AI Assistant (Chatbot) for an Agency Team

STARTING POINT

A globally dispersed growth marketing agency faced significant challenges in maintaining consistency and efficiency across their operations. With a remote workforce and frequent team turnover, there was a constant need for training and onboarding. Long-time team members were called upon as Subject Matter Experts, reducing efficiency and drawing their time away from urgent leadership work.

The agency required a solution that could streamline internal processes, support complex interrelated tasks, and reduce the time spent on repetitive inquiries, allowing the team to focus on strategic initiatives. The solution would be contextualized in the broader context of the client journey from first touchpoint to ongoing engagement after project close. That is, its success would be measured by its impact on key touchpoints impacting client satisfaction, team experience, and project results along the timeline of each client's engagement with the agency.

The project would hinge on skills including innovation, strategic thinking, people development, and the ability to seamlessly execute on both high-level and granular levels across multiple knowledge domains and relational/emotional arenas.

Constraints: The team was spread across multiple time zones and faced frequent changes in personnel, necessitating continuous training. Tasks were complex and interrelated, requiring detailed and accurate responses. There was a need to maintain high productivity with minimal budget for additional tools or resources.

Opportunities: Enhance internal efficiency and knowledge management, provide consistent and accurate support across the team, save time and resources by automating repetitive inquiries, enable the team to focus on high-value tasks and strategic goals, increase familiarity of and ease with AI tools, and improve onboarding and training for new team members.

SERVICES

Requirements discovery, analysis of team communication trends, chatbot strategy design, comparative research, chatbot setup and management, training, source development, copywriting, website embed, integration with third party platforms and live search, development of multi-channel automation, process documentation, ongoing monitoring and adjustment

RESULT

The deployment of the chatbot demonstrated the power of AI in enhancing internal processes and supporting a globally dispersed team. By providing instant, accurate responses and integrating with existing tools, the chatbot streamlined operations, saved time, and allowed the team to focus on strategic initiatives while bringing added expertise to the client experience. The ROI calculations showed a notable reduction in time spent on routine inquiries, contributing to substantial cost savings for the agency and an improvement in client experience.

IN DEPTH

Users: Internal team members, including agency leadership, project managers, marketers, designers, and new hires

Activities:

Training and Onboarding: The chatbot provided detailed responses and training materials, helping new team members quickly get up to speed. It was trained to ask key questions while responding. This (1) improved response quality and (2) reinforced the questions most important for agency team members to ask while problem solving on their own.

Project Management Support: The chatbot offered guidance on campaign planning and management, content creation and design checklists. This ensured team members had access to the necessary resources and information.

Knowledge Management: The chatbot's ever-growing knowledge base included PDFs, onboarding files, project documentation, benchmarks, brand guidelines and an entire book. It was trained to offer paraphrases, questions and conversational cues. These promoted accessible training for all employees, including a range of proficiencies in English.

Proof of Concept: The internal chatbot provided a testing ground for additional chatbots to be created for clients and/or potential clients in the agency's lead generation activities.

Channels & Tools:

Slack: Integrated with Slack for real-time support and seamless team communication.

Zapier: Used Zapier for workflow automation, connecting the chatbot with various tools and platforms to streamline processes.

Graphics: While the primary focus was on text-based support, the chatbot also guided team members to the appropriate resources for graphic design and content creation using the agency's existing tools.

Industry databases: The chatbot drew on a third party tool to compile live, daily information on other campaigns in the agency's core industry.

Training and Documentation:

As the project lead, I developed training materials and documentation to ensure the team could effectively utilize the chatbot. This included:

Video Explainers: Screenshare videos providing guidance, examples and context for team members.

Living Handbook: Easy-to-follow documentation for team members to maximize the chatbot's utility.

Channel-Specific Guides: Detailed guides on how to interact with the chatbot across different platforms and use cases.

Benefits:

The implementation of an internal Marketing Assistant chatbot resulted in significant time savings and efficiency improvements for the agency.

The chatbot provided instant, accurate responses to team inquiries, reducing the need for human intervention in repetitive tasks. This allowed the team to focus on strategic initiatives, ultimately boosting overall productivity and ensuring each person could focus their contributions in their areas of greatest strength.

The chatbot's connections with other websites and data sources enabled the team to work from the latest guidelines in advertising, landing page design, graphic design and other fast-moving information resources. Connections with third party tools—and the chatbot's ability to analyze both words and images—allow for both breadth and depth in on-demand market research, all in a fraction of the time it had taken previously.

Team members confidently drew on the chatbot's guidance, knowing it was rooted in the proprietary systems, knowledge resources, and prior experience of the agency's team and leadership. The strengths of the global team shined more brightly as team members were able to translate key concepts into the language of their choice. At the same time, they could add an additional layer of proofreading in the language in which copywriting was published for a given project.

A focus on accessible explanations aided in knowledge building across the team, equalizing and dispersing the concentration of company knowledge across a larger number of team members. The chatbot was also trained to apply time-tested frameworks and lines of inquiry, supporting the ability of new team members to bring the same level of inquiry to their work. As a result, team members were more equipped to make independent decisions promoting company and client goals.

The chatbot's integration with Slack and Zapier streamlined workflow automation, further boosting efficiency. Users engaged the chatbot in the platforms where they conducted their work, soliciting insights within Slack channels and funneling content between platforms.

As a secondary benefit, team members could more readily access brand language for the agency, aiding their roles as brand ambassadors in their own networks and with clients. Brand awareness, coherence and reputation are expected long-term outcomes of this improvement.