AI in Action: ClairiTech’s Transformation Through Digital Boost 3.0

Founded in 1989, ClairiTech Innovations specializes in advanced ventilation systems designed to improve indoor air quality and support better breathing. The company has developed industry-leading digital units and intelligent systems that allow customers to control their indoor environment year-round.

With a growing customer base across North America, ClairiTech is committed to delivering a high-quality standard of service regardless of location. However, with customers spread across multiple time zones, it became clear that maintaining the same quality of service was no longer possible within regular business hours alone without the use of technology to bridge the gap and improve efficiency.

ClairiTech turned to Digital Boost 3.0, a digital transformation program that offers funding support to New Brunswick based business. Digital Boost 3.0 has a two-phase approach, the first consisting of a comprehensive assessment to determine current capabilities and identify opportunities in the areas of cybersecurity, data management, and artificial intelligence (AI). The second phase supports the implementation of solutions identified during the assessment phase to improve the company's productivity, security risk, and innovation. The program also helps to offset some of these costs while working with New Brunswick based technology providers.

The program enabled ClairiTech to partner with service provider Babin Després Consultants, a business and technology consulting firm. Their collaboration resulted in the implementation of several technology-driven solutions to improve customer service, including a 24/7 self-service chatbot. Additionally, adopting AI equipped customer service agents with AI-powered tools to enhance productivity, accurately calculate the cost of replacement parts under warranty by product model, identify recurring installer issues, and free up valuable time for management to focus on strategic priorities.

Babin Després Consultants began the project with an initial assessment, which quickly revealed that AI could offer significant benefits to ClairiTech. At the time, ClairiTech did not offer a chatbot, and its customer service team was not yet leveraging AI to boost productivity or accelerate onboarding for new employees. The assessment also highlighted a broader need: to enable management to spend more time working on the business rather than in it. Readily available Generative AI solutions were identified as valuable tools to improve productivity, enhance communication quality, shorten training periods, and facilitate access to decision-making information.

During the implementation phase, Babin Després Consultants extracted conversation data from ClairiTech’s multiple databases and processed it to train the chatbot directly. They set up a dedicated storage area for ClairiTech data on their AI platform, ensuring security and easy integration. By providing sample outputs and writing effective prompts, the platform could quickly transform conversations into training data for the model.

Babin Després Consultants also developed an interactive software tool capable of identifying and extracting information related to replacement parts and installer issues. This process involved developing the software, extracting and cleaning conversation data, and feeding that data into the chatbot to improve its accuracy.

At the start of the project, ClairiTech was hoping to implement two main solutions: a self-service chatbot for customers and a way to predict failure rates of parts under warranty for each product model. While ClairiTech was not fully ready for AI at the beginning, the team at Babin Després Consultants was able to get everything in place for these specific use cases and scenarios.

It is still too soon to fully evaluate the impact of the project. The project took place during the busiest time of the year, but by October, ClairiTech expects to have enough traffic and usage to get a better sense of how well the new tools are working.