Service Needs

Reference No.

N-0087

Title

Interactive response system in the forms of an online chatbot and physical robots.

Business Needs / Challenges

The Department has been putting considerable amount of manual efforts and resources to handle an increasing number of public enquiries through emails (more than 100 numbers daily) and telephone hotlines (more than 60 numbers daily).  The Department plans to make use of an online chatbot to be resided at the Departmental Homepage in handling simple enquiries from the public so as to relieve the heavy workload in this regard.

In addition, the Department has been sparing valuable resources to handle face-to-face enquiries at control points / public area of departmental offices.  By leveraging the back-end engine of the online chatbot, the Department plans to introduce physical robots to handle such verbal or text enquiries.  The physical robots are expected to act as smart interactive presenters in the ceremonial and public events held by the Department.

Application Areas

Broadcasting
Commerce and Industry
Education
Law and Security

Expected Outcomes

The system shall be equipped with Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning and speech-to-text capabilities, etc. in order to promptly, accurately and consistently handle the enquiries, thereby improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public services.  Furthermore, the back-end operation system should support sentiment analysis and categorisation of the questions, major concerns and interests of the public which help the Department to explore ways to further improve its service quality.

It is expected that the system will have biliterate (i.e. good written Simplified / Traditional Chinese and English) and trilingual (fluent spoken Cantonese, Putonghua and English) capabilities.  With the implementation of this system, simple online or face-to-face enquiries will be handled by the online chatbot/physical robots automatically.  In addition, the physical robots, as smart interactive presenters, should be able to greet visitors, tour around showcases with pre-defined routes and deliver presentations, thereby bringing an innovative and smart experience to working counterparts and the public during ceremonial and public events.

Technologies to be Used

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Machine Learning
Natural Language Processing
Robotic Process Automation