Why Conversational AI

Citizens are still being left frustrated by poor customer experiences when contacting their local councils. As consumers, they see the benefits of AI-powered self-service environments that deliver faster, more convenient access to the information they need and expect this from their local councils.

Wherever you look, organisations are reporting impressive results. A recent 8x8 survey of contact centre leaders showed:

  • 92% of respondents confirm that using AI technology allows their organisation to resolve customer issues faster.
  • 94% confirm that AI improves agent productivity.
  • 87% confirm that the use of conversational AI in their contact centre has reduced effort for agents.

The pressure is not only from our citizens and customers. Contact centre agents are seeing the benefits of conversational AI, with ASAPP-CX reporting that 90% of agents want to see more aspects of phone calls automated.

AI-powered self-service environments have benefits for both staff and citizens, although some organisations are still steering clear. In this blog, we discuss some of the barriers and benefits of implementing conversational AI alongside some helpful guidance.

How to implement successful conversational AI

Many local governments are slow to adopt conversational AI. Very often, the biggest barrier is identifying where to start. Local councils manage a vast number of services and processes and wherever you look there is something that could be automated. The answer is to start small.

Identify Trends

The first step is to identify repeat requests and repetitive processes for example, bin collections, parking fines, council tax. Then identify the most common ones and the simplest to automate. Using speech analytics is a great way to understand trends pertaining to frequently asked questions.

Before looking at how to use and implement AI, it is important to be clear about the outcome. What is the reason to automate with AI? Is it to deflect contact centre calls, reduce duplication or create better information sharing? All of these are good reasons to consider conversational AI.

Understand processes

The next step is looking at how citizens currently engage with the process you wish to automate and any other processes that may be affected. There is no point in automating one part of a process if it simply creates a requirement for a spreadsheet to be downloaded for the next action to take place.

For this reason, automation often starts at the first contact point and is built around deflecting calls and creating look-up tables to enable citizens to self-serve. A typical use may be to route callers wanting to pay parking fines directly to a payment portal or team that can take a secure payment from them. Essential to any self-service environment is ensuring a contextual agent hand-off so citizens do not get trapped going around in an endless loop, become increasingly frustrated, have to repeat information and ultimately get the total opposite effect of what you intended.

Understanding the most common queries is best done with good data-driven insights and analytics to learn more about the type of information users need, pain points within the customer journey and repetitive queries.

Deliver a seamless customer experience

AI-driven automation works best in an environment where there is a single platform for all communications which integrates with all in one CRM and other business systems to share information and deliver seamless customer experiences. Increasingly, local councils are updating old, inflexible systems to reap the benefits of modern technology and deliver better customer experiences and operational efficiencies.

The impact on staff and citizens alike is clear: 41% of IT leaders believe companies will fall behind if they don’t adopt conversational AI capabilities to help make services accessible and inclusive, provide 27/4 access to FAQs and redirect labour costs to areas where human intervention is needed most.

8x8 templates simplify Conversational AI

At 8x8, we have done the research and identified and pre-built a set of user-friendly, plug-and-play templates for the most common conversational AI use cases in local government.

These templates simplify the deployment of conversational AI to:

  • Route calls
  • Answer FAQs
  • Report blocked access routes, potholes, etc.
  • Manage waste and recycling
  • andmore

8x8 templates are designed to be easily deployed with minimum customisation, allowing you to skip the complexity and jump right in to build a highly scalable, always available experience.

Westminster City Council are already achieving an 80% success rate with conversational AI to provide citizens with the answers they need, without agent intervention and The State of Conversational AI in the Contact Center Report cited a 55% reduction in customer wait time times by organisations using AI in the contact centre.

The question about conversational AI has moved on. It is no longer an option; it is a necessity to provide effective customer experiences and operational efficiency.

Download the guide 6 Ways Conversational AI Can Support Local Government.

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