Fast to Smart: Creating an enterprise-grade virtual assistant in under 8 weeks

A UK-based telecom provider adopted a fully digital support model for their customers which included substantial online content for questions and live chat support. However, instead of referring to the self-serve content, customers defaulted to live chat agent support. When agents were busy, chat support became unavailable.

“The company had the opportunity to quickly implement a chatbot that could understand customer questions, guide them to the right answer, and only handoff to an agent if required.” said Asma Mohammad, Director at Calabrio.

“It was a fairly standard problem to solve but was made infinitely more challenging by a hyper-aggressive timeline. I’m proud of how quickly we pulled it together.”

In a matter of 8 weeks, we went from project kick-off to live: we delivered a branded Virtual Assistant that automated simple tasks like customer inquiries, integrated into a Live Chat solution through LivePerson, the company’s preferred platform. The Virtual Assistant gave the company’s customers a seamless experience.

Project Goals

• More customer self-service where possible
• Increase agent availability and productivity
• Fewer handoffs to live agents
• Easy handoffs to live agents in cases of escalations
  Solution

This project presented two initial challenges beyond the deadline that required immediate attention and quick thinking to stay on time.

• Integration: No chatbot support had existed for the Live Chat app in the LivePerson environment until we started working on one. We adapted our data to the platform and designed it accordingly while concurrently testing new ideas. It was like building a plane while flying it
• Compliance: Keeping a Virtual Assistant compliant with regulation is a complex process. The build required an eye on compliance that presented strategic roadblocks we had to account for. We did, and we made their company a fully compliant and approved solution.
  Despite these obstacles, we had the company up and running on a Virtual Assistant in just a few weeks.

Impact

The telecom company learned quickly how beneficial a well-designed chatbot is to the customer experience and the bottom line.

With 60% of customer contacts being handled by their new chatbot, they were able to reduce customer care centre costs and improve the overall speed-to-resolution incoming inquiries.

Moving forward

The company has a virtual assistant that is able to understand what customers are trying to accomplish, guide customers to specific goals through conversational journeys, and when appropriate, intelligently hand customers off to human agents.

Next up, the telecom provider and Calabrio plan to further improve the virtual assistant experience by scaling to handle more complex, transactional use cases like topping up or paying a bill. We’re also launching an online and in-app natural language search solution to help improve customer experience.

We can get you up and running with a Virtual Assistant in a matter of weeks, on the chatbot platform of your choice. You’ll see immediate improvements to customer service, employee satisfaction and the bottom line.

Get in touch today!