SUISA

More efficient support thanks to AI

Using music, creating music, understanding rights: Anyone who uses music in public or is a member of SUISA as a music creator always has questions about licenses, tariffs, royalties, or copyrights. SUISA’s new AI assistant answers these questions quickly and directly on its website.

SUISA: The point of contact for music creators and music users

SUISA is the cooperative society for music creators and publishers in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Since 1923, it has ensured that composers, lyricists, and publishers are fairly remunerated when their works are used in public. The cooperative has over 45,000 members; thanks to agreements with sister organizations around the world, SUISA represents the repertoire of around two million music creators and publishers worldwide in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

The range of people who contact SUISA with inquiries is correspondingly broad: music creators with questions about membership, registering works, and royalty payments, as well as music users who need the right license for concerts, events, in-store background music, or online content. SUISA responds to numerous inquiries like these every day.

The answers are there. They just need to be found.

Copyright and music licensing are complex issues with many special cases. The answers to the vast majority of questions can be found on SUISA’s website, spread across many pages in four languages: German, French, Italian, and English. In practice, however, many customers and members still contacted support directly. For SUISA, this meant a significant recurring workload handling inquiries that were already answered online, which diverted time away from its core business.

The goal of the project was therefore clear: to reduce support’s workload and give employees more time to focus on their core business—without compromising on the quality and reliability of responses. After all, when it comes to legal issues such as copyright, providing incorrect or inaccurate information is simply not an option.

A public AI chatbot must be trustworthy

An AI assistant that is publicly accessible on a website poses particularly high challenges:

Accuracy

The answers must be factually accurate and based solely on approved content.

Multilingualism

Although SUISA provides information on its website in four languages, the AI assistant answers questions in almost every language.

Security

A publicly accessible chatbot must be effectively protected against misuse.

Availability

The solution must be scalable and meet SUISA’s business continuity requirements.

An RAG system based on the principles of trustworthy AI

ti&m had overall responsibility for the design and implementation of the AI assistant. This covered everything from the architecture and machine-learning engineering to the UX, UI, and front end. The assistant is integrated directly into SUISA’s Magnolia website as a chat widget and hosted in SUISA’s Azure tenant. The solution therefore runs entirely within the SUISA environment.

At its core is an intelligent retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) system: For each inquiry, the assistant searches for relevant content on SUISA’s website and uses it to formulate an accurate response in line with SUISA’s quality standards.

"With the SUISA AI Assistant, we created a solution that makes complex content easily accessible to music creators and music users. The close collaboration with ti&m — from concept through to implementation — was decisive here. Within a joint project team, we combined subject-matter expertise with technological know-how and a solution-oriented approach. In this way, a shared idea grew into a valuable product that eases our employees' day-to-day work."
– Roger Derungs, Senior Project Manager SUISA

The principles of trustworthy AI:

Answers taken from approved content only

The assistant answers inquiries based solely on SUISA’s approved website content. It does not make up anything else. If the information isn’t on the website, it will not provide an answer.

Multilingual and transparent

The chatbot answers questions in almost every language and provides links to the source on the website in its responses.

Protected by guardrails

Guardrails and system prompts protect the publicly accessible chatbot from misuse and ensure that the assistant stays focused on its tasks: answering questions about copyright, licensing, and SUISA’s services.

Scalable and available

The architecture ensures scalability and fulfillment of SUISA’s business continuity requirements, even during peak loads.

Entlastung für die SUISA, besserer Service für die Nutzenden

Benefits

For SUISA

The AI assistant answers inquiries automatically 24/7. This significantly reduces support’s workload, freeing up employees’ time for their core business: member support and music licensing. At the same time, SUISA retains full control of its knowledge base: The assistant relies exclusively on the content that SUISA approves and publishes on its website.

Benefits

For customers and members

They receive reliable answers to their questions right away, regardless of office hours, in almost any language, and without having to click through lots of pages. Those who need more detailed information can simply click on the referenced sources to go directly to the relevant original page. In this way, the assistant combines the convenience of a chatbot with the reliability of official SUISA content.

Head of AI & Digital Solutions

Lisa Kondratieva

Reduce your support team’s workload with a trustworthy AI assistant.

Message*

First name*

Last name*

Company name*

E-mail*

Telephone*