Artificial Intelligence Joins Our Team To Enhance Customer Experience

Avenue Living Communities’ (ALC) newest team member is more robotic than human. However, this new team member is learning more every day. His name is Clark, and he is a live chatbot that has recently been integrated into the ALC website to enhance customer service, experience and engagement. 

“We are thrilled to introduce Chatbot Clark, our newest team member. Clark helps us with our live messaging,” said Murray Danyluk, Director, Sales and Marketing for Avenue Living Communities. “He assists our call centre agents with frequently asked questions. We have pre-loaded answers, and he will keep learning more with experience.”  

Opening the live chat on the ALC website opens the door to a conversation. An existing or prospective resident can open a chat, and the chatbot can begin answering questions immediately, handling maintenance requests, and responding to operational inquiries. 

“He gives our customers another touchpoint and the option to receive answers in an efficient and swift manner, streamlining certain frequently asked questions,” said Danyluk. “If someone prefers to chat to a live bot versus emailing their queries to our Prairie Relief Team (our dedicated team put in place during COVID-19 to assist residents with rental concerns such as payment worries or other property-specific concerns), they can type their concern directly into the live chat. If the query is straightforward enough, they will get an answer within seconds. Chatbot Clark is streamlining our resident communication experience.”  

If Clark cannot answer, he will redirect the query to a live agent, but Danyluk says his repertoire will expand rapidly.  

“Clark is very responsive. Every week, we update his conversations, so that he gains knowledge through previous chats,” said Danyluk. “As we notice popular questions or subjects that arise, we add the answers into his conversation list, so he’s continually learning, growing and expanding his artificial intelligence capabilities,” added Danyluk.  

Clark can hop on many conversations as needed.  

“We do have live agents that can give Clark immediate backup if he’s not able to answer something. And each one of those agents is set up to manage up to four chats at a time,” said Danyluk. By managing the more straightforward requests for information, Clark increases the bandwidth of the live agents to manage more complex queries.  

The launch of Clark the chatbot is another example of the innovative technological initiatives and customer service that ALC has embraced throughout its operations, despite COVID-19. With resident numbers currently at 20,000 across the Prairies and continually climbing, artificial intelligence paves the way for growth.  

“We’re always on the front edge of technology and looking for innovative ways to improve our processes, responding to the general public who are inquiring about Avenue Living Communities, and to enhance our customer experience,” said Danyluk.