“ThoughtWorks, a global software consultancy, in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), developed and launched an interactive digital solution to help U.S. Veterans get important questions about COVID-19 answered. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the VA faced an unprecedented call volume that overloaded its communication channels. In response, ThoughtWorks worked alongside the VA to quickly design, build, test and deploy a chatbot to ensure Veterans’ questions about the coronavirus and VA benefits and services were answered.”
“The chatbot, which was built in under a month, was implemented using Microsoft’s Health Bot Service and leveraged the CDC’s COVID-19 symptom checking flow. The bot serves as a conversational tool that can be used 24/7 to self-identify symptoms related to COVID-19 and offer resources including testing options, stimulus payments, telehealth, scheduling, prescription refills and more through interactive prompts.”
“’As soon as the Department of Veteran’s Affairs brought ThoughtWorks on, our teams went into overdrive to get a solution out to Veterans as soon as possible. With the number of COVID-19 cases growing by the day, it was critical to alleviate the contact centers’ call volume by allowing as many Veterans as possible to self-serve on the VA.gov website,’ said Chris Murphy, chief executive officer of ThoughtWorks North America. ‘We’re proud to say that since its implementation, the chatbot has answered the same number of queries as the call center did in half the time…’” Read the full press release here.
Source: ThoughtWorks and VA Launch Chatbot To Help Veterans During COVID-19 – June 17, 2020. ThoughtWorks.
