The IBM Customer Success team has been pivotal to some very important projects over the last year and a half. I’m most proud of the work that we have done with our healthcare and government partners. Thru the use of IBM technologies, these partnerships have built and enhanced many of the COVID response capabilities across the United States. We were fundamental to digital responses to COVID information requests, online health assessments, and the scheduling / distribution of vaccines. I think these are great examples of IBM applying technology to make our citizenship healthier and more educated.

Our work with a healthcare retail partner started with a very simple, digital chat response system, that was intended to answer basic questions about the services available to their customers. Inquiries like hours, closest location, in store health services would be answered by a digital assistant, instead of needing to be answered by one of their representatives. The intention was to allow those representatives more time to work with customers that were already in the location. Then the pandemic happened. Very quickly, The IBM team worked to expand the digital assistant to ingest all the pandemic information and guidelines as they changed, and give the most current responses to citizen questions. As the pandemic went on, guidance would change, and vary from region to region. IBM’s AI technology was able to not only recognize the intent of the question, but respond with timely, location specific recommendations to help keep citizens safe.

When vaccines became available, healthcare retails played a crucial part in the distribution effort. The digital assistant was again expanded - not only to disseminate information about the vaccines that were available, but to schedule appointments and follow up appointments. The skill of the team, the ability to apply technology to quickly address changing needs, and the overall service to our communities in the US gives me great pride in the work we are doing.