Newport News Shipbuilding’s digital transformation extends beyond manufacturing and into service provisions, as machine learning and automation are leveraged to improve the ability of providing expeditious, efficient solutions.

The volume of service tickets increases with the complexity and reliance on IT systems and digital devices. In the past year, over 200,000 service tickets and more than 600 knowledge articles have been documented in the SMAX service portal. With the quantity of data, system integrations and speed of transactions, new service capabilities must be adapted to keep pace with this customer demand.

In an effort to reduce the time to resolution for digital device users, Business Transformation & Technology has implemented an artificial intelligence (AI) virtual agent, named after Newport News Shipbuilding’s first hull, Dorothy.

Dorothy is designed to categorize customer input through contextual understanding, provide proactive and prescriptive solutions, automate redundant tasks and execute service catalog offerings. In addition, Dorothy will provide helpful recommendations to support agents through the simulation of knowledge articles and historical resolutions that will allow agents to resolve issues faster and with consistent accuracy.

Over the next few weeks, BT&T will begin its training process in the SMAX service portal that will introduce the AI into the NNS environment. This will provide specific details about customer intents that require resolution. Dorothy will quickly learn to provide self-help and self-healing resolutions. Dorothy is located on the Service Portal. Watch the Dorothy introduction video on MyNNS.