Our chatbot transformed Glastonbury for Festivalgoers
With a focus on emerging technology, we explored the capabilities of AI and chatbots to find a way of improving the experience of the Glastonbury Festival for their attendees
The Challenge
As loyal Glastonbury followers ourselves, we discussed issues we had experienced at the festival with learning who the 'secret acts' where and when they were performing.
Although the official Glastonbury app and website are updated promptly, sometimes the mobile signal is so poor that people aren’t able to find information quickly enough.
With the growing popularity of Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp reaching over 1.2 billion users, and the launch of bots for brands such as Domino’s Pizza and BBC news, we found that a chatbot could provide both high engagement rates and levels of customer satisfaction. As an additional bonus, the data usage for Facebook Messenger is very low, and therefore the chatbot worked quickly and responsively on both 2G and Edge networks.
Festival Discovery Challenge
As regular Glastonbury attendees, we saw first-hand how difficult it could be to find out who the secret acts were and when they were performing
Limited Connectivity
Although the official Glastonbury app and website were updated quickly, poor mobile signal often made it hard for people to access information in time
Chatbot Opportunity
With messaging apps growing rapidly, we identified a chatbot as a low-data, responsive way to deliver fast festival updates, even on 2G and Edge networks
What We Delivered
We built a lightweight Facebook Messenger chatbot designed to give festival-goers quick, up-to-date information during Glastonbury.
The bot provided details on acts, stages and set times by connecting to an open-source information feed. We also monitored Twitter and rumour feeds to identify potential secret acts and keep users informed as new information became available.
Users could opt in to receive updates about secret acts, with their information stored only for the purpose of broadcasting those alerts.
The bot launched the week before the festival, supported by a team who monitored it throughout the weekend to make sure it stayed operational and could respond to unexpected questions.
The Result
The chatbot received over 50,000 messages across the festival weekend.
Our research proved accurate, with the most common questions focused on when specific acts were playing and who was performing on each stage.
The bot also helped us uncover unexpected user needs, with questions about cheap beer and the weather becoming some of the most popular. These insights gave us valuable learning for future festival chatbots and showed how low-data messaging experiences can support festival-goers in real time.
How We Work
A proven process that delivers results, from discovery to continuous improvement.
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