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

Harry Liimal
April 16th, 2020

City and people with phones

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.

How We Are Helping Elisa Solve Their Customer Support Issues

Elisa is a telecommunications provider operating in Finland and Estonia. As a vital service provider, all their systems and services had to keep working just as they did before. It is a requirement that also extends to customer support.

To keep their workforce and customers safe, Elisa closed all their stores and relegated their office staff, except technicians, to remote working.

As one of the most innovative and forward-thinking telcos in the modern world, Elisa has invested many years into digitization and AI solutions, an approach that has enabled the company to pivot to remote work quickly.

Although many processes had to be changed, Elisa’s great advantage was that their internal processes were built so that the operational level could quickly make decisions at the product manager level, as well as MindTitan’s ability to scale and modify the solution to the current situation needs.

Because of their agile stance, Elisa was able to continue to offer top-quality service without missing a beat. Against all odds, they were ready to respond in the face of crisis, largely because of the effort and resources they had put into digitization.

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.

MindTitan Callbot Enhances Customer Service, Enables Business Continuity

In conclusion, MindTitan call center automation solution has excellent potential to improve your customer service and technical support, and this is especially true in these unprecedented times. As companies struggle to maintain consistency, stay responsive, productive, and deliver on-brand excellence to their loyal customers, we need to leverage every tool possible to ensure life carries on without a hitch.

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Harry Liimal
HEAD OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Harry has years of experience working in business development, strategy, and digitalization for some of the world’s largest companies. He is a people person, who enjoys fast-paced environments and multiple responsibilities. He is especially curious about transformation and disruptive technology.

Harry holds a Master’s degree in Law from the Tartu University and is acquiring an MBA at the Estonian Business School. He has also studied innovation management in Japan at the Nagoya University of Commerce and Business.

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