Enabling high quality Customer Experience at scale for Direct Line Group
How Sabio is helping to deploy multiple chatbots to make customer digital journeys easier
Different ways that Virtual Assistants can be used to make digital journeys quicker for customers and more efficient for organisations was the topic of our recent webinar with Direct Line Group. David Rowley, Customer Improvement Manager for Direct Line – who has worked with the Sabio Digital team to deploy two Virtual Assistant types: the Concierge Bot and the Contact Us Deflector – co-presented with myself. We explained to attendees how chatbots can enable FAQ replacement, as well as specific Problem Resolvers aimed at addressing functions such as password reset, IT troubleshooting or processing a warranty claim.
David Rowley will be discussing the Direct Line Group chatbot projects and how they support the broader Automation Journey at our upcoming Disrupt CX 2020 Conference in London on the 17th March. Free registration here.
Supporting easier customer journeys via a Contact Us Deflector
David Rowley shared the experiences Direct Line Group had in deploying both a Contact Us Deflector and a Concierge Bot. He stressed that, while there was a significant opportunity to support customers online by adopting a Virtual Assistant strategy, it is important not to force people down a self-service route. Instead, by deploying a chatbot on its ‘Contact Us’ page, the company is now able to make its customers aware of their different self-serve options.
By identifying a broad range of customer queries, Direct Line Group is able to signpost self-serve options. Here it was important to draw on a range of data sources, including webchat data, information from speech and data analysis, as well as frequently-accessed knowledge answers to really understand the kind of questions that customers were asking. This approach enabled the company to ID around 80-90% of topics, and provide content associated with those topics.
18 months in and the results are impressive, with the chatbot providing an alternative for customers that don’t want to self-serve, routing 38% of visitors to a phone or webchat contact option as it was the best way to serve them, and enabling 37% of Contact Us page visitors to self-serve through an entirely automated interaction.
Effortless 24×7 service with a Concierge Bot
Applying a Concierge Bot approach has also helped Direct Line Group in terms of removing effort for customers by providing rapid resolution for issues at specific stages of the customer journey. David Rowley explained how by training a chatbot to address a particular process such as Password Resets, the company has benefited from a 60% drop-off in the volume of customers needing support for this issue. This was much higher than was initially expected. And for those customers that the chatbot can’t help, support is still available by dropping them out of the Concierge Bot into webchat. Critically for customers, the chatbot is also really easy to use, available 24×7 and removes the requirement to call, use and IVR or wait in the webchat queue.
Taking Virtual Assistants to the next level
Building on the success of these initial Virtual Assistant projects, David Rowley suggests that there’s still lots of opportunity to optimise their chatbot engagement. Further areas of focus include developing the Virtual Assistant to support customer sign-in, applying the technology to provide proactive help for customers who need assistance on their journey, and also as a signpost to help customers identify the next stage to take. Increasingly, he expects chatbot support to be context-dependent, with Virtual Assistants surfacing at any stage of the CX journey whenever customers look like they might need some support.
To find out more about shaping your Virtual Assistant strategy to help solve customer issues, you can request a recording of our webinar.
Learn more about how Sabio’s Virtual Assistant solutions can help to empower your customers at our Disrupt CX 2020 Conference on the 17th of March 2020. Register here.
