To make external communications more effective, lots of companies and organizations around the globe have been incorporating automated chatbots for their services, either by voice, text or email. Not only have chatbots decreased the response lag time for these brands, their advanced natural language processing (NLP) feature has helped these brands develop distinguished personalities for their companies. The NLP feature has also helped the chatbot to modify and personalize the kind of language they use when communicating with different customers from different demographics who have different needs. 

With more and more business entities adopting chatbots into their businesses, currently they have earned the elite status of topping the chart of most frequently-used social networks in 2015. Furthermore, with the most recent advancements, the chatbot market potential can reach US$1.23 billion by 2025.

Chabots are not useful among businesses only; they can also be applied in city management. And as the NLP features can give characters to the bots, the personalization of these chatbot services is useful to enhance your cities’ brand identity. Not only to attract investors and tourists, the city's branding can be a powerful tool to spread public campaigns and social activities. So, do you want your city to be known as a warm and friendly place or a highly productive one?

How can cities use chatbots?

Beyond the private sector, public administrators can also integrate chatbots into their external communications platform. Cities can apply chatbots specifically for spreading public service and public information purposes. Of course, the chatbots can be used to run voice, text and email messages. These features are useful for city administrations to send the residents notifications on public policy updates or other types of public service advertisements. 

Why brand identity and personalization matters

By giving its chatbot system its own personality through distinguished manners of speaking, tonality, voice timbre and so on, cities can build and reinforce their brand identity. This brand identity can be an important pull factor for investors and tourists. Whether the strongest plus factor of your city is its people’s warmth and helpfulness or ability to get things done, you can always give the chatbots corresponding personalities. 

The AI-backed chatbots also allow the hotline or information center to modify the type of message they send depending on the different needs of different people with different demographics. This is especially important for public campaign and social engineering projects, where you have to involve a huge pool of people from all walks of life in a collective behavior modification project, whether encouraging them to take public transports or to be more disciplined in public places. The personalization feature allows you to address the obstacles or challenges that a particular segment might have in changing their behaviors. 

Best practices

Let us look to corporations to gain inspiration on best chatbot personalization practices. First things first, striking a balance in communications strategies matter here. For instance, Capital One has created a friendly bot called Eno who is friendly without being overly conversational, hence retaining “his” professionalism. On the other hand, travel site Hipmunk uses a Facebook Messenger bot to assist customers searching for flights and hotels, balancing humor and helpfulness. Please note that sense of humor is relative, therefore a fine balance between intelligent wittiness and timing also matter in using humor through your chatbots.

Finally, it will also be helpful to give your chatbots his or her own gender, name and corresponding photograph, in alignment to your core brand identity. To craft your chatbot’s own personality, it will also be helpful about different personality types, such as the quick helper, the self-motivated productive worker, the patient listener or the playful friend, which you can then align with your own city’s brand identity.