Guardian Childcare & Education, a provider of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services, has introduced an AI chatbot to help educators find essential information across its network of more than 160 staff across the country.
Guardian has experienced significant growth over the last three years, increasing the number of services in its network by 50% and employing around 6,000 staff. Educators who work directly with children or in management and support roles often need access to advice on a range of protocols, from injuries and illnesses to other unforeseen incidents.
Previously, this information was collected on a internal SharePoint intranet repository, known as Guardian Way.
Searching the vast digital library was often time-consuming and “tedious” for educators, adding complexity and barriers to finding the information they needed to support children and families.
Guardian recognized the need for a more streamlined and accessible platform and transformed its knowledge management system, exploring generative AI and leveraging cutting-edge Azure OpenAI technology to reimagine how educators retrieve and process information.
As a result of this process, “Ask Guardian Way” was created, an internal chatbot designed to provide instant access to the company’s vast repository of information.
“Ask Guardian Way” is an innovative tool that enables educators to receive immediate and accurate answers to policy-related questions, significantly improving efficiency and trust.
Billed as “the definitive guide to how Guardian operates,” the chatbot aligns seamlessly with the company’s policies and procedures, fostering a culture of accessibility and efficiency.
It is available directly from the staff intranet homepage and requires a secure login from a staff device, ensuring sensitive information remains protected.
Staff members can ask the chatbot questions on a variety of topics, from locating documents for new staff registration to logging classroom incidents. The generated response also includes direct links to the source documents it references. This not only adds a level of credibility by verifying the information, but also allows staff to dig deeper into the documentation if needed.
“Once we received the product from Microsoft, we simply renamed it and asked it to scan our repository and the pilot was up and running within hours,” said Keith Hopkins, IT and Communications Manager at Guardian Childcare & Education.
The chatbot’s database is automatically updated every night, ensuring that any changes to policies or intranet pages are quickly reflected. This means that the chatbot always provides the most up-to-date information, providing fast and accurate assistance to teachers.
“Early childhood educators’ computer skills are generally low. These are people trained to care for children, so the more time they can spend doing what they do well and the less time they have to spend in front of a screen to help them do it, the better,” Hopkins said.
Real-time assistance to facilitate decision-making
This real-time support for educators is a “transformative tool” that facilitates rapid and informed decision-making.
Take for example the case of a child who falls ill. Previously, educators had to refer to the comprehensive policy on childhood illness and review a number of guidelines to determine what action to take.
Now, an educator can simply ask the chatbot, “What temperature should I send a 2-year-old home at?” and receive an instant response with the exact information required.
The chatbot also helps by outlining subsequent actions, such as notifying parents and managing the child’s daily payment, all coming directly from the policy.
“This chatbot allows the educator to spend more time with the children rather than wading through 300 pages of documentation to determine the right thing to do. It improves the quality of interaction between educators and children by minimizing administrative hurdles,” said Wenshuo Han, Strategic Customer Success Architect at Microsoft Australia and New Zealand.
The chatbot now answers hundreds of queries daily, a testament to its effectiveness and the trust it has among teachers. For new employees, the chatbot acts as a digital mentor, streamlining the onboarding process and helping them confidently navigate the training process, drawing on a readily available set of organizational knowledge.
In the future, the company will explore ways to integrate the chatbot with the organization’s ticketing system to further refine the support system. This integration would allow teachers to benefit from AI-generated recommendations and responses, reducing wait times for human support responses.
Beyond that, Guardian plans to expand the chatbot’s services to expectant parents, allowing them to inquire about registrations, book tours and receive quotes easily.
This news was first shared by Microsoft. Access the original here.