How we’re using AI to revolutionize our call centres

We all know the pains of calling customer service for help. Statistics show, 72 percent of consumers expect personalized interactions when they contact a company’s call centre and 65 percent of customers have switched to a different brand after a bad experience.

It is frequently the most frustrating experience a consumer can have with a company – one that businesses are constantly trying to resolve by improving their call centre operations. Quality customer service that gets to the root of the problem and provides accurate solutions quickly is a powerful differentiator, driving increased loyalty and connection to customers.

That’s why we’re focussed on transforming our call centre operations within the Liberty Global family of telco operators – with the help of AI.

Agent Assist – an AI-powered platform for customer service

From billing inquiries to product upgrades and technical support, customer service agents fielding calls across our brands troubleshoot hundreds of issues every day.

Last month alone, our call agents at VodafoneZiggo and Sunrise – two of our operating companies – responded to around 700,000 service calls, with the average call lasting six minutes from introduction to resolution.

Until now, analyzing why the customer calls has been a complex manual process. Agents start the conversation with baseline details – contract type, contact details, and scant information about the issue at hand, based on the options the customer chose during pre-call prompts. The information doesn’t fully help to anticipate what the customer needs.

This is where our new AI platform, Agent Assist, comes in.

It’s fundamentally changing the way our call centres operate:

• To start with, the bespoke technology predicts why a customer may be calling, providing the most relevant information about their call history in three to five succinct bullet points, giving agents a head start before the call even begins
• The platform then listens to the conversation, generating a transcript in real-time and consistent, automated post-call summaries, which lays out the problem, action and solution. This was a step agents used to do manually – having to take notes whilst simultaneously listening to customers’ queries and pulling together summaries at the end of the conversation.
• Lastly, it categorizes the intent and outcome of each call, with the data integrated via easy-to-use dashboards. This step hands our operating companies invaluable insights into what customers are asking for, recurring issues and how to solve them, and which products and services are in demand.

These are just the initial features that are being embedded in our operating businesses, with 200 agents using the technology in The Netherlands for more than 40,000 calls so far. Meanwhile, our UK operating company, Virgin Media O2, has begun piloting a similar AI technology for broadband customers.

So far we have seen:

• Agents appreciating the consistency of summaries and the real-time assistance, as they’re better informed about how best to meet customers’ needs.
• Agents reporting that they are able to be more engaged and focused on customer conversations while the AI takes the lead on note-taking
• Overall, we’ve seen an average of 25 seconds reduced call time – which equates to around a five per cent reduction in in overall handling time.

This has meant reduced waiting times, improved efficiency and effectiveness for agents, and increased customer satisfaction – vital metrics in the telecommunications sector, where exceptional customer service is a deciding factor that sets us apart in a fiercely competitive market.

Embedding AI into the DNA of Liberty Global

Agent Assist is just one of a series of AI initiatives being developed within our business,  which will benefit our customers, employees, and shareholders.

In a case study in Switzerland, Sunrise has adopted an AI-powered software into its existing mobile networks to make a 10 percent reduction in energy usage – without tampering with the network availability and connectivity for the customer. In 2022, the energy saved amounted to 6.4 million kWh – enough to power a small Swiss village of about 2,700 people for a year.

And in initiatives I’ve been leading across our footprint, we’re investing in AI in several key areas, including optimizing our fixed network, shaping our best-in-class consumer products and services, and enhancing our employees’ productivity. For example, we’re deploying another AI resource to predict and resolve faults within our fixed networks, helping field engineers assess cable damage and make quick repairs.

We’re unlocking AI’s promise to improve operations and productivity, creating a personalized experience for the customer, and solving problems with data-driven insights – all while driving innovation.