‘I got in touch with several chatbot providers. It soon became clear to me that Watermelon was a good fit. There was a clear culture fit and, just like us, Watermelon wants to keep their processes running smoothly.’
The learnings
As Marcel mentioned earlier, setting up a chatbot is very different from having a conversation as a customer service employee. You’re forced to think about your customers and conversations from a different perspective. ‘The purpose and tasks of the customer service employee’s job change drastically. We keep this in mind when we hire new people. Aside from being a customer service employee, you also have to be good at content creation, thinking about tone of voice and reflecting on how conversations go.’
When chatbot Kees went live, the option Chat with Kees was only shown after three other buttons. In this manner, a Minimal Viable Chatbot was offered to customers. After a little while, the options was visible after only two buttons and now you can immediately start chatting with Kees. ‘It was very exciting for us when Kees went live. You never know how customers will react or whether it’s going to work well. By placing the Chat with Kees option later, there were fewer conversations and we were able to quickly make adjustments.
Kees
Ticketpoint chatbot
80%
automated
3
weeks until they went live
“You have to coach a chatbot and that turned out to be more difficult than we thought. Sven (Watermelon) was a huge help to us, we were live within three weeks!“
How about the speed in today’s customer service?
Ticketpoint hopes to guarantee 24/7 service with the chatbot. ‘We expected Kees to be able to take care of 15-20% of customer inquiries, but now, he got that up to 80%! While reducing the workload within the customer service department, weekends also became a lot more enjoyable with Kees.’
Ticketpoint has had a FAQ page -where customers could find information- for quite some time, but nobody seemed to be using it. ‘Clients contact you for the most simple questions, even if the answers are already on your site. Kees now refers customers to the correct information. The FAQ page has way more clicks now. These are all questions that an employee used to have to answer.’
New virtual colleagues in their sights
The questions the chatbot is currently answering are consumer questions. However, Ticketpoint has two kinds of clients, the consumer and the event organisations. ‘The B2B side also requires a lot of support.’ A chatbot would be more than able to answer questions about voucher codes or requests for estimates. Pretty soon these clients will also be able to get help day and night from our new chatbot.’
Chatbot Kees: the perfect colleague
‘Thanks to Kees, we are enjoying a lot more rest and enjoyment in our customer service department. And of course more importantly: our customers are being helped more quickly! I’m looking forward to welcoming even more virtual colleagues to our team.’