The first AI-chatbot of public administration in Latvia

A success story in a nutshell

In June 2018, UNA, the first virtual assistant in the state administration, was launched at the Register of Enterprises. So far on the agency website or the Facebook Messenger platform it has provided information about various services of the Register of Enterprises to more than 25,000 customers.

UNA’s experience demonstrates that the AI does not take over jobs, but provides support to those who are overloaded, offers career development opportunities to those who wish to re-train, and inspires those who follow the development of the customer service representative profession in the digital age.

Transition to remote registration was needed and provided for in the strategic objectives

According to the 2018 statistics, employees of the Register of Enterprises answered more than 67,000 customer calls and 10,000 e-mails in 2017, while the monthly number of users of its website was more than 10,000. The majority of questions were asked again and again, such as about the filling in, submission and progress of documents.

The register was already an advanced body driven by e-development; thus, the gradual transition to remote customer service was started as early as in 2017 to meet the requirements of the digital age. Introduction of a virtual assistant was a logical step towards the strategic goal: 100% remote registration.

Virtual assistant UNA or the future of corporate support

In view of people’s habits and the desire to rely on social networks for communication, UNA, the first virtual assistant in the state administration, was “hired” by the Register of Enterprises in June 2018.

On the website and Facebook Messenger, it advised customers about the establishment and winding down of companies, as well as the progress of specific documents. As UNA developed, the number of topics increased from 3 to 60. Since its first day at work, UNA has sent more than 234,483 useful messages in two languages. People trust UNA: if compared to all customer support channels, up to 13% of customers chose the virtual assistant as their source of information.

“UNA is an efficient communication tool and an innovative state administration service in Latvia that serves customers and keeps learning about topics of interest to customers,”

Advanced technology for future-orientated institutions

In developing UNA, neural network technologies played an essential role for it to be able to analyze the natural language used by people on daily basis. UNA understands what the user is writing, even in cases when the text is inaccurate or flawed. In addition, the robot learns from communication with customers. The platform allows employees of the Register of Enterprises to monitor conversations and take them over, if needed.

UNA provided invaluable support in informing customers at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis

UNA’s opening statement was updated with information about the unavailability of the on-site customer service. It was followed by information about remote services: this information was very useful for the customers. Since the decision about the emergency situation, UNA has continued to perform its customer service duties, and no on-site services to customers have been provided.

The virtual colleague has become an important member of the team

At the beginning, the new virtual colleague was treated with caution. Human members of the team pondered whether AI would take their jobs away. However, it soon became clear that Customer Service Representatives would also be needed in the future and that only the content of their job would change depending on societal processes. For 3 years, UNA has served as an example of how virtual assistants can improve productivity instead of putting people’s jobs at risk.

UNA has become a real member of the team — it supports the call center that can use the chatbot to provide advice over the phone, and offers development possibilities to those colleagues who have re-trained as bot trainers. And the other colleagues can see how the profession of customer service representatives develops in the digital age.

On the website and Facebook Messenger, it advised customers about the establishment and winding down of companies, as well as the progress of specific documents. As UNA developed, the number of topics increased from 3 to 60. Since its first day at work, UNA has sent more than 234,483 useful messages in two languages. People trust UNA: if compared to all customer support channels, up to 13% of customers chose the virtual assistant as their source of information.

The results speak for themselves

Future plans

Three years after the launch, both the register and its customers are satisfied, and the initial targets have been met. UNA is continuously trained, and its knowledge base is improved with new knowledge allowing it to provide more complete and better answers, which contributes to developing the business environment. Currently, the virtual assistant writes in English and Latvian. When e-services are upgraded, the possibility of integrating UNA into them will be considered in order to enable first-level support.

The Register of Enterprises would like to introduce voice technologies. It would be particularly useful for people with visual or hearing limitations, as UNA would be able to transform texts into speech and vice versa for this group to receive services independently without any third-party assistance.

The compiled statistical data demonstrate that the number of persons using virtual assistants has rapidly increased during the last year due to improving quality of assistants, as well as the pandemics. The most popular topics discussed with virtual assistants include various explanations, registering a company, liquidation, filing documents and receiving various statements. However, various explanations and definitions were at the very top of this list. This result is quite interesting as such questions are rarely asked to call center operators. It is also interesting to note that students and pupils also use the virtual assistant of the Register of Enterprises to look for answers for their homework and tests.

At the moment, the Register of Enterprises is implementing a call assessment feature: it is very important as it allows to find out about topics and answers that require improvement to allow UNA to become ever more helpful to the customers of the Register of Enterprises.

The virtual assistant was developed on the Latvian state administration language technology platform Hugo.lv in cooperation with the Culture Information Systems Centre.