Espoo to test a chatbot in business services to facilitate customer service

A chatbot is a computer programme designed to engage in a dialogue with people. When a person writes text, the chatbot answers or asks a question in return.

The goal of the Business Espoo chatbot experiment is to test the functionality and usefulness of a chatbot in improving services provided to businesses. The chatbot serves in Finnish at first. The English version will be published during the spring.

A customer, who can be a private person, company or organisation, can ask general questions in the chatbot dialogue box that opens on the Business Espoo website. Customers can provide user feedback on the chatbot throughout the testing period.

The City of Espoo will complete an overall evaluation of the experiment by the end of August. The results of the experiment will be communicated in the communication channels of the City of Espoo and Business Espoo.

The experiment will be implemented in collaboration by the seven operators of Business Espoo (City of Espoo, Espoo Marketing Oy, Federation of Espoo Enterprises, Helsinki Region Chamber of Commerce, Omnia, Uusimaa TE Office and EnterpriseEspoo). Business Espoo is a unique network of business services involving the state, municipality, third sector and companies.

In this experiment, the city and Business Espoo will partner with GetJenny Oy.

The experiment is part of Espoo’s digital agenda experiments aimed at developing the city’s services with the help of digital solutions and new technology.