Dubai: If you have queries about your latest electricity and water bill in Dubai, and you want a quick answer, you don't need to go anywhere.

Just whip out smartphone or sit in front of your laptop and talk to Rammas, a Siri-like service. Meet Rammas: a virtual employee at Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa).

Rammas employs artificial intelligence (AI) to answer your most common queries, such as billing or locating Dewa's "customer happiness" centres.

A demo was given by a Dewa staff at the ongoing Gitex, the Middle East region's biggest annual tech event, where Rammas answered both Arabic and English queries.

The chatbot, which uses artificial neural networks, also has the ability to learn and understand customers' needs, based on the most common questions, a Dewa staff explained.

The chatbot analyses queries based on available data and information, and takes action to accurately answer customers' questions. 

Since it launch at the beginning of 2017 until June, Rammas has responded to 270,000 customer queries.

Dewa is the first Dubai government organisation to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to answer customer enquiries in  an innovative and interactive way, in both English and Arabic, through a 24-hour chatbot. 

 

AI is a fast-growing arena and Dubai is on the leading edge of innovation in the Middle East. 

Rammas is available on Dewa's website, and works on Dewa’s smart app (iOS and Android). It is also available on Dewa’s Facebook and Amazon’s Alexa service.

Gulf News earlier quizzed Rammas and the AI chatbot was able to provide accurate information within a fraction of a second.

You should try it, too.

What Rammas can do

Dewa’s artificial intelligence-based chat-bot, has addressed 276,756 enquiries from customers since it was launched in the first quarter of 2017. It supports the directives to reduce the number of visitors to Dewa’s offices by 80 per cent.

Derived from the local Emirati dialect meaning “a chatting person”, Rammas is capable of learning and understanding the needs of customers, according to their enquiries.

It analyses these based on available data and information and takes action to accurately answer all queries.

Rammas is a smart and easy option for customers to find answers to their queries, and interact with Dewa’s system.

It also acts as a supporting option for the customer care centre, website and mobile application. It also enables easy access of information for Dewa customers through its natural language processing and artificial intelligence-based capabilities.

Rammas is able to provide services round the clock and respond real-time to any query, even live conversations, within less than five seconds.

Available in English and Arabic, Rammas can provide billing information when given an account number, track the status for disconnections and reconnection of services, as well as provide information on technical and consumption complaints.