Client Profile

Industry: Telecommunications

Client: Fortune 50 telecom

Solution: Voice Virtual Assistant (VA) Implementation

Partner Role In Project  

When a global telecommunications company wanted to build a new Voice Virtual Assistant leveraging Google's Contact Center AI (CCAI) platform, Kenway partnered with the client to harmonize the innovative capabilities of CCAI with the people, processes, and tools already in place. With Kenway’s help, the client established a platform of cross-functional learning, and Google gained insights into the client’s methodologies while the client received an in-depth understanding of CCAI strategies.

The Challenge

The client sought to improve the customer experience by implementing Contact Center as a Service (CCAI Platform) while upholding their high standards of operational efficiency and service. Their objective was to enable seamless interactions that delivered fast, accurate responses, alleviated the workload on their experts, and reduced operational costs.

While Google CCAI is an excellent out-of-the-box product, additional personalization is necessary to align with internal policies, practices, and service offerings. Balancing consistency in Google's Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) with the unique internal requirements is a complex task. This task requires a deep understanding of branding, including language and messaging. It also calls for close collaboration between Google and the client’s teams to integrate CCAI’s features while preserving the uniqueness of the client’s products and services.

The Kenway team worked closely with the client to identify the following goals:

• Decrease Agent-Transfer Rates: Designing an effective customer experience to ask the right questions at the right times allowed the client to minimize the need for transfers between agents.
• Achieve Containment and Cost Savings: Balancing self-service and containment was key. High self-service attempts didn’t always mean success, if customers were directed to FAQs but left without answers, it hurt their experience and failed to reduce costs.
• Deliver the Highest Quality of Customer Service: Our team leveraged its deep knowledge of the client’s products and processes, supported by data analysis and testing, to gather feedback and identify opportunities for improvement and optimization.
• Expand and Improve on Existing Self-Service: Utilizing CCAI’s data insights enabled the client to identify new areas for service enhancement and operational optimization. 

The Solution

Data-driven product design decisions

Leveraging data plays a pivotal role in enhancing overall user experience. By leveraging feedback loop analysis and existing reporting tools like Power BI and Kibana, Kenway skillfully identified opportunities and pain points across all self-service customer experiences and brought them to Google with the goal of improving the customer experience and driving more calls into self-service. 

Customer welcome and intent identification

Before a caller can access the variety of self-service functions, they first encounter a series of questions designed to capture their intent and confirm their account. Kenway recognized how essential it is to accurately identify the purpose of the call from the outset to deliver a tailored experience. By leveraging insights from Google’s data, Kenway optimized these initial prompts to feel natural and intuitive, creating an efficient, almost human-like dialogue that keeps callers engaged longer and encourages them to use self-service options.

NLU tuning

By quantifying the most common customer utterances, Kenway helped customize the Natural Language Understanding (NLU) model. These recommendations included giving customers more time to respond, slowing down prompts, and understanding specific terms, phrases, or accents unique to the client. As a result, the NLU model has significantly improved containment rates and enhanced accuracy in interpreting customer inputs, enriching the overall user experience. This analysis is conducted program-wide as customer behaviors and preferences evolve, utilizing a robust, customizable NLU model that adapts to fit specific needs related to products, services, and language.

Customer experience and journey mapping 

Tying the customer experience to an overall customer journey strategy is essential to enhanced Customer Experience (CX) decision-making. It’s crucial to the customer journey enhancements to minimize excessive questioning that can frustrate callers. By ensuring that questions are relevant and leveraging known customer information from past interactions, the IVA can more effectively guide callers through the system without overwhelming them. This contextual awareness allows the system to make informed decisions about a caller’s intent, reducing the need for clarification and streamlining the overall experience.

The Results

Significant Progress

With these enhancements, the client’s Google CCAI platform made significant strides in success metrics and self-service containment rates, currently handling over 25 functions, such as payments, troubleshooting, and billing, while servicing more than 1 million customers daily.

Data-Driven Refinements 

The rapid development of call functions is based on continuous refinement cycles using data from real callers. The team designed an efficient call flow by carefully analyzing NLU and customer inputs that adapt to evolving consumer needs. This includes reducing unnecessary prompts, leading to increased caller engagement and a seamless experience.

Trust and Cost Efficiency

While serving a larger number of callers can generate direct cost savings, the greater benefit lies in the enhanced trust between our client and its customers. By implementing an efficient system that effectively serves customers, both parties are building a reliable foundation for future interactions.

Conclusion

The client’s successful implementation of Google Contact Center AI, guided by Kenway Consulting, highlights the critical role of strategic collaboration, specialized technical knowledge, and data-driven insights combined with deep business knowledge. This partnership has led to notable improvements in operational efficiency, enhanced customer experiences, and innovative service delivery.

Are you ready to elevate your customer interactions with an effective Voice Virtual Assistant strategy? Contact us today to discover how CCAI can transform your service capabilities!