REMARKS
Commissioner discusses business portal and chatbot functionality
0:30:03
·
122 sec
Commissioner Fraser explains the development and functionality of the business portal and chatbot, emphasizing their role in improving city services and information dissemination.
- The chatbot was introduced to handle low-level information requests, potentially reducing the load on 311
- Initial challenges with the chatbot, such as hallucinations, were addressed and refined
- The business portal was developed in conjunction with industry feedback
- Future plans include expanding the chatbot's capabilities to cover more city services
Matthew Fraser
0:30:03
Now when it comes to the business portal and what we've done around the chat function, I I think for us, I I give council members the council just the committee just highlight, like, when you look at 311, New York City runs 1 of the nation's largest information support lines.
0:30:21
Over 70% of the calls in 301 does not result in the city agency having to respond to anything.
0:30:27
People are calling for information.
0:30:29
Right?
0:30:30
Now if you look at the if you look at that demand and you look at the amount of wait time that exists within the 301 universe, alright, we're doing a great job, but we could do a better job if we can field some of these lower level request for information by providing something that's more usable.
0:30:47
The chatbot was the first phase at testing that in a very specific in a very specific and limited universe around small business services, and that seemed to work out very well for us.
0:30:57
There was some initial sentiment feedback that came out of out of press about, providing some hallucinations and things along that lines, which we could really refine.
0:31:06
But by and large, that's giving us a foundation where we can start to serve New Yorkers and provide more context to digital assistance so that you can start to feel more of those questions.
0:31:16
So when you think about the limitation that's on the chatbot today where it's limited just to small business services or people that are looking over the business, If we could open the universe of that up to everything that through in 1 can service, it would significantly help relieve some of the back pressure that comes to coming into through in 1 and gives us a better response time in terms of dealing with New York as they need urgent assistance from quality of life related issues.
0:31:41
In addition to that, the actual the small business portal that that exists.
0:31:46
Again, that was one of the things that we built in conjunction with industry to figure out where New York wasn't getting it right.
0:31:52
And we've gotten great feedback from industry that the portal is in the line of what they need.
0:31:56
But I think we are, in many cases, a victim of our success.
0:32:00
So as good as that is, people always want more and we're working to give more as quickly as we can.
