How an AI-Powered Automation is Helping Elisa During the Crisis

How an AI-Powered solution is Helping Elisa’s Customer Support During the Current Crisis

These times are unprecedented from just about every angle. During this global crisis, we are not limited by geography or industry, so everybody is facing an uphill battle. While some companies have been forced to close, essential businesses remain up and running, requiring a completely different approach to how they deliver their services.

Facing Our Challenges Head-On

Companies like telecommunications, finance, energy, food, and fuel are vital to our ability to carry on. Since these businesses do not have the option of shutting down completely, they need to find ways to work around the shutdowns while still providing quality customer service.

It’s times like these that our systems and workflows are tested. Agility is essential, as is compassion, empathy, and respect as we all deal with factors such as closed offices, a dwindling workforce, and an exponential increase in customer service requests.

With a significantly higher demand for customer support, viable solutions are needed to respond. Telecoms, in particular, are seeing a marked increase in new service requests and service upgrades, a situation that could potentially create bottlenecks in customer service unless an agile approach was applied.

For example, MindTitan telco client Elisa saw a six-times increase in chats and a 25 percent increase in voice calls after closing all their brick-and-mortar shops. Along with this increase in volume comes an increase in customer service calls, indicating the need for an immediate and innovative solution.

The Technology That Supports Elisa’s Success

MindTitan solutions are effectively implemented together with Elisa’s contact center solutions and it makes no difference whether Elisa’s customer representatives work from the office or from their home. Neither employee workflows nor the customer experience changed in the least, so their subscribers did not experience any gaps, glitches, or delays in accessing the services they needed.

Here’s how MindTitan’s Callbot helped Elisa to make their work more efficient:

Greater Accuracy,  Reduced Wait Times, Achieved SLAs

Callbot replaces the legacy IVR system, in which customers would have to listen to menus and press buttons to reach various departments. Now, when calling customer service, customers speak their requests to the Callbot. Callbot asks the caller, “What can I help you with?” The customer then explains their problem in their own words, and the Callbot forwards their call on to the appropriate specialist.

Statistically, Callbot is about 90 percent accurate in directing the call to the right customer representative. This stands in contrast to IVR, where more than 30 percent of people will choose the wrong option.

Callbot is more efficient in connecting customers to the solutions they are seeking. It also reduces wait times significantly, and abandon rates are reduced to near zero, compared to IVR, which sees an average of 10 – 15 percent call abandon.

Every wrong routing will cost several minutes for both the customer and the customer service representative, and given the increase in call volumes in this situation, it would make it virtually impossible to meet the SLAs without a callbot. Because customer service representatives do not have to deal with incorrect referrals, they are more efficient and, as a result, waiting times and abandon rates are reduced and SLAs met.

Natural Language Processing Reduces Technical Errors

Customer service associates are often required to report or pass along technical errors they receive from customers to the technical team. This process adds extra steps, creating delays and inefficiencies in opening and resolving support tickets.

Now, Callbot listens to conversations and recognizes errors automatically when and as they occur. Incidents are automatically redirected to the technical team, where they can be addressed appropriately.

Even in cases where the customer has described a problem but then hangs up before reaching a representative, Callbot transmits the issue to the appropriate department so it can be resolved. Fewer miscommunications result in process improvement, faster response times, speedy resolution, and happier customers overall.