Videotron first to launch a chatbot

March 21, 2017 - Press Release

Montréal, March 21, 2017 – In keeping with its commitment to providing customers with the best and the latest in new technology, Videotron is launching Chillico, the first Facebook Messenger chatbot from a Canadian telecommunications provider. Chillico's mission is to converse with users in order to recommend selections from the illico.tv video-on-demand catalogue. It harnesses technology rooted in artificial intelligence to communicate with Videotron's customers in an innovative and personalized way.

“Chillico is our first experiment with chatbots,” explains Julie Brault, Vice President, Branding & Ominchannel Digital Strategy. “It will give us more information about how our customers interact with this type of innovative service. In the long term, we expect to learn how we can permanently incorporate bots into our customer service toolkit.”

Hello Chillico!
The way it works is simple: users just start talking to Chillico, the chatbot returns the greeting and asks multiple-choice questions in order to come up with viewing recommendations. The conversation can be fairly detailed: desired genre, user's areas of interest, age, and so forth. The bot will suggest the titles from the illico.tv catalogue that are likely to be the most appropriate and interesting to the user.

To try out the innovative technology and have a conversation with Chillico, go to www.messenger.com/t/chillicovideotron/


About Videotron
Videotron
(www.videotron.com), a wholly owned subsidiary of Quebecor Media Inc., is an integrated communications company engaged in cable television, interactive multimedia development, Internet access, cable telephone and mobile telephone services. Videotron is a leader in new technologies with its illico interactive television service and its broadband network, which supports high-speed cable Internet access, analog and digital cable television, and other services. As of December 31, 2016, Videotron was serving 1,690,800 cable television customers, including 1,587,000 Digital TV subscribers. Videotron is also the Québec leader in high-speed Internet access, with 1,612,800 subscribers to its cable service as of December 31, 2016. As of the same date, Videotron had 893,900 subscriber connections to its mobile telephone service and was providing cable telephone service to 1,253,100 Québec households and organizations. For the eleventh consecutive year, Videotron ranked as Québec's most respected telecommunications company in the annual Léger survey.

Follow us on the Web | facebook.com/videotron
Follow us on Twitter | twitter.com/videotron

– 30 –

Press inquiries

Véronique Mercier

Vice-president, Communications QMI

medias@videotron.com