7 min read From billing and emergency updates to policy-related inquiries, government agencies, and utility providers play a crucial role in delivering essential services to citizens. However, owing to the expanse of what comes under their wing, these organizations often struggle to manage citizen queries and requests.
With more touch points being established, manual processes and traditional systems are no longer sufficient. This is where AI-powered automation for customer support comes in to make processes more streamlined and efficient.
In this post, we’re going to look into why customer support automation is a must for government agencies and utility providers. We’ll explore why traditional workflows no longer meet customer expectations and the role of AI in adapting to these changes.
Table of Contents
Why do government agencies and utility providers need automation?
The demand for efficient, accurate, and timely customer support is increasing by the day – and it’s no different for government bodies and utility providers. Here’s why automation is becoming a must-have in this segment:
1. High volumes of inquiries
According to a study published on ResearchGate, government call centers handle millions of calls annually. This has resulted in an average wait time of 20 minutes or more during peak periods; the number only increases by manifolds when there are critical updates on policies, services, and billing.
2. Resource constraints
Government bodies and utility providers are often running on tight budgets and limited workforce capacity. In fact, Gartner indicates that 60% of government agencies struggle with staff shortages and outdated systems, slowing down response times and frustrating citizens.
3. Need for 24/7 availability
Emergencies such as natural disasters, hazards, power outages, policy changes, and similar demand real-time updates. Traditional systems fail to enable round-the-clock and timely communication, leaving citizens uninformed.
4. Operational inefficiencies
Manual workflows can add to administrative burdens and unnecessary complexities for tasks like managing billing inquiries or scheduling appointments. This often leads to human errors when managing citizen requests, missing out on crucial information.
Must-have automation for government agencies and utility providers
While we do recommend using a customer support automation solution like Auralis AI to create custom workflows based on what you do, who you serve, and what the objective is, here are some must-have automation to have in place:
For government agencies
- Automated inquiry resolution – Government agencies can handle repetitive inquiries like tax policies, benefits programs, and legal services with AI-powered chatbots. According to McKinsey, automating responses to FAQs can help reduce the volume of calls by almost 30%.
- Appointment scheduling – AI customer support tools can help streamline service scheduling for passport applications, vehicle registrations, or even court hearings. With an automated workflow, citizens can book, reschedule, or cancel appointments without long waits on phone calls.
- Document verification and processing – AI can be used to automate the verification process of digital documents like ID proofs, tax returns, or permits. This helps cut down manual reviews, speeding up approvals.
- Emergency notifications – Automation can help disseminate critical information during natural disasters or public emergencies through email, SMS, calls, and other channels.
- Policy update alerts – AI-powered tools can be used to monitor changes to policies and proactively trigger automation to inform citizens of changes made. This could include news, government policies, regulations, and deadlines that typically require mass manual outreach.
For utility providers
- 24/7 billing support – AI-powered solutions can automate tasks like providing billing information, breakdowns, processing payments and even resolving disputes. With their ability to fetch customer data in real-time, utility providers can achieve faster resolution times.
- Real-time updates – Well-integrated AI support tools can communicate power outages or service disruptions. This helps notify affected customers in a timely manner and also automate troubleshooting workflows.
- Service request management – AI can automate routing service requests like new connections, meter installations, or disconnections. This helps reduce the manual workload for customer support teams and allocate resources efficiently.
- Proactive maintenance alerts – Utility providers can also improve customer experiences by scheduling and informing customers about maintenance activities. This helps build transparency and trust and minimizes service disruption queries.
Why use AI-powered support automation over traditional workflows?
Automation is not new.
However, the traditional approach to automating workflows has its limitations in scalability, personalization, and adaptability.
This is where AI-powered customer support automation tools like Auralis AI enable advanced capabilities that not just improve operational efficiency, but scale positive customer experiences.
Here’s how:
1. Customer journey mapping
Solutions like Auralis AI can integrate with your technology stack to create a 360-degree view of the citizen. This helps map out comprehensive customer journeys and offer tailored customer support. For example, if a citizen frequently requests information about tax filings, the system can guide them through the process or even suggest resources to help them understand how it works.
2. Sentiment analysis
AI-powered support tools can do more than just proactively respond to inquiries. They have the ability to assess the sentiment of customer communication to identify frustration, urgency, or satisfaction levels. This allows government bodies and utility providers to prioritize high-stake issues and offer empathetic assistance.
3. Personalization
Traditional automations follow a one-size-fits-all approach to responses. AI-powered systems can access and process historical data to enable personalized interactions. For example, a utility provider can check for past upgrades/ downgrades by a customer and offer personalized service recommendations that better suit their requirements.
4. Scalability
AI-powered automation systems can handle thousands of queries simultaneously. This enables government agencies and utility providers to offer 24/7 customer support, and also ease scaling the service during emergencies or peak seasons when inquiry volumes surge.
5. Cost savings and efficiency
Research by Deloitte shows that AI-powered systems can help reduce customer support costs by 30-40%. This also helps free up human agents to handle more complex and high-value tasks.
6. Data-driven insights
AI support tools can analyze customer data and interactions to identify trends, pain points, and opportunities to improve services. For example, government organizations can use these insights to streamline citizen outreach programs.
7. Multi-channel support
Customer support automation tools can help government bodies and utility service providers activate multiple channels. AI can help them ensure standardization of processes followed when addressing queries or requests, or responding to inquiries, preventing any kind of miscommunication.
8. Multilingual assistance
For demographics that speak multiple languages, addressing inquiries in one can often lead to miscommunication. This is where AI-powered support automation solutions like Auralis AI come in. Government agencies and utility service providers can easily provide multilingual support by translating documentation in real time.
Also read: Best practices for implementing AI-powered support automation
Conclusion
Most government organizations and utility providers use basic automation or manual workflows to handle day-to-day inquiries – the primary reason being the complexity and multi-step approach to most processes to ensure complete compliance.
This is where solutions like Auralis AI come in.
By integrating with your existing systems, the support automation solution enables you to create customized workflows. The layer of intelligence added by AI further helps bring data validation and verification into the processes, ensuring the compliances required to be met.
Want to know more? Book a demo of Auralis AI today.
