By Mary Tucker | Senior Communications and Content Manager | IAEE
The AI revolution is reshaping the exhibitions and events industry, from how we work to how we create memorable experiences. In advance of his webinar on 19 February, IAEE sat down with 42Chat Founding Partner Bob Caldwell to explore the practical ways industry professionals can harness AI’s potential while maintaining security and control.
How to Use A.I. In Your Event to Achieve Your Goals… Safely will explore 42Chat’s real-world experience implementing AI solutions. The conversation will dive deep into the practical aspects of AI adoption, from distinguishing between different types of AI technology to establishing proper vetting processes for potential providers.
Here, Bob shares the fundamental differences between AI types to real metrics from successful implementations along with candid insights about security protocols, implementation challenges, and the evolving relationship between AI and human expertise in the exhibition industry.
Your team works extensively with both curated and generative AI. Can you break down the key differences and explain why this distinction matters for exhibitions and events professionals who are just starting their AI journey?
Bob: There are many types of A.I., but for this discussion, the ones that matter are curated and generative conversational A.I.
Curated A.I. is where the set of responses (the answers) are predefined in advance. The A.I. extracts the need from the user question and then delivers that curated response. Generative A.I. also extracts the need from the question but creates a unique response based on its training.
Now, importantly – and this is critical to understand – generative AI does not actually “know” anything. Despite how it may seem, it doesn’t search for an underlying fact base to create the response. It quite literally makes a response based upon its training, where each individual word is strung together into a response.
You can think of Curated A.I. as a super-smart team member that’s trained to respond exactly the way you want, every time. It’s precise, reliable and secure, and of course, unlike human team members, it can work 24/7 and never calls in sick.
You can think of Generative A.I. as more of an improvisational storyteller. It can create narratives and handles unstructured, creative tasks but it’s prone to errors and, frankly, hallucinations. Curated A.I. excels when facts matter and delivers greater than a 95% correct response rate. But since Generative A.I. achieves an estimated 80% correct response rate or less, it works best when the user is knowledgeable enough to validate the response.
What specific challenges do your clients face and how does AI provide solutions that traditional methods cannot match?
Bob: Our clients almost universally have two distinct challenges:
- How do we connect with our attendees?
- How to answer the thousands of questions those attendees have? (Especially leading up to, and during, the show when staff are at their busiest).
Curated A.I. is perfect for this job – it can handle thousands of concurrent, disparate questions and deliver exactly the answer a client wants, exactly the way they want, instantly, 24/7. Providing these answers through an SMS chatbot gives attendees a reason to connect and opt-in. That means clients then have a way to reach their attendees when they want to remind them of something important or get them to react to some other call to action.
Data security is a top concern for event planners. What are the most crucial questions event professionals should ask AI providers before entrusting them with their event data?
Bob: For A.I., generally, there are two key questions:
- Is your data only being used to support your needs, or is it being used by your A.I. provider to train their A.I. model for everyone else as well? (TIP: Read your A.I. provider contract to make certain there is no difference between what the salesperson says and what the contract says.)
- How is your A.I. provider measuring the correct response rate? Is it just an estimate from the A.I. itself, or is it monitored and tracked by humans and knowable in advance? In this way, you can be certain that their measure of success corresponds to how your organization measures success and your data is protected and secure.
Can you give us an example of how AI implementation specifically moved the needle on attendee engagement and satisfaction?
Bob: Engagement and satisfaction always start with connection because no matter how great your offering, if people don’t connect with it, they won’t engage. Cvent recently reported an industry average of 63% app downloads, but our clients report their apps have anywhere from a 20 to 60 percent download rate. Of course, all those numbers are misleading because not everyone that downloads an event app actually uses it. And more importantly, many that download a new app turn notifications off, so they are not reachable.
In contrast, everyone has and uses SMS. It’s the first screen of every phone and has a 98% read rate, so virtually everyone is reachable and paying attention. Because users leverage the Curated A.I. chat functionality in SMS, they have opened that channel for other engagement.
Correspondingly, we see significant increases in satisfaction and engagement because users quickly access the answers they need, and clients can actually contact them in the SMS channel. For example, one of our clients wasn’t seeing enough traffic to a second exhibitor room, but one timely notification almost instantly increased traffic. Another client wanted to let attendees know about an emergency ‘go fund me’ campaign to support an attendee in need and saw an immediate 90%+ response rate and contributions with just one message.
There is a lot of fear around AI potentially replacing human roles in the events industry. Based on your experience, how do you see AI complementing rather than replacing industry professionals’ expertise?
Bob: I am absolutely certain most folks in the industry would love to have A.I. take over answering all the repetitive questions they get! Of course, I am kidding a bit – the bottom line is that A.I. is an incredibly powerful tool that allows folks in our industry to do more work with less effort and to deliver more accurate overall responses.
A.I. can more quickly create show floor layouts, improving matchmaking effectiveness, monitor mood and sentiment, and even count booth traffic. Ironically, using A.I. to handle these types of tasks frees everyone up to spend more time doing the one thing A.I. can’t do: meet face to face! (Which is, of course, the purpose of our industry.)
What key lessons would you share with event planners who are considering AI integration and what do you find surprises your clients most about the implementation process?
Bob: First, for any A.I. integration, be specific on what job you want A.I. to do. Second, be sure to have very clear KPIs to measure your success and have your A.I. provider show you specific examples, not hype. Finally, be sure to work with your vendor and meet their deadlines to make your implementation better.
As far as what surprises our customers – more often than not, it is how easy and quick implementation can be. Our average customer spends about an hour a week over six weeks deploying a bot. Funny enough, the most common feedback we get is that clients spend more time deciding what name and avatar to give a bot than anything else!
