At ROLLER, we obsess over customer success—it’s even one of our values! So, it was exciting to get together as a team for our 2024 ROLLERthon to generate ideas on the theme of AI co-pilot.
Together, we workshopped ways that AI can be integrated into the ROLLER platform. The sessions' intent was to ultimately create new product features that make our customers' everyday lives and operations easier, helping them grow their business in new and exciting ways.
In this article, we’ll uncover the details of the session and how the ideas could shape the future of innovation in the attractions industry!
What does AI co-pilot mean?
AI co-pilot is our way of looking at use cases for emerging AI-based technologies and how they can solve problems for attraction venues, providing value above and beyond industry standards.
As part of the ROLLERthon session, the teams were tasked with researching AI solutions on the market, evaluating their strengths and limitations, and finding unique ways of extracting value from them for our customers.
We believe there is an opportunity for an AI co-pilot to help our customers be more efficient—they are super busy. We also recognize that AI is such an evolving area, and there are still some challenges with it. There needs to be a lot of work to de-risk the landscape for our customers. This event allows us to dip our toe into the water of AI and ultimately get some ideas that lead to product features that we ship.
Richard Steers
Chief Product & Technology Officer, ROLLER
How ROLLERthon was organized
Small teams were created comprising groups in the ROLLER team who typically don’t work together. This was done to ensure that problem-solving was approached from a broad spectrum of perspectives and with different industry expertise.
ROLLERthon is an opportunity for our product and tech teams to come together and showcase how technology, passion, and intellect can drive innovation to enhance customer and guest experiences.
Lauren Smirfitt
Director of Platform Education, ROLLER
After teams had generated their ideas, they submitted them to a panel of judges, who ranked the solutions based on:
- Technology: Engineering skill demonstrated, use of technology stack(s), PoC working functionality.
- Design: Attention to aesthetics, user experience, interaction, and user interface.
- Business value: Meets customer needs and creates business value.
- Presentation: Clarity, engagement, and structure of the presentation, including a demo of the solution.
- Process: The process the team followed to get to the outcome.
- Inspiration and innovation: How well the team innovated and how inspired and excited the panel was about the idea.
The winning idea: Revolutionizing revenue management
The winning team impressed the judges with their innovative creation, a co-pilot designed to revolutionize venue revenue management. This cutting-edge concept dives deep into a venue’s data and benchmarks it against similar venues. By leveraging this comparative analysis, the co-pilot can then identify actionable strategies for maximizing revenue.
What makes this co-pilot truly special is its ability to show exactly how much more revenue a venue could make by following its suggestions. It doesn’t just give vague ideas; it provides clear, detailed projections of the financial benefits the user can achieve. This helps venue operators see exactly what steps to take to boost their profits and makes it easier to understand the impact of those actions!
The teams showed we can deliver innovative ideas in a matter of days, making use of tech we know very well combined with AI tech that most of us have only played around with in our spare time. The energy throughout the week was amazing and it was awesome to see people who don't usually work together able to produce cool and useful features in a small amount of time.
Andrew Carter
VP of Engineering, ROLLER
While we can’t promise that this feature will be implemented into the ROLLER platform, the sentiment and reasoning behind it give us plenty to think about.
Other ideas and themes
Predictive analytics
While we already have a robust Analytics tool, one idea that has great merit is the potential of predictive analytics. This concept looks at ways venues can visualize possibilities based on their current performance. While businesses can already leverage their existing data to inform strategies that boost revenue and increase party bookings, this idea could take that to the next level by identifying emerging trends and visualizing their impact.
Chatbots
The idea of utilizing chatbots provided food for thought. Chatbots can offer instant support to guests, answering common questions about opening hours, ticket prices, and events all day and night. This means guests get the information they need quickly, improving their overall experience. Chatbots can also manage multiple inquiries at once, allowing staff to focus on more complex guest needs. There’s plenty to look into here!
The future of AI in attractions
ROLLERthon 2024 was a vibrant showcase of creativity and collaboration, bringing our team together to explore how AI can enhance the ROLLER platform. By focusing on the theme of AI co-pilot, we generated innovative ideas aimed at making our customers’ operations smoother and more profitable.
While we can’t promise implementation of these ideas, the insights and enthusiasm from ROLLERthon provide a solid foundation for future innovations that will influence our product roadmap and unlock value for our customers!
