California Department of Water Resources' employees leverage an AI assistant for internal knowledge, efficiency, and greater self-service
Case Study: DWR “Ask Blue” AI Assistant | Gen-AI-powered Assistant and Sitecore + ServiceNow Integration
DWR needed to empower their employees with greater self-service capabilities, to allow them to quickly access the vast amount of internal knowledge, reduce the amount of helpdesk requests, and provide an enhanced employee experience.
Challenges
- Vast amounts of information: Including content that exists on the DWR Intranet, the Department Administrative Manual, and the ServiceNow knowledgebase, employees had to peruse through large amounts of information to find what they were looking for. Considering that the different systems also have their usage nuances, it was difficult for employees to browse and search for their desired knowledge.
- Helpdesk workload: Because it was difficult to find information, forms, and other data required for employees to perform their day-to-day jobs, simple requests such as replacing a security badge, or knowing whom to contact for website changes, became a difficult task that ended up in the hands of helpdesk staff, who were inundated with these seemingly straightforward needs.
- Employee experience: DWR had already successfully implemented an effective and engaging Intranet, but realized that the amount of information was still too large for Intranet search functionality to provide effective results. With their commitment to continually improve their employee experience, there was a need to leverage Gen-AI to improve employee productivity and satisfaction.
Solution
We implemented our Gen-AI Assistant, named “Ask Blue”, focused on providing internal employee experience that drew knowledge from the DWR Intranet (Sitecore) and their ServiceNow knowledgebase, which contained thousands of pages, forms, documents, and articles. The solution was configured to leverage Retrieval Augmented Generation, tailored to specific use cases and questions that DWR employees would need to get answers to. “Ask Blue” was integrated directly into the DWR Intranet, providing in-context responses to those questions.
To fine-tune the results that employees received through “Ask Blue”, DWR technical teams have access to an administrative interface that allows them to configure the large-language models being used, search strategies for retrieval augmented generation, and other settings that would result in the best responses. They also had the ability to upload supplemental information to assist the models to respond more appropriately.
Our reporting solution also allowed DWR to see which questions were being asked and whether or not responses were effective. This allowed DWR to not only learn the challenges that employees faced in their day-to-day jobs, but allowed DWR to provide that information for continual improvement of their employee experience.
Outcomes
- Quick access to internal knowledge. With “Ask Blue”, DWR employees now get rapid answers from the vast amount of internal knowledge within the organization, including the Department Administrative Manual, ServiceNow knowledgebase, and the DWR Intranet.
- Reduced helpdesk requests. With Gen-AI responses handling the majority of the simple and straightforward employee questions, helpdesk staff within DWR have the opportunity to work on the more complex issues and requests for the organization.
- Increased employee satisfaction. Rather than not knowing what to do, or where to seek information, “Ask Blue” provides employees answers to questions directly within the DWR Intranet user interface, allowing them to be more efficient in their daily operations.