Event technology work
An AI assistant for a trade show portfolio
Answers routine attendee and exhibitor questions around the clock, checks registrations, hands off to a person when it should, and logs every chat to the CRM.
- ~85% of inbound questions in scope
The problem
Most questions that reach a show team are repeats: dates, hours, parking, how to exhibit, whether a registration went through. They arrive at night and on weekends, and answering them takes time away from everything else.
What I built
An AI assistant on the show websites, built so each show has its own voice and facts.
- One assistant per show. Each gets its own facts, its own allowed links and its own prompt, so answers never bleed between events.
- Answers from a curated knowledge base, not the open internet. During registration season it could also check whether someone’s registration went through.
- Knows when to hand off. Every reply is either an answer or a handoff to a person, nothing in between.
- Consent first. The chat only loads after a visitor accepts cookies.
- Remembers. A summary of each conversation goes to the contact’s CRM record, so the sales team sees what a prospect asked.
How it works
- Visitor asks Web chat on the show site
- Automation picks it up Pulls the conversation so far
- AI answers or hands off Show's own knowledge base, strict answer/handoff format
- Reply goes back Into the same chat thread
- CRM is updated Summary on the contact record
Two design choices mattered more than the model: a smaller fallback model answers if the main one is unavailable, so the assistant never goes quiet, and it only answers from what it’s given. If the knowledge base doesn’t cover a question, it says so and routes it to a person.
The result
It’s scoped to handle about 85% of inbound questions. Visitors get an answer at 11pm on a Sunday, and the questions that do need a person arrive already summarized in the CRM.