A leading US financial services company faced challenges in providing a seamless customer experience through its call centers due to outdated speech IVR technology. This resulted in long wait times and frustrated customers.
The IVR system’s combination of DTMF options and speech-enabled directed dialog was ineffective in providing a personalized and efficient self-service experience. According to a senior manager at the company, “We’ve been tuning our IVR for 15 years and had achieved solid containment. But we needed a solution to improve the customer experience even more and provide a natural language conversation.”
They sought to break the glass ceiling of IVR containment by increasing automation levels in the voice channel, realizing conversational AI technology was the key to transforming the customer call center experience.
“We’ve been tuning our IVR for 15 years and had achieved solid containment. But we needed a solution to improve the customer experience even more and provide a natural language conversation.”
The Solution
The financial services company implemented Omilia’s conversational AI platform, which uses natural language conversation to provide a more personalized and efficient self-service experience. The solution included enhanced IVR containment, guaranteeing an increase in the number of customer interactions the IVR system could handle. This reduced wait times and improved efficiency.
The company selected Omilia over other vendors, such as Nuance and IBM Watson, due to the technology’s superior results in a customer-facing pilot and lower cost. Omilia’s solution provided a Conversational AI IVR for the financial services company’s phone advice center, which offers telephone banking services to its credit card and bank customers.
The senior manager noted, “When we met Omilia, we quickly discovered that natural language gives us an opportunity we never even thought of before.” Omilia’s solution improved the customer experience and enabled the company to deliver new automation experiences independently without extensive IT support.
Implementation
The financial services company worked with Omilia to pilot the technology and gather customer feedback. Based on the pilot’s results, they migrated from the legacy IVR to the conversational AI IVR over 12 months.
Omilia worked closely with the company’s IT team to ensure a seamless transition to the new platform. Omilia provided the company with the tools to deliver new automation experiences independently and autonomously, allowing them to make real-time improvements based on customer feedback.
The Omilia implementation was a collaborative effort between the financial services company and Omilia, which was critical to the project’s success. According to the senior manager, “Working with Omilia was highly collaborative. They were very flexible, adaptive, and agile.”
Results
The Omilia implementation significantly improved customer experience, reduced wait times and provided more efficient and personalized self-service. The Conversational AI IVR system could handle more customer interactions, significantly improving efficiency.
Key results included:
Conversational IVR
- 9% Increased IVR containment
- 97% Semantic accuracy
- 92% Task completion rate
- #1 JD Power for Financial Institutions
- New self-service capabilities
Next Steps
The financial services company has outlined a roadmap for implementing the Omilia solution to improve customer experience and efficiency further. This includes migrating its existing infrastructure to the cloud and selecting a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution to integrate with the Omilia conversational AI platform. This will help them provide a seamless and personalized customer experience across all channels.
The financial services company also plans to expand the use of voice biometrics to improve security and further personalize the customer experience. It aims to unify its voice and digital channels to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
