Chatbot helps football team connect with fans

An Italian football club is using an AI-enabled chatbot to help answer customer queries and questions from fans.

Chatbots are becoming more popular for a variety of uses. We have previously seen chatbots used to reduce stress in the workplace and to prevent fraud by wasting scammers’ time. Now, Italian football team AS Roma has started using an AI chatbot to connect with fans and improve customer service.

The new chatbot was developed in concert with British agency We Build Bots. Fans chose the name Botistuta in a Twitter poll. The name is in honour of the club’s championship-winning striker Gabriel Batistuta. The chatbot is designed to answer basic fan queries using an artificial intelligence platform. The platform allows Botistuta to become more sophisticated in its answers the more it interacts with fans. According to Paul Rogers, head of digital media at AS Roma, “We’ve been working with We Build Bots, who are experts in this space, for a number of months on the project and we think it will help speed up the response time for many fans who are trying to find out particular information about the club.”

AS Roma has a reputation for innovating in the social and digital space. This attracted We Build Bots to the projects, according to Paul Shepherd, chief executive officer at We Build Bots. Shepherd added that the launch of Botistuta “is just the start of what we are doing together. In the next few months, we will be further integrating our AGAME platform and deep integration capabilities into Botistuta to help Roma further connect and engage with supporters.”