At the beginning of 2020, we were about to shift to our new office. Jovita, our receptionist at the agency for about five years at the time, decided to move on.
With the Experience Engine already in the works to go up on the east wall of the entrance, we felt looking at the remaining area, putting up a desk, and hiring a new receptionist was counterintuitive.
Enter the idea to build a digital receptionist. Before starting off, we knew an interface will never really replace human intervention. At the same time, locating your desk on a moving day to placing an order for breakfast on your behalf, there were a few things that a digital receptionist can definitely do.
We finalized two user journeys—one for the employees and the other for our guests from Cheil HQ.
After the first few drafts of the interface, we felt we had to increase the emotional quotient of the bot. To solve this, we turned to the tried and tested ways of the internet to express itself—memes.
Working with bots, you intend to understand the limitations in pre-fed responses. The workaround lies in content. The way it can communicate and express itself can make a difference.
For us, we used a couple of well-known and contextual memes to drive the point home.
From SRK coming home to Leonardo Di Caprio cheers from the Great Gatsby, we fed the system a string of video memes and responses to make the user journey a little more.. human.
Paired with the agency’s expression-based architecture logo and voice enabled responses, the Xbot felt fresh.
We made it a little more intelligent for our guests on the shifting day, showing them their own worldwide projects in a similar video meme format.
In the end, Xbot opened doors to newer possibilities for future engagements within the organization. For example, today, we can program the bot to welcome new hires and take Zomato order deliveries on your behalf while maintaining brand tonality of the agency.
With this, we move an inch closer to redefining the workspace interactions within a company.
