Aecus European Innovation Awards 2015

Transcription

1 Aecus European Innovation Awards 2015 Name of Innovation Case: Customer service improvement with AI Name of Supplier Organisation(s): Celaton Limited Name of Client Organisation(s): Virgin Trains

2 Background What was the business challenge / opportunity? Virgin Trains is committed to deliver customer service excellence to its growing number of customers. This growth created challenges due to the demands of handling an unprecedented volume of customer correspondence which were a result of a number of factors from the company working hard to improve the customer contact channels, its ever growing social media profile, delays and disruption to trains, often beyond the control of the company; and ultimately more and more people wanting to sample the great customer experience for which Virgin Trains has become synonymous. The increasing volume of customer s alone, which has more than doubled in the last 12 months, placed significant demands on the customer relations team. As a result the department initially found itself using highly skilled individuals being utilised for effectively high level data entry, this was not sustainable as it removed resource from actually interacting with customers and other areas of the business to facilitate first time resolution, which is the primary function of Customer Relations. To address this the department recruited additional temporary staff during periods of high demand to deal with a complex process involving labour intensive, unstructured content. Whilst Virgin Trains uses a CRM system to manage customers communications, by far the most labour intensive element of the correspondence process was reading, understanding and preparing each correspondence to be case ready before being entered into the CRM system. As a result of these challenges, the customer experience was negatively affected which further magnified the issues and led to increased labour costs (temporary staff and overtime), delayed response times and created unfavourable impact on the Virgin brand. The focus of the department became reactive rather than proactive and this had a negative effect on not only morale but productivity. Approach What was the innovation that was delivered? In what way was it innovative? Virgin engaged with Celaton to deploy its instream platform and apply Artificial Intelligence to streamline the labour intensive administrative tasks and decision making in handling customer s. All customer s are now received by instream. Unique to instream is its ability to learn the pattern of unstructured content through the natural consequence of processing it. As a result, instream is able to read, understand meaning/sentiment, categorise and then recognise key information within customer s as they are received. instream relies on its own confidence in processing documents and data and therefore if confidence levels are not high enough then it will refer these exceptions to the customer relations team for assistance. This human intervention helps to teach instream and enables it to become more confident with every transaction. Learning is permanently enabled to achieve continuous optimisation and will, subject to confidence, minimise or eliminate the need for human intervention. Celaton s customer service team are continuously monitoring transactions levels from its offices in Milton Keynes and can intervene where this is a potential breach in service levels. Only when the customer correspondence is guaranteed case ready does instream upload/enter the structured data into the CRM system.

3 With over 400 categories into which customer s had to be identified, instream relied on high volumes of customer s to accelerate its learning. Despite the complexity, instream was able to deliver tangible benefits within days of go-live. Impact What was the value delivered? The daily processing time and manual labour involved in dealing with customer s was reduced by 85%, from 32 man hours per day, to 4. This has a significant impact on the time it takes to respond to customers and so significantly improves the customer experience. The need for temporary staff during periods of high demand was eliminated. All customer s are handled by the customer relations team regardless of increasing volumes due to passenger growth or network disruption Visibility is an advantage. Real-time management information is now available to customer relations staff and management and this enables all correspondence SLA s to be monitored. This allows for effective performance management, be that targeting and eliminating deficiencies or celebrating successes and understanding and replicating best practice. Resources and skillsets were optimised, which has allowed the department to evolve in other areas There is clarity in reporting to Department for Transport. Tools, techniques and technologies Which of the following was important for this case? Innovative use of Important Details Y/N? Robotic automation Y Artificial Intelligence (Cognitive computing & machine learning) Other [please specify] Y Artificial Intelligence (Cognitive computing & machine learning) Measuring the impact Which of the following was important / quantified? Measure Important Quantified? (% change, / generated, ROI) Y/N? Cost reduction Y Staffing costs. Rather than employ temporary staff, instream can cope with sudden demands following large scale delays or disruption to train services Speed to serve Y 32 man hours of process per day reduced to 4 Differentiation Y Faster, more personal response to passengers Productivity Y 32 man hours of process per day reduced to 4

4 Quality of service Y Faster, more personal response to passengers Improved compliance Y Reporting of passenger complaints categorisation and classification is a by product of using instream but this an important obligation of Virgin s franchise agreement with Dept of Transport Operational flexibility Y Rather than employ temporary staff, instream can cope with sudden demands following large scale delays or disruption to train services Financial flexibility Y The commercial model for instream is based on transaction volumes and therefore up front capital costs are minimised and operational costs scaled as the business requires. Client Comments We are not simply a Train operating company we are a customer experience focussed company that runs trains. We pride ourselves on delivering exceptional levels of service to our customers, whether they be internal or external. However we found that increasingly as a department we were finding ourselves working around processes and systems rather than having systems and processes that worked for us and ultimately the customer. As a result a significant amount of time and resource was being taken up by tasks that were not contributing, and sometimes actually counterproductive to our goal of enhancing the customer experience. This rigidity, combined with rising passenger numbers and a period of disruption on the network meant that during prolonged spikes in customer contacts; there was a requirement to bring in additional agency staff. While we are appreciative of the needs and benefits of using agency staff we believe passionately in nurturing our talent for the long-term and the sporadic nature of agency work does not allow us to do this effectively as we, or the agency staff would like. Our manual processes showed that they lacked the scalability and flexibility the business needed to deal with growth and unpredictable demands and so we decided on a more radical approach and that was to apply artificial intelligence in the form instream from Celaton. The result has been impressive and a complete success. We have significantly improved our ability to respond to customers and achieved flexibility and scalability whilst reducing costs. instream is now a fundamental part of our customer service process and we are already planning to expand its use to deal with other unstructured processes such as general correspondence, white mail, feedback and delay related compensation. Initially, we were sceptical of artificial intelligence. This was new and emerging technology and its usage was limited to a relatively small number of companies. However, as a managed service, Celaton was able to work with us on a proof of concept to enable us to gain trust and confidence in instream. While the product was technologically superior to other alternatives, what really set it apart was the fact that Celaton took the time to truly

5 understand the needs of both Customer Relations and our customers and ensured that the product reflected that at every level. We did our due diligence and this included an inspection of the datacentres and we worked with Celaton to define our SLA, security, availability and performance characteristics. Our primary requirement, after performance and availability of the service, was scalability and low human intervention. We deal with a sensitive and complex environment and sometimes our resources are tested by events on the trains. At all times our objective is to respond to our customer and provide an amazing customer experience. With instream we can achieve this and we can cope with unexpected demands and exceed our customers expectations. Crucially instream has allowed us to utilise the skills and passion of our permanent staff more effectively which has enabled us to create, implement and drive a sustainable long term strategy for Customer Relations, which is already having a positive impact on both the department and Virgin Trains as a whole. This evolution would not have been possible without instream. Christian Clarke Head of Customer Relations Virgin Trains