The challenge: plenty of valuable information, but where to start?
BOM runs two websites, BOM.nl and the BrabantBusinessRegion.com platform, holding years of accumulated knowledge about innovating, investing and doing business in Brabant: news items, events, articles, publications and annual reports. That was exactly where the challenge lay, says Ingrid Nagtzaam, Marketing & Communications Manager: "Both BOM.nl and BrabantBusinessRegion.com hold a lot of valuable information, but visitors don't always know where to start."
Visitors arrive with a specific question. "They often have a concrete question and no desire to work their way through navigation structures, pages and downloads," Ingrid says. At the same time, the organisation wanted to guide visitors to the right information, contact person or organisation more quickly.
The two platforms serve distinct audiences. BOM.nl is mainly about innovative entrepreneurs, investors, knowledge institutions and other stakeholders looking for quick answers to practical questions. BrabantBusinessRegion.com is about international companies, investors and talent exploring Brabant as a region for innovation and business location.
The solution: not a standard chatbot, but two digital assistants
"Together with DataSpeak we developed two AI assistants that help visitors with their questions right away," Ingrid explains. The assistant knows the content of the websites, retrieves relevant information and news, refers visitors to the right contacts and initiates a contact request where needed.
Deliberately not an off-the-shelf solution, Ingrid emphasises: "We didn't opt for a standard chatbot, but for a digital assistant that fits the objectives of both platforms." On BOM.nl the emphasis is on finding information and connecting with the right experts. On BrabantBusinessRegion.com the assistant helps international visitors discover Brabant and connect with relevant organisations within the ecosystem. It does more than answer questions there: it introduces visitors to the province and uses insights and telling facts to show what Brabant has to offer as a region for innovation and business location. That gives foreign companies and talent a concrete sense of the region's appeal.
That difference runs deeper than the interface. The assistant searches the live website itself, drawing on its built-in search function, so news, events and publications surface straight away. That is what turns a vague search into a concrete one. Where a visitor would otherwise work through menus and overview pages, the answer now takes two steps on average: from "I'm looking for someone who can help me" to the right expert, with a contact request in the same movement.
The collaboration: start small, test fast, keep developing
Ingrid sums up the collaboration briefly: "Extremely pleasant. We started small, could test quickly and kept developing based on user feedback." DataSpeak contributed the AI expertise, while BOM provided the domain knowledge, user scenarios and real-world cases.
That way of working allowed for step-by-step improvement, testing continuously for relevance of answers, findability of information, referrals and user experience. For BrabantBusinessRegion.com the team went one step further, Ingrid says: there they explored "how the assistant can answer and help in the right language and tone of voice, taking into account the country the visitor comes from."
The results: faster to the right answer and the right person
"The dashboard shows that the AI assistant is being found," Ingrid says. "We see that visitors gain faster access to relevant information and get in touch with the right person or organisation more easily."
Just as valuable is what the assistant gives back to the organisation itself: "The AI assistant also gives us insight into the questions visitors have and where their information needs lie." BOM uses those insights to further improve both websites and its services.
And the threshold for getting in touch is lower than before. The assistant is available 24/7 and helps, in Ingrid's words, "to make the services on both BOM.nl and Brabant Business Region more accessible and more personal."
Conclusion
Two websites, two audiences, one approach: start small, test fast and keep developing based on what visitors actually ask. For BOM this produced assistants on both platforms that get visitors on their way faster while showing the organisation where the information needs lie.
“The result is a solution that not only works technically, but genuinely matches what our visitors need.”
— Ingrid Nagtzaam, Marketing & Communications Manager