Artificial intelligence gives a boost to online customer service
Several decades ago, customer service moved from a face-to-face interaction to the telephone. In more recent years, it migrated to the internet to support numerous sectors from e-commerce and telco to gaming and transport. In Europe alone, over EUR 11 billion is being spent on delivering text-based customer service. Against this backdrop, the EU-funded TRACS project worked on an innovative solution to make the customer service experience more effective and affordable. It based the solution on artificial intelligence (AI), while still maintaining the critical human factor in the equation. “As much as 60-80 % of customer queries are simple and repetitive,” says Pyry Takala, project manager for TRACS and CEO of True AI. “This provides a huge opportunity for improved customer experience and cost savings by automating part of the agent.” Online customer service to improve significantly To achieve its aims, the project built an AI tool called TRACS (Text Response Automation system for Customer Support). “TRACS supplies the customer service agents with suggested replies to the customers’ inquiries, freeing up agent time and improving customer satisfaction,” notes Mr Takala. The project team conducted a feasibility study which showed that the tool successfully provided accurate suggestions between 60 and 83 % across different scenarios that covered e-commerce, telco, gaming, media, transport and customer service outsourcing. “When TRACS provides an accurate suggestion, agents can answer with a single click rather than searching for a template or writing the answer from scratch,” explains Mr Takala. Demonstrating the concept’s success, the TRACS feasibility study brought together seven prominent companies and led to forging new commercial partnerships. “Lead generation campaigns and sales conversations have shown high conversion rates comparable to industry benchmarks,” reveals Mr Takala. “Clients who used the system in our feasibility study saw increased customer support productivity of 20-40 %.” Better for companies, agents and consumers Overall, TRACS frees up agent time to deal with more challenging queries, improves quality and consistency of support, and helps train agents faster. The results provide strong incentives for clients who can save a large share of their support costs by deploying TRACS. The software, which is easy to install with the help of this video, is available in many languages including Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. Consumers also stand to benefit from the technology. “Consumers will see better and faster service in text-based channels across chat applications and social media as the technology becomes more cost effective,” highlights Mr Takala. “It is also popular with customer service agents as it helps them concentrate on complex issues and provide more personalised care rather than answering repetitive questions and spending time on simple administrative tasks,” he adds. The future looks bright for the TRACS application as the company behind the technology, True AI, has worked on enabling companies to integrate the software within 10 days. There are solid plans to commercialise TRACS rapidly in Europe and across the globe, reaching a considerable amount of companies that want to streamline their online support. The result should be more effective business support, happier customer agents and more satisfied consumers, thanks to AI.
Keywords
TRACS, customer service, AI, text-based, artificial intelligence, online support, chat applications