The Hong Kong Fire Services Department implemented WhatsApp chatbots intended to accelerate and process large-scale quarantine facility applications in a short time.

What did Hong Kong Fire Services Department need?

Positive cases of Covid-19 pandemic overload quarantine application system

The Covid pandemic has brought a great burden to the Hong Kong government as well as its residents. Thousands of daily positive cases from the Covid epidemic overloaded the quarantine application system. During the pandemic, the HK government exposed the lack of resources available to control a widespread illness epidemic.

As one of the public service agencies, HKFSD was among the pioneers to respond with digitization, establishing the government’s first-ever WhatsApp chatbot to assist with quarantine facility registration.

What was the solution?

Pioneering digitalization to meet the volume of quarantine facilities

HKFSD cooperated with Sanuker to build a chatbot on WhatsApp which is the most popular messaging app in Hong Kong. By entering a WhatsApp number or link, users must choose a language and complete 11 screening questions to categorize their cases according to their urgency.

The chatbot will also automatically verify the applicants’ information, such as the entered phone number, HKID card number, and date of positive result in the right format.

The submitted entry will be shared to HKFSD through automatic email at a preset time interval with details to follow up; cross-checking duplicated entries across platforms (WhatsApp, WeChat, and email) is also enabled.