Graham Media’s WDIV launched a Help Desk to provide answers to every one of viewers’ questions. “It has been wildly successful so far,” says Stephanie Slagle, the company’s VP and chief innovation officer.
If you live in Detroit and need help, WDIV, Graham’s NBC affiliate, has a button for that.
Literally, on WDIV’s website, ClickOnDetroit, in the lower right-hand corner, sits a HELP button. And when you click on it, a dialogue box appears that welcomes you to the ClickOnDetroit Help Desk and invites you to ask a question, promising the station will find the answer for you.
It’s not a gimmick. It’s for people who have questions or problems. Some need information, like what time their favorite NBC show is on. Some have consumer issues, and some leave news tips. Some answers are provided right away by AI bots.
For those questions the AI bot can’t answer, “the bot will open a ticket and a human being will be on the other end of that ticket to answer those questions,” says Stephanie Slagle, Graham Media’s VP and chief innovation officer. “We didn’t tell anybody we were doing it. We just put it up and let it sit. It has been wildly successful so far.”
WDIV’s Help Desk is the result of a grant from Google.
“They think that TV stations can be the center of a community because when there’s challenges or concerns or even governmental issues, that’s who they go to,” Slagle says.
Since the middle of December 2022, when the Help Desk was launched, 3,287 tickets were created and 3,232 were solved, Slagle says.
“We solved 70% of our tickets within 24 hours.”
Users commented on the Help Desk:
“It was nice to know that there are caring folks at Channel 4 that are willing to reply and report requested news”
“I was blown away at the great response! I told my pals at the gym this morning and they were impressed!”
“Terrific service. Quick response with exactly the information I asked for!”
Slagle says the Help Desk came from the realization that “people need us. They look to us for help especially in crisis moments like a hurricane or a major event in the city. But we have this hypothesis that they need us other times, too, because they don’t know who to ask, they don’t know where to go.”
Slagle says viewers reach out to TV stations with questions in a variety of ways—phone calls, emails, Facebook and Instagram, and it’s difficult to track and answer them all.
“Our hypothesis here was what if we could answer them all,” she says. “What if we could figure out a way to help them all, be an actual local resource. I think we are getting close.”
WDIV started promoting the Help Desk in April. May was a record month when the station solved 500 tickets.
Hank Winchester, WDIV’s consumer reporter for WDIV’s Help Me Hank, is the recipient of most questions, Slagle says.
Those questions go automatically to the producer of Help Me Hank, who gets back to the sender.
Once in the ticket system, “the great part is we make sure it’s not lost,” she says.
According to WDIV, the top issues are landlord and rental compliance problems, questions about health insurance, disability benefits and reporting fraud.
Slagle says 43% of the tickets are news tips.
The Help Desk gives viewers the feeling they have a friend in the business.
“It’s helping people realize we have a couple hundred employees right here in your city that live in all of your neighborhoods, and they actually can help you,” Slagle says.
Other Help Desks are planned for Graham stations in Roanoke, WSLS and in Jacksonville on WJXT.
NOTE: On July 13, at 1 p.m. ET., TVNewsCheck will present a Working Lunch Webinar, Reinventing the Relationship with Local Audiences, to share more about Help Desk and how it has caught on with viewers.
TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp will also talk with leading TV marketing executives from Cox Media Group, Gray Television and Tegna about how they are promoting substantive local initiatives designed to engage a larger audience across platforms.
TVN Webinar: Reinventing The Relationship With Local Audiences
“With Promax’s Station Summit on pause for this year, we saw a strong demand among station marketers and creative services directors to convene a discussion around powerful local projects and their creative strategies,” Depp says. “This webinar will tap into substantive initiatives that really deliver on the local value proposition and illuminate how they were built.”
Stephanie Slagle, Graham Media’s VP & Chief Innovation Officer, is one of the speakers.
She joins Deirdre Conley, creative services director, WSOC Charlotte, N.C.; Jim Hays, creative services director, WOIO/WUAB/Telemundo Cleveland; and Enrico Meyer, director of marketing, KVUE Austin, Texas.
Market Share will preview topics presented by Conley, Hays and Meyer in the coming weeks.
CLICK HERE for more information about the speakers and the webinar.
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