Uncovering Root Causes of Issues from Unstructured Data
The Efficiency Unit chose to deploy SAS Text Miner, which can access and analyze various text formats, including e-mails received by the 1823 Call Centre. “The solution consolidates all information and uncovers hidden relationships through statistical modeling analyses,” says Yuk. “It helps us understand hidden social issues so that government departments can discover them before they become serious, and thus seize the opportunities for service improvement.”
Equipped with text analytics, the departments can better understand underlying issues and quickly respond even as situations evolve. Senior management can access accurate, up-to-date information from the Complaints Intelligence System.
Performance Reports at Fingertips
With the platform for SAS Business Analytics in place, the Efficiency Unit gets a boost from the system’s ability to instantly generate reports. For instance, it previously took a week to compile reports on key performance indicators such as abandoned call rate, customer satisfaction rate, and first-time resolution rate. Now, these reports can be created at the click of a mouse through performance dashboards, as all complaints information is consolidated into the Complaints Intelligence System. This enables effective monitoring of the 1823 Call Centre’s operations and service quality.
Strong Language Capabilities, Customized Services
Of particular importance in Hong Kong, SAS Text Miner has strong language capabilities—supporting English and traditional and simplified Chinese— and can perform automated spelling correction. The solution is also aided by the SAS capability of developing customized lists of synonyms such as the full and short forms of different governmentdepartments and parsing Chinese text for similar or identical terms whose meanings and connotations change, often dramatically, depending on the context in which they are used. “Also, throughout this 4-month project, SAS has proved to be our trusted partner,” said Yuk. “We are satisfied with the comprehensive support provided by the SAS Hong Kong team.”
Informed Decisions Develop Smart Strategies
“Using SAS Text Miner, 1823 can quickly discover the correlations among some key words in the complaints,” says Yuk. “For instance, we can spot districts with frequent complaints received concerning public health issues such as dead birds found in residential areas. We can then inform relevant government departments and property management companies, so that they can allocate adequate resources to step up cleaning work to avoid spread of potential pandemics.
“The public’s views are of course extremely important to the government. By decoding the ‘messages’ through statistical and root-cause analyses of complaints data, the government can better understand the voice of the people, and help government departments improve service delivery, make informed decisions, and develop smart strategies. This in turn helps boost public satisfaction with the government, and build a quality city,” said W. F. Yuk, Assistant Director, Hong Kong Efficiency Unit.
1. How did the Hong Kong government use text mining to better serve its constituents?
2. What were the challenges, the proposed solution, and the obtained results?