No more galleys with vocal servers, these AI speak to you as a real adviser and facilitates your life

It all starts with a simple sentence. “Hello, you are in contact with the virtual reception service of the town hall of Meudon, how can I help you today?” The male voice is warm, almost natural. Like thousands of French people every day, and 50% of the population of France each year (according to the 2023 customer services observatory), we composed the number of an interactive vocal server (SVI). Important difference, it is smarter than simply interactive. No key to press, keyword to be articulated in an exaggerated manner hoping to be understood.

Vocal servers… intelligent

We start, asks him a question about the opening hours of the pools of this opulent Parisian suburbs. Without dead time, the voice asks us which site interests us, because there are several swimming pools. The conversation continues like this, question and answer, interruption, flouting of us, and always behind a relevant response, or a slight silence when we have not been understood – it also happens. We don’t quite naturally talk about this server, but it is more of our fact than its own.
This intelligent standard is a new solution under experimentation in Meudon. It should be launched in July for a three -month trial period. If the test is conclusive, a contract will be finalized and the starting offer will be supplemented by “other uses as necessary,” promises Laurent Duthoit, deputy mayor for innovation and digital from the city of Meudon.
The solution was developed by the voluble French start-up and deployed by Bouygues Telecom, explains Benoît Torlotting, managing director of Bouygues Telecom in the middle of the Brouhaha de Vivatech. “It is our role of integration, to make sure to carry out the project from start to finish for our client in what I call the Go to IA,” he adds.

Go ia, Young Man

A few stands from there, still in Vivatech, Alexandre Cormeraie, innovation manager for the SNCF, presents Sofia, a project that is not yet ready to land in our lives. “We are in the contract phase,” explains the SNCF representative, who suggests that Sofia, or whatever her final name, could take service at the end of the year or early next year.
Once again, we call AI, a small predefined introduction tells us that we are dealing with a virtual interlocutor. We claim to have missed a train, and have to go to Bordeaux as quickly as possible. Sofia finds us TGVs. We suddenly remember an hourly obligation, specify it to our interlocutor, which responds to us almost as soon as two TGV correspond to our request. Once again the interaction was natural. Alexandre Cormeraie takes over the handset, makes another demonstration. As we would do with a human, he even takes the trouble to ask if Sofia hears us, which she confirms. It must be said that, noise level, Vivatech is not the Zen living room …

Two projects, a technology for the same ambition

In both cases, these AIs are there to improve or complete a public service, they aim, by offering a more fluid interaction, to replace the SVIs “not super pleasant, but not humans”, recognizes and affirms Alexandre Cormeraie.
They use LLM, these language models capable of communicating in natural language, synthetic voices, and access to precise and qualified information. They are also and above all multilingual, “what is essential in our eyes”, explains the representative of the SNCF, while Laurent Duthoit, deputy mayor for Innovation and Digital of Meudon, tells us that it is possible to switch from one language to another, once, during conversation. Practical for a tourist whose French suffers from a few limits and who wishes to finish his call in his mother tongue.

Sofia can “answer around 30% of general travelers’ questions”, such as train schedules or stations. A way to streamline information. The tool of the town hall of Meudon covers the same type of information by adapting to the need for a community (administrative procedures, opening of a service, collection of bulky items, etc.).
For the town hall of Meudon, it is a way to also extend its service outside the opening hours so that the information is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. “It is also a good way to provide information to the population faced with illectronism or seniors, numerous in our commune,” says Laurent Duthoit.

For the time being, these two systems give access to a large set of information, but it will be necessary to wait a little longer for the data in real time to be accessible. For example, to find out “incident situations”, which lead to delayed trains, or to be able to redirect incoming calls to “the city’s penalty services, in the event of critical situations”, like an accident or a tree fallen on weekends, for example.

Facilitate the lives of employees

Sofia is immediately thought of as a “means of qualifying calls”, filtering them, and “not blocking them”, insists Alexandra Cormeraie, to release human collaborators from “basic and simple questions, which will allow them to focus on more complex cases where their added value and their expertise make the difference,” he explains.
Same bell in Meudon where the immediate objective and in the long term is to “facilitate the work of the teams” and not to increase productivity.
Sofia can also be used to “filter abusive calls”, and protect employees from difficult interactions. By delaying, the AI ​​can calm the situation before a transfer to an adviser specializing in thorny cases.
A television who may also take advantage of the prequalification of the call to provide faster answers to the problem. Alexandre Cormeraie sees a future where “complementary models can extract relevant data to avoid advisers to search during the call to find the right answer. »»
The services of the town hall of Meudon are considering a SVI in the long term which could inform users but also ensure the appointment. After all, it’s a logical step. We find out about the documents necessary to obtain a passport, we make an appointment in stride …

An AI, carrier of “brand quality”

Like Laurent Duthoit, Alexandre Cormeraie insists that his AI is “a manifestation of the service and must therefore contribute to strengthening brand quality”. The innovation manager for the SNCF therefore takes the time to explain that “Sofia does not hallucinate”, and that rigorous tests are currently being carried out to verify that the settings are optimal. It is essential that AI is not wrong with these services which it comes to complete and enrich.

Obviously remains an essential question, that of the cost. According to Bouygues Telecom and the councilor, the services being very recent, it is difficult to assess their real cost. Bouygues Telecom explains, however, that his vocal agent is able to manage up to a thousand calls simultaneously and that his offer is accessible from 150 euros per month. The town hall of Meudon receives some 50,000 calls for the year, any schedule. The new generation SVI will only manage only part … but already Laurent Duthoit led to the Rush of the start of the school year, with school inscriptions, the activities to be expected and planned. Far from the abstract uses or the images generated for pleasure and quickly forgotten, AI settles in our daily lives, a call at the same time.

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