Empathy in AI: How an empathetic chatbot drives 12X signups in chronic care
The story of Neutrality Health
Image by Andrea Piacquadio
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TLDR
An empathetic chatbot significantly enhances user engagement in chronic and rare disease care by providing consistent, round-the-clock emotional support and personalized interactions, leading to a 12X increase in signups compared to traditional call-center-driven chats.
Introduction
I had the pleasure of speaking recently with Ilya Gluhovsky, co-founder and CTO of Neurality Health.
I sat down with Ilya and we talked about their empathetic chatbot for autonomous conversations in supporting whole-person care in mental health, and chronic conditions.
We talked about their work with Reviving Mind - a Y-Combinator company. Reviving Mind runs a peer-to-peer support group program for aged and often lonely women.
Danny - “Ilya, tell me about yourself”
Ilya - “Sure. I have a Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford. I’ve done a few things at several healthcare technology unicorns. I served as Rally Health's Vice President of Engineering, landing a $4B acquisition by United Health, I was a co-founder of GetGoing, a Y Combinator company in Time's 50 Best Sites, and Ancestry's Chief Scientist”.
Danny - “Ilya, that is super-impressive! Please tell me about the Reviving Mind case study”.
Ilya tells the story
“I previously had a Y-combinator startup and I reached out on the platform, looking for other Y-Combinator companies that might be interested in trying out our chatbot. Reviving Mind answered and started working with us.
The objective of the project was to improve signup traction for women to join their support programs.
The Neurality Health empathetic chatbot provides 4 main functions:
Answers program information queries
Does in-chat appointment scheduling
Moderates the conversation for sticking to program-related topics
Does follow-up with the user
After training sessions for the chatbot, an ad campaign was run by Reviving Mind driving traffic to a chatbot page.
The results of the Reviving Mind main ad campaign were measured by a KPI
#scheduled appointments upon chatting/#chats
Baseline (admin-driven chat): 2.4%
Autonomous AI responses: 11.3%
Autonomous AI responses + AI-driven follow-up: 25%
The performance of the Neurality Health empathetic chatbot was 12X better than admin-driven chat
Danny - “How do you explain such a dramatic performance gain?”.
Ilya - “I was pretty surprised myself. We found that the key drivers were:
Response time - the fact that chatbot answers so quickly is the number one factor in higher performance
The chatbot builds rapport with empathy. Prospects start sharing a lot. People really open up. The transcripts of the conversations reads like a novel. So - it is not just action-driven, and purposeful. The AI provides empathetic responses really well. Of course some of the conversations were very purposeful with people asking about pricing and technical details of signup to a seniors support group.
The ability to schedule inside the chat while the person was on the line
Chatbot follow-up with the person
Danny - “Ilya - Your chatbot is not working on a quota. Maybe not having a personal interest in closing the sale and improvising features helps?”
Ilya - “Yes, the chatbot is consistent that way. Consistency of response is very important”.
Danny - “Ilya thank you for joining me today and thank you for doing an amazing job. My thanks to my colleague, Tigran Arzumanov who introduced me to Ilya.”.
The historical roots of empathetic chatbots
The work being done by Ilya has its roots in work done in the mid 1960s at MIT at a project called ELIZA.
ELIZA was one of the first computer programs that attempted to simulate human conversation. Developed in the mid-1960s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by Professor Joseph Weizenbaum, ELIZA emulated a Rogerian psychotherapist. The program used pattern matching and substitution to process user inputs and produce responses.
The program was named ELIZA as a nod to Eliza Doolittle, a character from the play "Pygmalion" (and later the musical "My Fair Lady"), who is taught to speak with an upper-class accent.
The most famous script for ELIZA is called DOCTOR, which allows ELIZA to play the role of a Rogerian psychotherapist. The technique involves primarily reflecting back the user's statements and encouraging them to continue talking.
ELIZA identifies keywords in the user's input and uses these to generate a response based on predefined scripts. If the user says, "I am sad," ELIZA might respond with, "I'm sorry to hear that. Why are you sad?"
While ELIZA doesn't "understand" input in any meaningful way, the design created an illusion of understanding and empathy for many users. Some people even reported feeling a therapeutic effect after conversing with ELIZA.
Like Ilya, Weizenbaum himself was surprised at how seriously people took ELIZA and was critical of the implications, raising questions about the ethics and implications of AI in therapeutic settings. The program is significant because it laid foundational work for future conversational agents and brought attention to the potential and pitfalls of human-computer interaction.
Today, ELIZA is primitive compared to modern chatbots like Neurality Health and AI language models, but her role in the history of AI and human-computer interaction remains important.
Why is an empathetic chatbot so effective?
When I reflect on why the Neurality Health empathetic chatbot does an order of magnitude better than a call center chat, it seems that the following factors come into play.
Here's how this can be explained:
1. Emotional Support: Patients with chronic and rare diseases often face emotional and psychological challenges in addition to their physical symptoms. An empathetic chatbot can provide immediate, non-judgmental support, making users feel heard and understood.
2. 24/7 Availability: Empathetic chatbots are available round the clock, allowing users to reach out whenever they feel the need. This constant availability contrasts with admin-driven or human-operated chats, which might have time restrictions.
3. Privacy and Anonymity: Some users might feel more comfortable sharing personal or sensitive information with a bot, knowing it's a machine and won't judge them. This sense of privacy can make users more open about their concerns and needs.
4. Consistency: Empathetic chatbots offer consistent responses every time. This reliability can be comforting to users who may have had varied experiences with human call center representatives.
5. Personalized Experience: The Neurality Health chatbots are tailored to provide information and responses specific to the user's condition, making the interaction feel more personal and relevant.
6. Holistic Approach: Emphasizing "whole-person care" enables the chatbot to address not just medical but also emotional, psychological, and social aspects of a patient's condition. This comprehensive approach can be more appealing than a purely administrative or clinical interaction.
9. Engagement: Empathetic responses can enhance user engagement. When users feel like they're being understood and cared for, they're more likely to continue the interaction and explore the services offered.
10. Modern Expectations: As technology progresses, users increasingly expect more advanced and interactive digital experiences. An empathetic chatbot aligns well with these expectations.
In conclusion
The enhanced user experience provided by empathetic chatbots in healthcare settings, especially for mental health, resonates with patients' needs for understanding, consistent support, and immediate assistance and provides an order of magnitude better sales performance.
You can see a recording of our conversation here:
For more information, you can reach out to Ilya at ilyagluk@gmail.com or Tigran at tigran.arzumanov@bdasaservice.com. I know they would love to talk to you about making something amazing with a slam-dunk ROI.