Innovation in our industry
– an article signed by Gregoire Vigroux – Co-Founder & Vice-President Business Development Europe at TELUS International –
Now more than ever, innovation is essential for the success of any company. Nowadays, companies are growing much more quickly than before due to innovation. TELUS International is no exception. Innovation is at the core of DNA and that shows in our day to day work as we continually advance the size and scope of our next-generation IT consulting and delivery capabilities. This includes AI-powered tools, user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design, open-source platform services, cloud services, over-the-top solutions, Internet of Things (IoT) and the list goes on.
Globally, in the digital era, there is an entirely new service delivery model whereby customer service providers are evolving to become innovation centers that leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning, chatbots, analytics and algorithms, to name just a few, in order to help clients turn data into breakthrough business value. These customer and business insights that drive better, more informed decisions, are collected and then analyzed by AI-powered digital solutions. But even with mountains of data, at the end of the day, a technology platform will never be able to generate solutions on its own for the countless unique customer scenarios that will inevitably occur. What separates the best companies when it comes to customer service is the keen ability to determine which customer service functions AI can handle on its own and which cases need to be handled by a human supported by AI. This is where TELUS International shines – we have the best people supported by the most advanced technology in order to deliver exceptional client experiences.
One example is a project that we have implemented for a US-based cable TV and home automation provider that needed to better understand their customers’ needs in order to increase the speed and accuracy of their responses. The company had a huge chat log data, but no analytics in place. We evaluated and analyzed all their chat logs; which were fed into an Artificial Neural Network to categorize and analyze all the chats between customers and agents. The results were faster customer service response times, improved accuracy and a better customer experience.
Another innovative project delivered by our company was a Digital Virtual Assistant for a leading Canadian Telco. The challenge we were asked to address was increasing efficiency of customer care processes with repetitive support requests, which needed a help desk for reduced Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR). As such, we deployed our Cognitive Chatbot platform that supports seamless transfer to live agents and Knowledge Base (KB) repository including media content. The KB Bot intercepts queries on chat and offers appropriate solutions by redirecting customers to the appropriate place. The outcome was a 24% reduction in call volume to live agents and reduced costs by freeing up helpdesk team to serve other critical projects. At the moment, 45% of all support requests are answered via the KB bot.