The DTI improves citizen experience with AI-enabled citizen support

The Department of Trade and Industry, which serves as the prime mover of consumer welfare in the Philippines, received a large number of phone and email queries from stakeholders and the general public. They handled each one manually through their contact centre, serving six functional groups with different specializations.

However, different roles and regulations across each functional group made it difficult for admin teams to ensure each query was forwarded to the correct group. Additionally, the volume of queries increased wait times for citizens seeking help, particularly since live agents were only available during business hours. Limited hours also made it more difficult for foreign investors seeking assistance, particularly if they were not in the same time zone.

Proto's solution for the Department of Trade and Industry included a chatbot, TIA (Trade and Industry Assistant), which automates responses to queries across the DTI's six functional groups. It provides 24/7 service to citizens across the Philippines as well as to foreign stakeholders, answering questions in local languages including Cebuano and Tagalog.

TIA was trained with various frequently asked questions from the organization's database, covering topics such as business registration, consumer complaints, and e-commerce adoption. If the chatbot doesn’t have the correct answer for a question, it will suggest the correct channel for citizen queries so they can contact the responsible group.

Besides helping citizens, the Proto platform collects query data to help the team understand what topics citizens are most concerned with, what issues they faced, and which functional group received the most questions. The Department of Trade and Industry will then be able to use this data to improve citizen services – for example, optimising the citizen experience on their website.

The DTI team will continuously improve the chatbot with a channel for consumer complaints, more language support such as Ilocano and Kapampangan, and more channels such as Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp, and Twitter. They will also continue to customise service across the 6 functional groups.

Proto’s AI Citizen Experience solution has helped the Department of Trade and Industry’s contact centre to automate a large volume of repetitive, direct questions while providing more localised and efficient service for citizens.

TIA is also helping the organisation achieve its No Wrong Door policy, by automatically forwarding citizen requests to the correct department. Finally, Proto's platform allows the Department of Trade and Industry to analyse citizen queries to continually improve citizen engagement.

Proto is the leading generative AI platform for local customer experience. Powered by GPT and its own proprietary AI engine, Proto's AI Customer Experience (AICX) Platform automates transactions, tickets, bookings, and other high-volume interactions for local and mixed languages across text, voice and 20+ messaging channels. Proto is globally-recognized for its inclusive AICX solutions across the government, financial, health and transport industries.