BACK TO MAIN BLOG This festival season, award-winning Cheshire music festival Brit Fest handled more than 117,000 fan conversations through an AI-powered WhatsApp chatbot developed by us, with 100% of queries resolved without human intervention! Built by our talented team, the automated channel has remodelled the way Brit Fest communicates with its audience, providing 24/7 support across WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger while creating a direct channel for festival announcements, competitions and ticket engagement. With more than 90% of conversations taking place through WhatsApp, the platform has also delivered announcement open rates of up to 98%, giving Brit Fest a highly engaged direct-to-consumer audience that is not dependent on social media algorithms. https://ultimate.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/uploads/2026/07/24161236/Whatsapp-Loop-closeup.mp4 Saving crew time with automated FAQ responses Brit Fest partnered with us in 2025 as the festival team looked for a more direct and reliable way to communicate with its (quickly!) growing audience. As the festival approached, the team was dealing with increasing volumes of repetitive questions around tickets, set times, parking, travel and other event logistics. At the same time, relying on social media meant that important announcements could be affected by changing algorithms and audience reach. To solve these issues, we developed an AI-powered chatbot capable of answering festival-goers’ questions instantly, 24 hours a day. Since launch, the system has handled 117,000 conversations across WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger. Every one of those interactions was resolved entirely by AI, with zero human intervention required. For the Brit Fest team, this has meant removing a significant volume of repetitive customer service activity, allowing the core team to focus on delivering the festival rather than manually responding to thousands of similar enquiries. Based on an estimated £3 cost per managed customer service interaction, the volume of automated conversations represents approximately £351,000 in potential manual customer service cost displacement. Building a direct comms line to festival-goers The platform has become a key part of Brit Fest’s audience engagement strategy. Ticketing platforms like Ticketmaster and See Tickets sit between festivals and their fans, meaning organisers don’t always have direct access to the data or permissions they need to communicate with ticket buyers. By building an opted-in WhatsApp audience, Brit Fest has created its own direct line to fans, giving the team a way to keep communicating long after the ticket transaction is complete. Announcements have achieved open rates of up to 98%, demonstrating the level of engagement possible when festivals have a direct communication channel with their audience. Our team also developed an ongoing programme of gamified campaigns to keep fans engaged between festival editions. Christmas, Blue Monday and Valentine’s Day activations have been joined by an 80s and 90s music quiz, tapping into Brit Fest’s nostalgic positioning and giving fans reasons to return to the channel throughout the year. Our resulting platform supports the entire festival journey, from answering practical questions and building anticipation to driving ticket sales and VIP upgrades. Win, win, win! Creating a direct line for next year’s sales For our team, the Brit Fest project demonstrated how AI can move beyond simple customer service automation to become a valuable audience and commercial tool for events businesses. The same infrastructure allows the festival to answer questions at scale while building a direct, engaged audience that it can communicate with outside the increasingly unpredictable reach of social platforms. Festivals have thousands of people asking the same questions, often at exactly the point when their teams are under the most pressure. An AI channel gives event teams a way to handle those conversations instantly, but once you’ve built that direct relationship with your audience, you can use it to keep people engaged and sell tickets ahead of next year’s festival. The Brit Fest platform is now an always-on part of the festival’s digital ecosystem, connecting fans with the information and experiences they need while giving the team a scalable way to manage engagement before, during and beyond the event. Learn more about the partnership, and test out the channel yourself, here. More WhatsApp Get in touch SHARE LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Email Related articles Views How businesses can use WhatsApp for marketing: 2026 guide Views WhatsApp marketing for recruitment agencies: how to automate candidate and client communication Case Study SEO case study: +342% to organic visibility in 12 months News WhatsApp marketing for hospitality: how hotels, pubs and visitor attractions can use automation Newsletter Name First name Surname CompanyEmail(Required)