Digital self-service and AI: Streamlined service, happy customers, real-life results
Success! A top utility provider implemented self-service + AI chatbots to boost customer service, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.
Macroeconomic challenges, residual impacts from the pandemic, climate change, and humanitarian crises are creating a pressurized environment for many regional governments and public entities. With limited resources and often overworked employees, they face all kinds of barriers to providing better citizen service.
Constituents expect more but trust less, while organizations must do more with less. On top of that, employees are trying to keep up with citizen expectations while dealing with outdated business applications and siloed systems.Help is on the way in the form of AI in the public sector. Both generative AI and business applications with AI deeply embedded into business processes are now able to streamline multiple tasks across the citizen engagement spectrum.
The promise of AI in public sector
Business AI in particular marks a paradigm shift in how public sector organizations can garner insights from data and solve issues faster and cheaper.
Public entities should consider these forecasts:
- Forrester researchers predict that enterprise AI initiatives will boost productivity and creative problem-solving by 50% this year.
- IDC predicts that by 2026, 90% of Global 2000 organizations will augment operational roles with automation technology, increasing worker efficiency by 30%.
- Gartner says that by 2027, the productivity value of generative AI will be recognized as a top economic indicator of national power, mainly due to workforce productivity.
Improving citizen services and engagement
Business AI built into customer service applications can provide tailored solutions to stakeholders, making each interaction an opportunity to improve satisfaction and loyalty.
Citizens and businesses can engage with agencies using natural language and get answers to simple inquiries that can be resolved quickly at the point of initial contact, without the need for personal interaction.
The use of natural language (conversational analytics) is making it easier for citizens to make more refined queries on data. If that doesn’t work then more complex, higher-risk inquiries can be routed to employees, who can then focus on providing personalized service.
The result: Citizens get answers faster and can engage easier with public entities, increasing their satisfaction. Employees are freed from routine tasks, enabling them to deliver high-quality services.
Boosting productivity with AI in public sector
Virtual assistants embedded into business applications from HR to finance, procurement, marketing, and services are already transforming the business user experience – it’s like tapping your smartest colleague on the shoulder.
Employees can ask a question in plain language and receive intelligent answers drawn from data across the applications portfolio and third-party sources, retaining context. Virtual assistants can quickly fill in data with smart input recommendations, which enables employees to interact with the system in natural language for help, FAQs, and insights.
Citizen-facing departments also could use business integrity screening to scan large volumes of data in real time with increased accuracy to detect and prevent fraud and errors by identifying anomalous activity quickly using flexible rule sets and predictive analyses.
Doing AI the right way
Implementing AI effectively requires careful planning and due diligence. Many government organizations need to steer their organizations through disruption to achieve the best outcomes, which will require both cultural and technological transformation.
Here are some key considerations when it comes to AI in the public sector:
- Start small and test the waters before embarking on a comprehensive rollout
- Employees will need training to upskill
- Security and privacy of citizens data must be protected, with full transparency to maintain citizen trust
While the integration of AI and enterprise business applications capabilities are enticing, the real promise of business AI for citizen engagement isn’t what it can do with the technology, so much as the value it will create.
