ICS.AI

Vision

Using a voicebot to help human call center agents do more

Local government councils tend to face similar communication challenges. Receiving many questions and calls, and not having quite enough resources to answer them all efficiently, is a common one. Councils are the branch of local government in charge of a range of neighborhood services, including waste collection, planning and social housing. Although many of their constituents visit council website for answers to questions like how to pay council tax or when their bins will be emptied, 60% of interactions still happen by phone.

ICS.AI has developed a language model trained for use in public sector applications. Two councils working together had been working with our partner ICS.AI to power the chatbot on their website. While the chatbot has been proven to answer 85% of questions correctly the first time, the councils saw the opportunity to take the technology further and implement an AI powered voicebot as part of their contact center to assist the 240,000 residents in their municipal area. Since they receive about 4,000 voice calls a month, it made sense to approach ICS.AI about adding an AI voicebot to their existing call center, not to replace human agents, but to improve the service that residents received while allowing them to use their agents’ time better.

For the voicebot to be implemented and used successfully, ICS.AI’s AI voice assistant would have to integrate seamlessly with the existing call center.

Transformation

Enabling conversational AI through telephony and cloud services

ICS.AI are providing successful chatbots to councils in the UK. They’ve partnered with us to leverage our expertise in provisioning voice services to ensure that the voicebot was able to deliver a seamless experience to residents.

The goal of the voicebot is to provide as good an experience through AI as if a constituent were talking to a person. The voicebot had to seamlessly integrate with the councils’ existing contact center solution, which used telephony from another service provider. The voicebot also relies on an ultralow-latency connection to the cloud to prevent processing delays when it is asked a question. Working together with ICS.AI, we ensured that the councils had access to a suite of managed voice services that enabled them to take maximum advantage of the AI-drive services.

For the first phase of the project, the voicebot was trained to answer certain questions about the councils’ services only. At launch, about 2,500 calls were routed through the voicebot every month. It was able to answer 50% of questions correctly the first time for trained material. The change in user behavior during the first phase of the project has accelerated voicebot training for further council services.

Results

Expanding availability and reducing pressure on contact center agents

NTT’s voice services enable the councils’ AI-driven voicebot. By seamlessly connecting ICS.AI technology to the contact center and the cloud, the councils can now answer a higher volume of questions about services while relieving the pressure on their human agents.

ICS.AI makes it easier for the councils to assist constituents

The councils want constituents to have the right information so they can make the best use of their services. Adding the voicebot allows them to answer more questions, more quickly, in turn allowing more constituents to use their services.

Improved customer experience (CX)

Connecting the voicebot to the call center eliminates waiting time for call center agents. Since the voicebot and line is available 24x7, it can answer questions whenever they arise.

Invisible support

Residents experience a single call center that is always available. Part of developing the voicebot to be on the same level as interacting with a human is eliminating delays when connecting to the voicebot through the cloud.