12-06-2023

How AI technologies are supporting Polish companies and public organisations

 

HUMAN BEINGS DECIDE. “Artificial intelligence is simply a useful tool for numerous fields and it works as programmed by a human being. It’s we, people, who inspire the actions of artificial intelligence and give it direction. And what it’s used for is up to us”; Michał Góra, President of the Alfavox Management Board.

 

Alfavox has deployed the Multichannel Communication Centre, which services clients of the National Revenue Administration. How will this benefit taxpayers?

They’ll have faster access to information about tax and customs via the phone or a chat function. Our cutting-edge system will soon be taking on the handling of e-mail enquiries, as well. The voicebot launched on the telephone channel is a new feature. It support clients by automatically redirecting their calls to a staff member who will answer their queries.

 

Is this a project accomplished by Alfavox entirely on its own?

It was a model collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and an ambitious undertaking. Our competitors were the largest players on the market. A deciding factor in our success was our twenty years of experience and our own Polish, multifunctional projects. What the competition had to offer were foreign solutions under licence.

 

How’s the digitisation of Poland’s public administration going?

It’s going well. As far as standards of service are concerned, we’re now well ahead of a great many EU countries, including Germany and France. And they were setting the pace for IT progress until quite recently. Germany doesn’t have a centralised service like the Prime Minister’s Office. Alfavox has provided a solution there, too. It encompasses the PM’s Office in its entirety, including subordinate ministries, along with central and regional offices.

 

What are the company’s plans for the near future?

We’re developing chatbots and voicebots. Another level is cognitive technology implemented in collaboration with leading research centres in the USA. We’ve created an artificial intelligence that recognises and analyses a brand’s environment, its competition, its strengths and its weaknesses and provides prompts as to how to communicate with the public. We’re supplying that technology to the financial and pharmaceutical sectors on advanced markets including Switzerland, Holland and the UK. Poland today is a market with prospects. Our technologies have been tried and tested on highly developed markets and it’s only a matter of time before they take over the Polish market. We’re seeking out partners for collaboration on joint ventures or incorporation both at home and abroad. We’d like to provide financial support for the development of innovative products if they have the potential for growth on the market. Alfavox is also active in the sphere of cybersecurity. We have a team of experts focused on the unique field of critical real and cyber infrastructure systems. Our system predicts the direction of a cyber attack. At present, this is an area dominated by post-factum action.

 

Do Polish companies need support in this area?

Companies often only become aware of a hacker attack and the theft of their data when they receive a demand for ransom in return for their data not being publicly released. Criminals break through an organisation’s security measures, enter it and analyse its structures. First, though, they disable the system back-ups. Then they block the system; user’s can’t log on to their computers, discs are encrypted and the company can’t function. 

 

Are there many cyber attacks in Poland?

There were seven million in 2021. In 2022, there have already been three and half million. That’s five times as many. We need to remember that it takes months to recover from a cyber attack. The managers of an entity, be it public or private, are responsible for outcomes and they often risk their own assets. Alfavox provides advice and training on how to build cybersecurity structures and procedures in organisations.

 

Do bots pay for themselves?

Voicebots and chatbots reduce the costs of customer service and increase its efficiency and quality. The technology means that the customers are served immediately. Our solutions already have an efficiency rate exceeding eighty per cent, meaning that more than eighty per cent of the cases reported are handled by a voicebot or chatbot monitoring the issue. Alfavox’s technologies can deal with highly complex processes They can give instructions on how to calculate tax relief, for instance.

We have two levels of solution. Our Enterprise solutions, which are designed for banking, finance and insurance, are intended to handle very complex processes. The other level is for much wider use, in small- and medium-sized enterprises. We provide chatbots or voicebots that relieve staff members of simple processes. They work 24/7 and they’re attractively priced, boxed versions of solutions for the most demanding companies on the market. The client can introduce changes themselves by teaching the bot to deal with new processes. The quality of the organisation’s services increases, with the costs falling relatively by as much as seventy per cent. Our technology is already integrated with Chat GPT, too. It can extract information from there, which speeds up the customer service and reduces the outlay on creating knowledge and teaching virtual consultants.

At one of Poland’s leading logistics operators, an Alfavox chatbot meant that all the customers on the helpline were served on the spot, even during the busiest period in the run-up to Christmas. The logistics sector fluctuates, with extra call-centre and customer-service staff contracted seasonally. We’ve observed concrete outcomes with clients where, following deployment, they only need to employ thirty per cent of the human resources in comparison to the numbers they engaged previously. So they can assign more developmental tasks to their staff. At the same time, our technology enables companies to draw precise conclusions from call analyses.

 

Is artificial intelligence a threat to human beings? Or could it be?

AI is a blessing in numerous fields today. Not only in IT, but also in medicine, chemistry and physics. We should remember, though, that it’s simply a tool that works as programmed by a human being. It’s we, people, who inspire the actions of artificial intelligence and give it direction. And what it’s used for is up to us.

 

Source: Puls Biznesu