Finding opening hours and making appointments
Tricky for generative AI?
“Are you open tomorrow?” and “Can I make an appointment for next Thursday?”. These look like simple questions, but handling them is surprisingly complex.
Generative AI can help, but it does not automatically know today's date or what ‘next Thursday’ means, and it cannot book an appointment in a municipal system either. That is why additional tools, checks and smart logic are needed.
Hence two topics that residents run into at municipalities: finding opening hours and making appointments.
Developing Gem further
For opening hours, Gem currently refers by default to the municipal page with the current opening hours. Recently Gem has also started recognising official public holidays and can indicate that the municipality is closed on those days.
That is a start, but it can be even more helpful. For example by taking different channels, services and locations into account. These often have different opening hours: think of the phone lines, public service desks, recycling centres, bicycle parking facilities or car parks. And that is complex. It asks something of the technology and of the web content. The Gem content team is working on this now, so that Gem will be able to answer these questions correctly.
We also want to make making appointments simpler. Right now, residents have to run several searches in an appointment system. And appointment forms often work in fixed steps: location first, then day, then time. This could be more flexible. So we are looking into how residents might soon be able to simply say through Gem: “I want an appointment as soon as possible, anywhere will do.” or “I can only make Tuesday afternoon or Thursday before 11.”