VDA - Voicebot on calls from Irish taxpayer on tax clearance

In early 2018, the Irish Revenue Commissioners began investigating the potential of Artificial Intelligence to provide a more efficient, effective experience for customers using their telephony services. A pilot project was initiated to examine if AI based Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies could be used to deliver an improved customer service, reduce costs and increase efficiencies. This resulted in the implementation of a Virtual Digital Agent (VDA) or voicebot which was designed to focus on a subset of calls from the Irish taxpayer relating to tax clearance. On a daily basis, taxpayers contact Irish Revenue tax clearance customer support asking how to apply for tax clearance; enquiring what their current tax clearance status is; requesting more information on expired, refused & rescinded tax clearance applications as well as just looking for information on tax clearance itself. It is reported that currently, up to 50% of calls were handled from start to finish by the voicebot, 70% of first-time applicants engaged with the voicebot when submitting their application, 75% of tax clearance holders were able to retrieve their tax clearance access number (TCAN). Only in 10% of the calls, the calls were transferred to a human operator due to the inability of the voicebot to understand the request.