The Drinkaware Chatbot

The Drinkaware chatbot is designed to achieve two objectives: 1) to deliver a screening tool for alcohol consumption (based on the internationally-recognised Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test) to determine a users’ risk of alcohol dependence and triage risky drinkers into personalised support; whether that is fact-based information, tools like our tracking app or pathways in to alcohol support support services. 2) To gather qualitative data and insight at scale, learning even more about users’ needs, motivations and challenges.

This product is about challenging and validating our business assumptions with data. Data-driven insight from the chatbot is informing our research and helping us to ideate responsive digital solutions based on user need, specifically the needs of those most at risk of alcohol harm. We may be a small charity with staff of 30 people and a relatively new digital team (of two years) but we have significant reach with over 6 million unique users to the Drinkaware website in 2021 and 1.1m people supported with our digital tools. This award will help validate our work in the digital product space and take us closer to our ambition of reducing alcohol harm by helping people make better choices about their drinking.