A digital employee for charities, associations and service bodies that answers enquiries and takes requests

Organisations that serve the public hear the same question many times over: what are the criteria, which documents, when does registration open, where has my request got to. The team is usually small, and the person answering the phone is the same person assessing requests, so both fall behind.

The digital employee takes the repeated questions at any hour, takes requests complete, and refers whatever needs a person to the right department. Staff are left free to assess cases and to talk to those who need a direct conversation.

In organisations of this kind, one wrong word can raise the hopes of someone in need or turn away someone entitled. So there is a fixed limit in the setup: the digital employee explains the published criteria as the organisation wrote them and helps the enquirer prepare a request, and tells no one that they are or are not eligible.

Asked about the amount of assistance, a payment date or the outcome of an assessment, it answers only with what is published, and says the decision comes from the organisation once the request has been assessed. It gives no legal opinion and does not interpret regulations; those questions go to the member of staff responsible.

Beneficiaries’ requests carry personal data, some of it sensitive, such as financial, health and family circumstances. We collect only what the request needs and keep it in the project’s own database, with access limited to those entitled to it, in line with the Saudi Personal Data Protection Law.

The digital employee reveals nothing about a request before verifying who is asking, in the way the organisation approves. The number, the accounts, the code and the data belong to the organisation and stay with it.

Where the beneficiary management or request system offers an interface, the digital employee records the request in it and reads the request’s stage from it. Where it does not, requests reach staff on a simple panel sorted by department, and status enquiries stay with staff.

Information is updated in one place: when a criterion changes or a new programme opens, the person in charge edits it and the answer changes on WhatsApp, the website and the phone together. The report of repeated questions shows management what needs explaining better on its website and in its announcements.

The demo page opens on a fictional sample business of a commercial kind, but it is enough to judge what matters to your organisation: whether it understands a message written in plain dialect, whether it says so when it does not know, and how it refers to a person. Try both chat and a voice call.

Yours is built on your organisation’s services, criteria and approved wording, and you test it with your team before it opens to beneficiaries.