Disclaimer: This project idea is the intellectual property of NYCHA Team.
Team: NYCHA
Team Members: Yutong Du, Jiawei He, Jingyi Pan, Guichun Pan
Link to the 1-minute introductory video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a0fiFSw5O5Fml9_lIEhFD5mgCEArEKxJ/view
Link to Business Case Analysis.
Problem: The living condition issue in NYCHA has been so intolerable that its residents had to take a stand to testify against their property owner. For example, according to NYCHA’s public disclosed metrics, it takes 188 days, on average, for NYCHA to complete repairs of a residence’s heat problem.
Approach to the solution: While NYCHA’s overall improvement involves multiple aspects, our group proposes IBHome, an IBM Watson technology integrated platform, to specifically focus on improving the efficiency at the call center at NYCHA. We believe that, in a way, NYCHA’s CCC plays the same role as the nerve center plays in human beings – the center of communications. Serving for such a complicated and huge organization as NYCHA, the call center is so vital that it is necessary for it to be equipped with better, faster and smarter tools. Inspired from a successful Watson implementation case in Brazil and the understaffed reality at NYCHA’s call center, our group propose to use IBHome as the initial response at the call center, focusing on fixing the current problems such as language barrier, lengthy waiting, and slow processing. Specifically, IBHome can be trained to answer typical questions and even guide residents to set up maintenance appointments. Furthermore, IBHome will be armed with a rich language system/database and therefore can respond to different speakers efficiently.