CSML Developer Spotlight: Interview With Alessandro Aureli

We love it when our community members share their feedback and tell us how they use CSML. That's why we are super happy to welcome Alessandro on this blog today, so that he can tell us more about his use of chatbots and CSML!

Interview with Alessandro Aureli, founder of Üpdate Solütions

In this interview we have the pleasure to receive Alessandro Aureli to introduce his various chatbot projects made with CSML.

Hi Alessandro! Thank you for participating in this interview. We are excited to know a little bit more about you and your chatbot projects! Could you tell us about yourself and your background?

I am Alessandro Aureli, living in French Polynesia (Tahiti) since 2001. I arrived here due to my previous work in the hospitality industry. I started my own company, Üpdate Solütions in 2016.

In the beginning, the scope of Üpdate Solütions was assisting local companies in their development of mobile applications and dematerialization of their customer services workflow.

Three years ago, Üpdate Solütions stepped into the chatbot sector and initiated chatbot development in Tahiti. Since then, we have been assisting local companies on their chatbot and AI development.

How did you discover CSML and how was it helpful for your projects?

I believe we are required to follow up on technology news that concern my company's business field and our customers' needs, by reading and searching on the Internet.

As a result, I started to read about CSML, and became very interested in it.‌‌ After a short while and out of some basic experiences, I decided to move all chatbots into CSML.

CSML is great progress for us, it let us abandon the rigidity and the high cost of popular chatbot platforms. CSML’s flexible and comprehensive code opened many wide horizons for development and customer satisfaction.

What projects are you working on at the moment? Would you like to talk about one of them in more details?

We are serving three customers situated in utility and aviation industries, with a total of nine chatbots on Messenger, WhatsApp, and WebApp channels.

Our customers are:

• Polynésienne des Eaux: Nationwide. Water utility systems; drinking water, and wastewater.
• EDT Engie: Nationwide. Electric power, production, and distribution.
• Air Tahiti Nui: Worldwide. National airliner.

I would like to talk about Polynésienne des Eaux, which has the most complete chatbot and AI project we worked on, and it paved the way to Üpdate Solütions for other customers’ projects.

How did you find the idea to create this project?

As Üpdate Solütions, we started to work with Polynésienne des Eaux in 2016. When we came up with the idea of adding a conversational agent to Messenger to improve customer support, it was obvious to us to present the idea to our historical customers.

Facebook is the most popular application in French Polynesia; being a user of Facebook enables one to communicate on Messenger by default. At that popularity level, for us; Messenger is the 4th communication channel for the company's customer support service, after phone, email, and physical agencies.

When we presented the project in this way and added it to the aim of covering 80% of Messenger’s workflow in an automated way, a very open-minded and innovative customer support team of Polynésienne des Eaux jumped in with us to the adventure. With the support and efficiency of Polynésienne des Eaux’s customer support team, we built the best-performed chatbot in the town.

The multichannel chatbot is able to respond to customers on actions such as:

• Consulting the last invoice and account balance.
• Paying the last invoice and/or account balance.
• Opening a support ticket.
• Registering monthly water consumption volume for self-billing.

Do you use any NLP service or other external tools and APIs?

Yes, we do use for our chatbots Dialogflow via external service/API.

What are your plans for the future of your projects?

We are working on connecting Amadeus for developers API with Air Tahiti Nui chatbots and improving the chatbot with tools that will satisfy many users. In addition, we are developing our chatbots on channels such as WhatsApp and WebApp. And foremost, we are convincing our customers to step into voice bots!