After reviewing several customer engagement tools including the development of internal technology, BT Enterprise chose ContactEngine as its customer engagement technology of choice.
BT implemented ContactEngine proactive conversations across its broadband and landline customer services in order to enhance the customer experience. The problems that BT was experiencing that led to the development of the programme were that too many of BT’s services were being cancelled before completion. Customers had a high propensity to call in during the onboarding process, raising BT’s cost to serve.
The UK incumbent telco knew that proactive conversations were the right thing to do for its customers, but it needed an alternative digital solution using conversational artificial intelligence (AI) which could deliver the business strategy to reduce provision-related call rates and customer cancellations. The aim of Brilliant Installations was to replace high cost, manually intensive processes in order to deliver next-generation customer engagement using proactive conversation. This would free agents to deliver true value-add customer service.
Customer expectations
BT realised that customers increasingly expect to be communicated with on their own terms and delivering upon that required a change in BT’s traditional communication approach. The change required a switch from outbound calling and generic messaging to tailored, personalised communications – intelligently automated conversations augmented by human agents NOT one-way notifications.
With ContactEngine, agents are able to communicate with customers through the customers’ channel of choice – not through one which was prescribed by BT as a company. This helped both with the efficiency of BT agents, as well as making it easier for BT customers to do business.
The programme achieved outstanding results, which exceeded the targets set out at inception.
Results include:
- 40% reduction in customer-driven cancellations
- 50% reduction in customer calls related to enquiries
- 85% customer engagement rate
- 38% improvement in NPS
Clyne McCarthy, technical applications manager at BT Enterprise comments: “With such a large variation in our customer base, it’s not one-size-fits-all. ContactEngine gives us that ability to tailor the conversations to exactly the customer journey and the type of customers that we’re dealing with at that point in time. ContactEngine also brought a lot of experience around linguistics and channel of choice… all that language and knowledge was extremely valuable in making sure we had a high contact rate and high level of engagement from our customers. As a result of implementing ContactEngine’s proactive conversations within customer order journeys, we saw a reduction in the cost of around 60%…It’s been a dream.” –
ContactEngine is a Conversational AI technology that automates customer communications for large corporates across various industries. The company employs linguists, behavioural scientists, mathematicians, and software engineers to design proprietary machine learning algorithms that automate human-like conversations. ContactEngine is backed by an AI advisory board that includes leading international scientists, engineers and industry professionals.
BT Enterprise offers IT and communications products and services to around 1.2 million public sector organisations, SMBs, and corporate customers (approximately 60% of the high street). BT Enterprise’s portfolio of products provides a wide range of diverse solutions for their customers, from a straightforward telephone line to a complex international IT network. The Customer Service team includes around 7,500 people, predominantly based in the UL.
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