5 ways chatbots & voicebots are helping councils & smart cities!
AI & the digital infrastructure of local government.
A smart city is hard to define. It is somewhat of a buzzword that gets thrown around when discussing both the physical & digital infrastructure of an urban area. But when does a city officially become smart?
For the purpose of this article, let’s assume that ‘smart city’ refers to a process or an approach, rather than a result. A process that all cities around the world should be (& mostly are!) engaged in.
In our view, a smart city is data-driven & leverages leading information & communication technology to enhance both the digital & physical experience of an urban area.
Fundamentally, it refers to the way in which a city uses technology to make the city a better place to live.
So, how are chatbots & other AI frameworks playing a role in this movement? Through our work with a number of cities around the world, we’ve identified 5 ways this technology is driving new standards in citizen experience.
- Optimising customer support
Probably the most common use case attributed to chatbot automation, this is a good place to start.
Automating responses to FAQ’s allows customer support agents to focus on complex queries, speeding up response time & allowing a higher level of service by providing instant answers to customers.
Based on Hopstay’s data, even partial automation can be beneficial. Councils are seeing front-line queries (the first question a customer asks) automated by up to 50%. Over time, as chatbots learn, we have seen that figure creep closer to 60%, with approximately 40% of queries handed over to a human. At scale, this has a significant impact & ensures distribution of rate-payer dollars to high-ROI activities.
They can also integrate self-service modules to reduce reliance on customer support agents to process basic form-filling. An example of this is checking bin day. This is the most common query coming through many city-based customer service channels. In this case, a customer asks when their bin is being collected & the chatbot responds with a series of follow-up questions to obtain the correct response, before delivering that response. This requires a simple API connection (either pre-existing or developed) so that the chatbot can call the relevant bin day once it knows a user’s address.
2. Improving accessibility
For cities & councils, accessibility is paramount. This is due to their responsibility as public bodies to ensure that all citizens can access services.
More than 1 billion people around the world now have access to voice assistants, which have the potential to unlock accessibility to both the elderly & disabled who may find it difficult to navigate a complex website or visit a customer service centre. Via simple voice commands, customers can get answers to quick questions or receive status updates on services. This is a significant time saver for these people.
Platforms like Google Assistant & Amazon Alexa are the leading voice platforms, but they don’t come without challenges. Whilst the majority of the population are comfortable navigating an iPhone, voice platforms are a new frontier. Education is therefore key if councils are to successfully offer this service.
It is also worth noting Google & Amazon’s invocation rules, which offer a huge opportunity for cities. More on that in our article on voicebots, here.
3. Bringing urban data to life to create citizen-centric use cases
Effective use of urban data sits firmly within the mandate of a smart city. Around the world, an increasing number of cities are making their urban data available to the public. Cities like London, Paris, Sydney & Copenhagen all have open data websites that grant access to developers to different datasets.
This is a bid to drive innovation & encourages the private sector to build use cases for this array of urban data.
This is undoubtedly a good thing & chatbots have begun to play a role. An example of this is in the smart parking space. Many councils are rolling out smart parking solutions to track the occupancy of car parks (thanks to an array of smart parking companies, including Smart Parking Limited & Cleverciti).
Connecting this dataset to a chatbot allows citizens to get instant, up-to-date information on the nearest available parking to any given destination. This use case is particularly strong if integrated into voice assistants because it allows hands-free access to this information, reducing the temptation to illegally grab your mobile phone while in traffic.
In many of the world’s busiest cities, more than 30% of circulating cars are searching for a car park.
Live parking data integrated directly into a voice assistant is therefore solving a very real problem.
Automatic alerts distributed to all citizens once air pollution hits a certain level is not outside the realms of possibility. In cities like Paris, public transport prices are reduced heavily on days of poor air pollution. For those driving, they may not get this news until they’re on the highway. A proactive approach can have a big impact.
4. Sending alerts & updates
The ability to be proactive is an important measure of customer service. Organisations that are reactive tend to overwhelm their customer support teams, while a proactive approach ensures that the organisation stays in front of the problem & anticipates customer queries before they hit their systems.
Social media-based chatbots (such as those through Facebook Messenger) are being adopted by councils to send updates & alerts.
On the same theme, checking bin day is another example of this. After the user receives their answer, the chatbot asks the user whether they would like to receive a notification every time their bins are being picked up. If the user agrees, they are never in the dark about their waste collection again. This reduces their need to re-ask the question over holiday periods (or when schedules change) & also improves sustainability outcomes by reducing the number of missed waste collections.
There are many examples of similar use cases around the world.
Text messaging services were partially used during the Australian bushfire crisis. They were again used during the covid-19 global health crisis to ensure citizens understood evolving lockdown measures & restrictions. It has a positive impact on customer satisfaction.
5. Improve knowledge management
As the adage goes, knowledge is power.
On average, customer service agents spend 1.8 hours a day searching for information (McKinsey report). The organisational impact of smart, structured knowledge is therefore enormous.
Chatbots require knowledge. When a user asks a question, the chatbot uses natural language processing to understand the intent of the user, then fetches the information from the knowledge base & returns it to the user.
The way knowledge is both managed & structured is therefore paramount.
In cases that we’ve seen, chatbots have forced councils to rethink how knowledge is managed & structured within their organisation. Often, customer service agents find it quicker to find the information via the chatbot than by searching their own knowledge base.
This is not to suggest that chatbots are more powerful than general search in this scenario, but rather that organised knowledge management can save an organisation a high number of man hours. In many cases, chatbots trigger this important realisation.
It’s worth point out that generally, councils have larger internal knowledge bases than most organisations.
Many council websites have more than 250 web pages, which illustrates the breadth of information & services they are mandated to provide.
Chatbots have been used internally by council teams to locate & get immediate answers to questions without sifting through dated intranets.
But more importantly, they encourage cities to rethink their approach to knowledge & force them to make structural improvements that allow it to be searched, updated & adapted with ease.
For more information on this project & access to the full case study, please contact lucas@hopstay.co.
