Proactive Conversational AI - Automating the Unemployment Journey

Goals:

Increase citizen experience (CX) with artifical intellegence (AI) and Natural Language Understainding (NLU)
Journey automation and transacting with citizens
Getting citizens reemployed
Reduction of inbound calls
Reduced operational cost

ContactEngine automates the unemployed individual’s journey by starting an outbound conversation triggered from data in the Tennessee Department of Labor Work Services Unemployment Insurance application. ContactEngine starts the conversation using natural language (improves engagement) reaching out (proactive) to individuals before they call in (reactive). ContactEngine engages constituents through their channel of choice, determined by our AI, and uses automated voice, email or SMS taking them on a journey to get them reemployed. The unemployed citizen can respond in their natural language (English, Spanish, slang, etc.) where our AI understands the intents (95%) in the conversational flow. The goal is to transact with citizens with reduced manual call center aid. This leaves call center personnel with more complex tasks and greatly improves citizen satisfaction rates.

“The Unemployment Journey” https://vimeo.com/501895913

Getting ahead of regular transactions:

Application filing journey communications - not complete, approved or rejected
Weekly Job Certifications
Payment release notifications (when, how much, which payment method)
Job search updates
Update during long period of processing
Webinar reminders and enrollment
Upload images of documentation
Upskilling and educational opportunities

ContactEngine also resolved experience interruptions:

Payments have stopped
Alerts when documents are needed
Request wage protests, backdates, appeals
Impacts from quarter change
Impacts from industry specific policies (school workers)
System issues impacting personalized cert days
Claim conversions (PUA)

ContactEngine communicates benefit policy changes, so constituents aren’t blindsided.

Federal benefit upgrades to State benefit program – qualifying policies
Notice Federal or State benefits are ending
Back to work communication

ContactEngine’s customers significantly reduce inbound and outbound calls up to 50%, improve engagement averaging 65% and contain people in the journey 96% - resulting in improved citizen experience.

Risks

Risk: PII exposure. We go to great lengths to mask PII. Data is housed in AWS GovCloud, data is encrypted resting and active. You depoy a single instance of AWS so we do not comingle data with other agencies. Our enviorment is scanned by some of the largest Global companies.

Rationale

In the Gartner’s 2019 paper ‘Customer Service & Support Technology’, the state “advancements in AI and machine learning are expected to deliver advancements in customized campaigns and automated interactions”.

According Gartner, "Customer service organizations face 10 dilemmas as they rethink their operations to show resilience to current and new digital business models." Here are two of them:

“By 2025, proactive outbound interactions will overtake reactive inbound interactions.”

“By 2025, 40% of customer service organizations will become profit centers by becoming de facto leaders in digital customer engagement.”