Empowering Aid: The American Red Cross and Dashbot Partnership

Harnessing the power of Conversational AI to serve communities in need

The American Red Cross provides a wide range of emergency assistance and disaster relief services through the power of volunteers and generosity of donors.

Summary

The American Red Cross (ARC), a leading humanitarian organization, leveraged Dashbot's conversational data platform to enhance its chatbots—a critical resource for scaling emergency assistance and disaster relief support. With Dashbot's advanced optimization tools for performance analytics and topic clustering, the ARC can rapidly improve bots designed for natural disaster support—saving them valuable time when vulnerable populations need them most.

"When disaster strikes, we have to be there for others during their time of need. Technically speaking, we have to quickly interpret conversations at scale and adjust to new requests and conversation topics. Dashbot gives us the insights to provide the support needed to those who need it most.

Additionally, I now monitor the performance of our engagement channels that outside contractors manage. The ability to proactively monitor saves me time and resources."

— Hailey Burgess, Product Manager

Key Metrics

Disaster response goal attainment (Did the person who needs shelter find shelter?)
Lowered not handled/fallback intent (especially within the Spanish language)

The Challenge

The ARC struggled with understanding user behavior during high-volume periods. Without real-time visibility into chatbot interactions, their disaster response teams could not identify users’ priorities and fix problems quickly—manual review of transcripts was time-consuming. It could not produce training data at scale.

The Solution

Dashbot’s Blueprint provisioned ARC with topic modeling, which quantified user behavior during high-volume periods. This capability allowed their team to create an automated process to identify and extract novel training for their NLU engine. This approach saved them valuable time and improved bot efficiency when vulnerable populations needed it most.

The Results

Using Dashbot’s analytics, ARC bots became a frontline support source during emergencies like Hurricane Ian. Their chatbot provides critical services like connecting individuals directly with shelters and essential safety information.

Lower the not-handled/fallback intent, especially with Spanish language interactions.
Improved their disaster response goal attainment, ensuring those in need could find shelter and support.