Santa Claus making Christmas merrier with AI

Who does not love Santa Claus? The most cherished benevolent person on a mission to make children of the world happy, delivering toys magically and spreading cheer worldwide, he is loved by all. Ever wondered what modern business tools Saint Nicholas might be using to achieve this monumental feat of making Christmas merrier? Well, he has embraced technology and integrated Artificial Intelligence (AI) extensively in all his processes, helping him stay ahead in his mission- boost the happiness of children (who behave well) around the globe by bringing toys on Christmas!

How does Santa Claus leverage AI to make children happy?

Santa Claus has an enormous responsibility, and he manages to do it right every year. His top priority is always top-notch customer experience – making children of the world happy! With the global population of children being 2 billion, it is not an easy feat for Father Christmas to achieve, yet he and his team of elves outperform themselves every year. Let us see how he has scaled up his processes using Intelligent Automation to achieve such a feat.

Santa Claus ensures that children receive the perfect gift they desire on Christmas. How does he manage to do that?

Dealing with Data

Santa and his elves have large data silos with key details of children (such as who they are, where they stay, records of new children born, and likewise). But now, using Intelligent Automation, the jolly red man and his team of elves can not only analyze the data fast and with accuracy, but can also effectively predict what toy they would like, whether they have really been nice (or naughty), and how much did they really like the toy. 

Since centuries, Santa and his elves have been manually processing all the toy requests and letters from children worldwide, and the results have been quite conventional, not to mention the tremendous labor they had to do to achieve that. 

Now Intelligent Automation has allowed the team to:

• Decide on the perfect toy!
• Obtain the data in the proper format.
• Automate data of the customers (children) from various additional data sources: Social media posts, shopping mall visits, online wish lists, and other sources.
• The software also leverages direct data sources, such as emails and hand-written letters to Santa, using OCR (Optical Character Recognition).
• Uses Machine Learning to understand what the child desires and arrives at a more personalized toy rather than a generic one.

Naughty or nice?

Santa also has the responsibility of identifying the kids who will be on the ‘nice’ and the ‘naughty’ list. He gets his data from schools, sports events, day care centres, summer camps, social media, school reports, and much more. But it isn’t easy to sieve through so many data sources and arrive at a conclusion when his elves do it manually. The elves are now augmented by AI software that utilizes RPA (Robotic Process Automation), Natural Language Processing, ML (Machine Learning), and cognitive tools which filter out irrelevant content and find accurate results. With the cognitive AI software explicitly built for Santa Claus, deciding ‘naughty or nice’ has never been faster! The team can process 100 kids in less than 10 minutes.

KYC- Know Your Children

Just as a bank performs KYC (Know Your Customer), verifies documents and then disburses the loan, Saint Nicholas also performs a KYC that is ‘Know Your Children’ through emails. Automating this entire process has enabled the North Pole team to:

• Have the right address of the child
• Extract data to process the toy request
• Use ML to find indicators of naughty or nice
• A seamless and effective way of updating and maintaining customer records (children).

Toy making

Now let us come to his workshop. The demand for toys has increased phenomenally and so has the immense variety of toys available than ever before. Santa has automated all the production processes which have helped him achieve this big feat of making toys and then map the specific toy with the child. Increased production of toys also means increased challenges, for which Santa is using AI to address them.

Amping up the Employee experience

Happy elves will make happy toys which will reflect on the customer experience! Well, the workload is heavy and growing heavier every year. Even then, Santa manages to keep his team happy, like every good business leader does. He aspires for the elves to have a joyful experience. Instead of manually managing data, reviewing the wish lists, and analysing emails, incorporating Intelligent Automation has been revolutionary for Santa and his team. Now when all the data handling is automated, data analysing is automated cognitively, the elves are much freer and can focus on aspects which need their creative attention.

Digital co-worker in Santa’s team!

With the advent of the digital worker which has a unique combination of AI, complete domain knowledge and elf in the loop experience, Saint Nicholas is further able to augment his workforce of elves who can now focus on the challenging and gratifying areas which need their attention. They no longer have to do the monotonous and tedious tasks. Elves can now research further on toys which make the children happier, develop creative solutions and stop themselves from workplace burnout. Augmented with digital workers, Santa’s elves are much happier employees.

Takeaway

Santa Claus, the jolly red man with white beard, is much jollier than ever before. His team of elves are happy with the incorporation of Intelligent automation and digital co-workers. The children who receive the perfect and personalised gift on Christmas from Santa have never been so much happy before. The gifts are perfectly synchronised to what they desired! It is like a dream come true. The holiday season is jolly! Do you wish to have delighted customers and provide good employee experience just like Santa Claus does? Check out the services by Saxon AI and Digital Clerx. Ho! Ho! Ho!

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