Unlike many Hollywood movies where machines with artificial intelligence (AI) bring the world on the verge of complete destruction, in reality, AI is in the news for all the good reasons. AI is shaping the future of the event planning by introducing some much-needed changes, like, offering hyper-personalized recommendations to planners, to help them choose the right event venues or to connect with right vendors etc.
Businesses across various industries are using smart tech tools and the trend will only go up in the coming years. According to a survey conducted by Business Insider Intelligence, 80% of respondents said that they already use or planned to use emerging tech tools like AI-enabled chatbots, by 2020.
The event industry is no different from others. According to 2018 Global Meetings and Events Forecast, “The ongoing evolution of mobile apps and hybrid meeting solutions, combined with the potential applications for newer technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI), have exciting implications for meeting owners and attendees alike”. We’ll discuss this point and others in details in the next paragraphs.
A) AI to play the role of a consultant
Ask event planners about what they go through when they have to manually select vendors and event venues. The former have to reach various sources to prepare lists of vendors and venue owners; send emails to them; match event requirements (including budgets) to quotations made by vendors and owners, and select the ones who suit event requirements in the best ways possible.
AI can make this entire process much easier. Many companies are coming up with AI matchmaking engines that help event planners select vendors and venues in their localities on the basis of event requirements. AI matchmaking engines can provide event planners with lists of right vendors and venue owners in a few minutes that may take multiple weeks if done manually.
B) AI to raise event engagement
Event attendees can engage with each other via personal chats. But big events have hundreds and thousands of attendees. It is meaningless to hold conversations with everyone (and it is also impossible to converse with each and everyone).
Tech savvy event planners can suggest event owners the names of event apps that use AI to match the profiles of attendees based on common interests. Some apps have in-built chat tools. Attendees can network with each other via texting. They can also share event related images and videos on chat platforms.
C) AI to enhance the features of chatbots
In 5 Biggest Challenges to Impact Events Industry in 2019 & Beyond, we discussed the survey report 2019: Global Meetings and Events Forecast. When the survey respondents were asked, do they expect event budgets to increase in 2019 and beyond, they said that they don’t. Hence, we can’t expect most of the events to have budgets to pay for 24*7 live chat support. In that case, what’s the low cost alternative to 24*7 live chat support? Allow us to introduce smart chatbots.
Smart chatbots or AI-powered chatbots like ZOE can converse with humans, analyze human sentiments and respond accordingly. ZOE can operate 24*7 and enhance the experience of event participants and others. Human executives can take up conversations based on confidence scores of ZOE. All the grunt work being executed by ZOE, event professionals can invest their talent in works that need human excellence.
To know all about how can AI simplify event planning, contact us. Leave your comments below and keep a tab on our next blogs to get all updates on recent developments in the event industry.
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