Chatbot for Oil and Gas E-Procurement Platform

Goal: Enhance the efficiency of the e-procurement system by implementing a 24/7 AI chatbot to handle end-user inquiries, eliminate support delays, and enhance the overall user experience.

Solution: Infopulse developed an NLP-based multi-language AI virtual assistant that provides instant and accurate answers to user inquiries. Simplified Q&A content updates keep the answers up-to-date and relevant.

Benefits: Automated processing of up to 75% of user requests, 24/7 instant support availability, enhanced user experience and satisfaction, reduced time and effort for support experts.

Services delivered: AI/ML solutions development, Natural Language Processing (NLP) services.

Infopulse developed an effective AI assistant based on a state-of-the-art NLP platform. The chatbot provides 24/7/365 consulting to its end-users, giving instant and accurate answers to their questions and requests:

• The chatbot was deployed on-premise per the client’s request to improve security. Thus, its core is isolated from the external network, allowing the chatbot to be operational offline. At the same time, the chatbot also supports deployment to the cloud.
• Cutting-edge NLP platform and advanced semantic analysis understanding simplify the process of content preparation. Since each user may phrase each question in a different way, support representatives need to train their chatbots and come up with dozens of different questions to one answer (or several thousands of questions to just a hundred of answers, which requires a massive amount of effort and time). Otherwise, the chatbot will not be as intelligent as it should. Instead, our chatbot requires only one question per one answer, showing the even better level of answering accuracy.
• Simplified process of Q&A content upload. The chatbot is immediately operational upon uploading a document with questions and answers in the relevant format (PDF, Word, or Excel). As of now, the chatbot contains 300+ detailed Q&A articles describing all aspects of the procurement process.
• All questions given to a chatbot are visible to the support representative, who can take over the chatbot immediately or per end-user request.
• Better UX process of Q&A content update and chatbot training. Upon completing the dialog with the end-user, the support representative is prompted to immediately edit and upload their own answers to the relevant article within the chatbot database. While this process is very effective, simple, and quick, it allows the chatbot to receive continuous updates with always relevant up-to-date answers.

The chatbot implemented by Infopulse is quick to provide relevant answers to most common questions. The AI assistant solves numerous challenges that may arise in the course of the procurement process, improving the overall user experience and the way the end-users interact with the e-procurement platform. As a result, the chatbot helps both suppliers as well as oil and gas companies to speed up the whole procurement process, making it more effective, transparent, accurate and consistent across all stages:

• 24/7 instant answers to user requests. No more waiting up to 10-15 minutes for live support over the phone.
• Automates handling of up to 75% of user requests.
• Perfect understanding of the end users’ requests with a state-of-the-art NLP platform.
• Leverages productivity and saves significant amount of time for the end-users of the e-procurement system.
• Indirectly helps to accelerate the procurement process and increases number of successful deals.
• 10x times more effective in terms of content composition, saving time of company support experts. Instead of 2,000-3,000 questions per 300+ Q&A articles, our chatbot requires only one question per one answer in order to achieve the same levels of answering precision.
• Multilanguage support. As of June 2019, Infopulse is finalizing the transition of the chatbot to a new semantic platform, as it will then support 100+ languages in total.