The Atlanta Braves knew they would be getting plenty of questions from fans with the opening of SunTrust Park.
This spring’s arrival of the new suburban Cobb County, Ga., ballpark includes all the traditional wayfinding and ushers. But the club supplemented those traditional efforts with an artificial intelligence-powered bot capable of answering fan questions about where to locate various amenities, such as specific concessions, restrooms or children’s areas.
Working with baseball’s digital arm, MLB Advanced Media and New York-based artificial intelligence company Satisfi, the Braves embedded the customer service feature within the sport’s popular Ballpark mobile application.
“We needed something more immediate and user controlled than a customer service window,” said Greg Mize, Braves director of digital marketing. “This gives us another avenue to learn what’s important to the fans, and as the season has progressed, the system has become smarter and has given better and more detailed responses.”
The club itself has also acted upon many of the questions coming into the app, including working with concessionaire Delaware North to increase the gluten-free food options at SunTrust Park after receiving so many inquiries about that into the bot.
An artificial intelligence-powered fan assistant at venues is not unheard of in sports and moves beyond prior iterations of customer service chat services, including some with Satisfi, that involved human involvement from team personnel. Soon after the opening of SunTrust Park, the Tampa Bay Lightning also partnered with Satisfi to create a team-branded bot capable of answering questions about parking, concessions, ticketing and other arena-related topics.
IBM last year similarly developed a feature for tennis’ U.S. Open using its Watson artificial intelligence that encouraged fans to send questions via mobile on concessions, transportation and other venue-related issues. The natural-language function allowed fans to simply type questions such as “Where can I get a soda?” to get a response.
The company also is looking to embed the customer service artificial intelligence in other interfaces such as robots that would roam event grounds.
“The notion of a cognitive concierge is something where we see a lot of possibility for this technology,” said Noah Syken, IBM vice president of global sponsorships and client programs. “You’re going to see that sort of thing a lot more at events going forward.”
The Braves’ efforts with Satisfi are just part of the overall artificial intelligence-fueled offerings at SunTrust Park. Other location-oriented amenities offered through the Ballpark app include an integration with traffic and navigation app Waze. The club is also beginning to survey ticket buyers on their motivations for attending particular games, such as business or wanting to share in an experience with families.
Those attitudes are being blended with purchase histories and other data to form the basis of an artificial intelligence-powered recommendation engine, similar to those used by Netflix, Amazon and others and developed with longtime partner Experience, on potential offers and upgrades.
“The idea is to use this technology to help unlock things fans didn’t even know they wanted and serve them in a much more personalized way,” said Adam Zimmerman, Braves vice president of marketing.
