Compliant Chatbots on Social: Best Practices for Pharma

Portions of this post originally appeared on intouchsol.com. Visit the full post to see more healthcare best practices.

The potential for artificial intelligence (AI) in social media and healthcare is incredible, and AI can no longer be relegated to innovation groups. Pharma companies can leverage AI to impact many aspects of the industry, from helping users find and talk to doctors, using AI to predict heart attack risk with greater accuracy than cardiologists, and providing real-time customer support.

While AI is clearly not limited to chat interfaces known as “chatbots,” these tools are one of the easiest ways for brands to start implementing AI into their connected marketing ecosystems. As platforms like Facebook and Amazon add to their artificial intelligence teams and toolsets, it’s important for pharma marketers in the social space to revisit how AI can play a role in their marketing efforts.

This post will address what AI is, how it integrates with social media, and best practices for marketers using AI to build compliant and effective chat interfaces for consumers.

Background

Artificial intelligence in bot technology is generally thought to have two main components: natural language processing (NLP) to understand user inputs and machine learning to understand, analyze and deliver outputs. We’ve discussed how machine learning can impact pharma in depth here, and outlined how AI can change the overall patient experience.

There has been a lot of hype around AI over the past few years. Much of the hype is warranted, but unless AI is implemented with the right thinking and planning, it can easily return counterproductive results.

Artificial intelligence can be used as a tool to benefit marketers in a variety of business cases, but customer service is one of the main use cases to date and is top of mind for healthcare marketers.

For customer service, the line between human support and AI is blurring. In fact, last year, 27% of users weren’t sure whether their last interaction with a brand was from a human or a chatbot.

Social Integration

In 2017, more than 200,000 bots were developed for Facebook’s Messenger platform, and more than two billion messages were sent between businesses and people each month.

Facebook’s Messenger codes make it easy for users to start conversations with brands, and their recent Discover tab showcases bots already on Messenger. Discover is organized by category, recent activity and featured experiences.

In addition, Facebook’s hiring of IBM Watson’s creator, Yann LeCun, shows Facebook is dedicated to integrating AI into the platform.

Facebook is making it easier for brands to develop and manage Messenger chat interfaces. Marketers with Facebook Pages can build native, simple automated responses to assist human community managers. This is helpful, but a full AI solution is more effective and efficient. When these tools are available across a marketing ecosystem, they connect multiple parts of a patient’s journey and create a seamless user experience.

Messenger Plugin for Websites

One way Facebook hopes to connect these experiences is by offering brands the ability to embed Messenger chats into their websites with a plugin.

When added to a site, the Messenger window is personalized to the user and loads recent chat history between the user and the brand. When a conversation is started on the website, it can be picked up in the Messenger app, on Facebook, or on the website in the future.

This creates a single experience for customers, and makes it easier for brands to follow up with the user without having to capture additional information.

This plugin is currently in the beta stage, but we are a part of the beta and will work with our Facebook reps to be ready to implement when the tool is pushed live.