Case study

COVID-19 Chatbot for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts partners with NeuroSoph to implement its Specto AI platform and deploy an intelligent conversational AI chatbot that provides secure and accurate COVID-19 digital information and services to its constituents.

COVID-19 Conversational AI Chatbot
Industry: Government
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
# Of Employees: 200+
Top Challenges:
  • Mass.gov and 2-1-1 hotline overwhelmed with an influx of calls and questions about COVID-19​
  • Citizens struggling to get accurate information about COVID-19
Key KPIs:
  • 1.7M+ chatbot clicks
  • 247K+ chatbot messages
  • >92% chatbot messages meeting need of visitor

Mass.gov

Inside the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) is the state’s leading agency for technology and innovation. EOTSS’s mission is to provide secure and quality digital information, services, and tools to constituents and service providers when and where they need them.

Challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic presented significant uncertainty and challenges across the world. It accelerated changes across organizations and strongly impacted the daily lives of many citizens. In a time where information is widely available (both accurate and inaccurate), citizens were looking for information and assistance from official channels to help guide them through this period of uncertainty. As a result, mass.gov experienced significant spike in traffic and its 2-1-1 hotline – for non-emergency assistance – was overwhelmed with an influx of calls and questions about vaccines and COVID-19.

Solution

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and EOTSS partnered with NeuroSoph to install and configure the Specto AI (artificial intelligence) platform. NeuroSoph’s cutting-edge Specto AI platform builds secure and enterprise-ready conversational AI chatbots. Furthermore, these intelligent AI chatbots are trained on industry-specific data to enable them to understand the nuances of each industry. Using Specto, a highly scalable and fault tolerant intelligent conversational AI chatbot solution was deployed on mass.gov. 

Using a 5-stage iterative process with EOTTS, NeuroSoph successfully implemented the Specto AI platform and launched a conversational AI COVID-19 chatbot that provides frequently asked questions (FAQs) and important information about COVID-19 and vaccines to the constituents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

5 main stages for launching the COVID-19 AI Chatbot:
  1. Acquisition and analysis seed data for initial training of the chatbot
    • Analysis of COVID-19 and vaccination seed data that includes call center logs and mass.gov feedback provided by EOTSS
  2. Configuration and integration of Specto AI chatbot user interface for mass.gov
    • Configure the user interface to match mass.gov theme and style
    • Integrate interface with mass.gov content management system for seamless user
      experience
    • Ensure 508 compliance and equal accessibility for all visitors
  3. Performance and load testing
    • Perform load tests to ensure Specto AI chatbots can handle mass.gov user load
  4. Soft launch
    • Launch bot for 20 of users to test and collect user conversational data for additional bot
      training
    • Incrementally increase exposure to 50% and continue to collect user data for bot
      improvement
  5. Production rollout
    • Launch bot to 100% of users
    • Monitor Massachusetts COVID-19 guidelines and bot messages for ongoing content
      releases
Goal Description Result
60-day implementation of Specto conversational AI chatbot
Due to pandemic and ongoing urgency of providingconstituents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with vaccine information, NeuroSoph needed to operationalize the Specto AI chatbot within 60 days.
The Specto AI COVID-19 chatbot was rolled out in 60 days on mass.gov.
Withstanding heavy traffic andwebsite load
Tests (capacity, stress, and soak) to ensureSpecto AI chatbots can handle mass.gov user load and site traffic.
Specto AI chatbots go through rigorous performance and load testing to ensure they can handle loads from mass.gov. Performance tests of bot response time is 1 second or less.
90% target for AI chatbot
As a key measure of ROI, NeuroSoph’s conversational AI chatbot needs to answer at least 90% of visitor’s questions without directing visitors to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 2-1-1 call centre.
NeuroSoph’s Specto AI COVID-19 chatbot is able to answer over 92% of visitor questions without redirecting visitor.
Reduce calls to Commonwealth 2-1-1 call centre
The 2-1-1 hotline was overwhelmed with an influx of calls and questions about vaccines and COVID-19.
Specto AI COVID-19 chatbot answers on average 500 questions per day, ~460 questions (92%) are handled by bot in an automated fashion and approximately 40 questions are directed to call centre.
Data collection for feedback and continuous improvement
Collect rich user conversational data for content development, improvements, continuous bot learning and training.
COVID-19 chatbot collects types of visitor questions about COVID-19 vaccines and helps anticipates needs and informs bot and mass.gov content updates.
Specto AI COVID-19 chatbot dashboard
Collect data from chatbot interactions for analytics and actionable insights to improve performance.
Real time dashboard that tracks web analytics such as:
- Click rates
- User demographics
- Devices used
- Bot analytics
- In-scope vs. out-of-scope messages
- User conversation history
- Top bot responses
Full Accessibility and 508 compliant
Follows federal government website requirements to be safe and accessible for people with disabilities.
Specto AI chatbots are designed to be fully accessible - 24/7, 365 - by all, including to those with disabilities.

Conclusion

clicks

1.7M+
Chatbot Clicks

messages

247K+
Chatbot Messages

in-scope

>92%
In-Scope Responses

Citizens need and expect information as quickly as possible to make decisions and move on with their day. NeuroSoph’s Specto conversational AI chatbot is used to augment citizen interactions at scale. The Specto AI COVID-19 chatbot delivers a conversational experience, answers frequently asked COVID-19 vaccination questions, is accessible to all (508 compliant) – 24/7, 365 days – and collects valuable customer insights.

EOTSS’ partnership with NeuroSoph leverages their Specto AI platform to build intelligent conversational chatbots that expands engagement channels, provides better customer experience, and increases the customers return on investment (ROI), as well as return on data (ROD). Moreover, with the success of the COVID-19 chatbot on mass.gov, EOTSS is looking forward to continuing its strong partnership with NeuroSoph. Leveraging the Specto AI platform, they plan to implement additional intelligent chatbots with expanded functionalities into other areas of mass.gov.

Extend Intelligence with your Trusted Partner, NeuroSoph

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts trusts NeuroSoph to replicate its success with the COVID-19 AI chatbot and build toward a future that helps make every interaction with government easier, faster, and more secure.

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