Article

Is it time to let bots into your media plan?

March 11, 2019

We live in an increasingly digital world, and bots are becoming a frequent presence in our lives. In the world of healthcare leveraging the Digital Front Door (DFD) with bots have the ability to support patient engagement by providing information when it's needed most.

What kind of bots are we talking about?

A bot, or chatbot, is a program designed to simulate conversation with users. When equipped with a database of knowledge, bots can become experts on a given subject. If you add the ability to process natural language, the bot becomes a conversationalist that can provide relevant information when prompted. Though it's not necessary to get into the technical details here, marketers need to understand that bots are only as useful as the algorithms that help them function and the data they have to draw upon.

Image removed.Bots can answer common questions using a content database.

How can bots support patient care?

To say doctors are like robots would be a gross inaccuracy, but certain physician functions do resemble the work that modern machines are capable of producing. For example, when doctors diagnose patients, they refer to their experience and knowledge to identify patterns of symptoms. A machine learning algorithm functions similarly, using practiced datasets to recognize patterns and make predictions.

A conversation with a chatbot is private and typically conducted on a one-to-one basis, much like seeing a doctor. Telemedicine has already helped patients get used to the idea of receiving healthcare through their mobile devices. This makes the step toward bot-supported healthcare that much more intuitive.

Within a pharma media campaign, bots can support patient care by answering frequently asked questions, thereby saving resources elsewhere. If the patient's questions become too complex for the bot, it can hand the conversation off to a human expert.

Bots integrate well with campaigns that have a strong content strategy. Intelligent bots can use natural language processing to understand patient concerns and pull relevant content from a database to provide quick answers. Imagine a display ad for a new drug that is too complicated to explain with a single image and a tagline. The ad could include a call to action that encourages readers to speak with a bot online to learn more.

Are patients ready to deal with bots?

Today, almost everyone who owns a smartphone has access to an intelligent bot like Siri, Alexa, OK Google or Cortana. Though these types of digital personal assistants are more complex than the bots used in marketing campaigns, they are similar enough that consumers can switch between conversations with either type without getting confused.

The ubiquity of bots in our personal lives is slowly gaining a parallel in other aspects of life. In fact, Gartner predicts that 25 percent of customer service operations will utilize bots by 2020. This is supported by consumer research from HubSpot, which found that 40 percent of consumers don't care if they're speaking with a bot or a human as long as they're getting answers to their questions.

Patients are primed to interact with bots, but the machines need to be able to offer a level of support similar to a human customer service representative. As part of a media plan, bots can serve as a follow-up touchpoint after a consumer views an ad in another channel. To learn more about how to optimize your next campaign, talk with a trusted Elsevier representative today.

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