Weathernews began integrating AI into daily workflows to improve maritime weather services and reduce customer response times. Our operations team started with targeted applications, such as summarizing customer requests and generating responses to inquiries.Here's what our team learned from working with AI every day.
Initial Implementation Challenges
The early stages of AI integration presented significant challenges, requiring effort to achieve desired outputs. We discovered that effective AI implementation depends heavily on precise prompt engineering and systematic testing. Our operations team started with basic prompts such as ‘summarize this customer email’, which yielded generic, unhelpful responses. We learned to structure requests more specifically with rules to follow and templates to reference, this dramatically improved output quality.
Building Confidence Through Experience
Through trial and error over several months, we developed the confidence to use AI capabilities while figuring out what still needs human review. We continuously refined our approach and the technology began delivering positive results that exceeded our initial expectations. One other successful application is that AI helps automate the extraction of vessel names from email subjects. This capability is crucial for identifying overlooked or unhandled orders and messages, saving significant time by instantly extracting necessary information that previously required hours of manual checking.
Current Operational Framework
Before, our operators had to manually double-check every final order, a time-consuming but essential process. AI has given an extra layer of security by streamlining the process, with the ability to quickly recognize patterns which makes it exceptionally good at detecting errors. Once AI is fed the right manual and instructions, the system provides immediate feedback. This proactive quality control catches mistakes before they ever reach the customer, preventing complaints and freeing up our team from tedious double-checking.
Future Integration Strategy
We plan to continue expanding our application of AI while maintaining our human-expertise foundation. By automating routine tasks like summarizing requests and providing recommended responses, AI significantly reduces response time and allows our meteorological team to focus on complex analysis and high-stakes operational support. This shift ensures we continue to deliver reliable weather intelligence, with improvements in both service quality and operational efficiency.
