He’s Always Working: Meet Dave, The Iowa Lottery’s Newest Team Member

A new team member has joined the Iowa Lottery, and you may have already been helped by his work.

His name is Dave and he’s a chatbot. When you visit ialottery.com, you now see a blue chat symbol in the lower right corner of the screen. The symbol tells you that the Iowa Lottery has a digital assistant available to help answer questions.

If you click on the symbol, the chatbot screen opens. Five popular search topics come up, or you can use the screen to type in your own question.

Now, Dave obviously isn’t a real person. Chatbot software uses artificial intelligence to mimic a conversation. Statistics show that nearly 70 percent of global consumers have used a chatbot in the past year, and the use of chatbots continues to rise.

Best-practice tips say that a chatbot should have a name and personality in line with the organization it represents. We wanted our chatbot to be friendly and engaging with an obvious Iowa connection.

So, you’ll notice that Dave is definitely an Iowa bot, and he’s got a happy smile.

Dave can already answer more than 200 questions about the Iowa Lottery and its products. As we see new questions being asked through the chat screen, we add in more answers.

Our goal in adding a chatbot to our website is to help you easily find information about the Iowa Lottery and its products. The bot helps us deliver customer service 24/7, even at times when our offices are closed.

So why is our chatbot named Dave? Go ahead, ask him. He can tell you. He’s got thoughts about the weather, too. But Dave's main purpose is that he knows a lot of in-depth details about the Iowa Lottery.

Welcome to the lottery team, Dave!

Comments

[Mary Neubauer]

Hi, Darryl. Yes, that has happened many times. In fact, someone who bought a ticket in New Hampshire just won the top prize in the Lucky for Life drawing on Sept. 16.

[Mary Neubauer]

Hi, Vicki. Our promotions have not involved mailing in tickets for more than a decade. With the cost of postage and the time involved, lottery players let us know that they prefer electronic entry of tickets into our promotions. It's very easy to do. Just join the lottery's free VIP Club and you can enter your tickets through our website or by scanning them with our mobile app. Here is a direct link to the VIP Club page: https://www.ialottery.com/Pages/VIPClub/VIPClubLogon_new.aspx

[Darryl hejlik]

Has anyone ever won the top prize in lucky for life.?

[Vicki Sparks]

Should I mail in my losing scratch tickets?