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response system in August 2020. “It understands your sentiment, it knows what you’re saying in multi- ple languages, [and] it also tries to find the right answer without having to go through the hierarchical tree,” Gupta said. “Now we are looking at expanding that voice channel to add more transactions so people could pay some of their fees.”
Officials are also considering inte- grating the voice channel into back- office activities, such as those that support the contact center. Addi- tionally, officials plan to automate the proctoring of knowledge tests that drivers can take at home, fur- ther reducing the amount of time they have to spend at DMV offices. That was one of the main reasons for adopting AI even before the pan- demic, Gupta said.
Clearing the hurdles to
implementation
He divided the challenges to AI implementation into three familiar categories: technology, people and process.
In terms of technology, DMV had only a limited amount of data to train the AI and the quality of the data sub- mitted by customers was inconsistent, so officials started with basic tem- plates and built from there.
In terms of people, managers evalu- ated individuals’ strengths and weak- nesses so they could train and reas- sign employees as needed. In terms of process, DMV officials wanted to make sure they did not replicate known problems when they rolled out new features to the field offices. Therefore, they “started small, which was really good because we learned
and then we expanded,” Gupta said. “We are still expanding.”
He acknowledged that the fluid nature of the pandemic has made it tough to plan. Government-mandat- ed cycles of closures and reopenings meant DMV had to be flexible. And that means AI has found a permanent place in DMV operations.
“Obviously, per-unit transaction cost is lower with self-service chan- nels and AI-based channels,” Gupta said. “It creates more elasticity. It’s more nimble to react to things like COVID.” In addition, during times of social unrest or natural disasters, the approach gives DMV “an avenue to continue to serve our customers safely.”
In short, “none of this is going away,” he said. “The value proposi- tion has been very clear.” n
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