One thing customers dread is calling for help and support from their telco or service provider because historically it has taken a long time to get a satisfying outcome or resolution. Telstra is now using AI to change all that.
The telco is using generative AI to help their frontline staff understand a customer’s needs and account history and provide superior customer service and faster issue resolutions.
Telstra has deployed two in-house developed generative AI solutions which leverage the power of Microsoft cloud and its Azure OpenAI capabilities.
Two new AI-driven tools – One Sentence Summary and Ask Telstra – have been designed to offer more effective support for customers.
One Sentence Summary utilises Azure OpenAI’s large language model and can transform customer notes, recent interactions and transactions into a summary of that customer’s history and status.
This will reduce the need for a customer to repeat information when interacting with Telstra customer service staff.
The tools were trialled during 2023 and showed that 90 per cent of Telstra employees save time and increase their effectiveness which resulted in faster resolutions and 20 per cent less follow up contact.
The Telstra staff also noted the tool help them understand an engage more effectively when faced with challenging or sensitive circumstances including those in need of priority or financial assistance.
One Sentence Summary is now being rolled out to all contact centres and store teams throughout 2024.
Ask Telstra is another tool that helps employees search the company’s internal knowledge databases to find information quickly and easily.
It provides AI-generated responses to staff queries.
This allowed staff to easily gather information to support customer inquiries with 80 per cent saying the tool improved their interactions with customers.
Telstra’s ability to unlock the power of AI is the result of a simplification and modernization of their data ecosystem which was done in collaboration with Microsoft and Accenture.
“We’re at a profound juncture in a new era of transformation, and it’s one that we’re navigating in lockstep with our partners,” says Kim Krogh Andersen, Telstra’s Group Executive Product & Technology.
“Our deep, strategic relationship with Microsoft is positioning us well to unlock value and growth as technologies like generative AI proliferate at speed.
“We’ve been on a journey of simplification and modernisation over a number of years.
“We’ve simplified our technology architecture and shifted to a 100 per cent API-first approach to product development.
“We’re also migrating workloads to the public cloud and building reusable AI capabilities.”
Our collaboration with Accenture is now helping to accelerate the work we have ahead. It’s a massive undertaking, but it has put us in a position to now rapidly scale bespoke generative AI tools, like Ask Telstra and One Sentence Summary, that can really shift the dial when it comes to helping our teams provide quicker, more effective, and more personalised customer interactions.”
