Connected Customer | Partnering with Logic20/20

 

Connected Customer

 

 

 

 

 

 

At a Glance

 

Our telecom partner was on a mission to increase customer retention by creating outstanding customer care experiences and to accelerate their speed of innovation. We leveraged our expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver game-changing innovations that reduce wait times, shorten time to resolution, and enable a deeper understanding of customer needs.

Customer Background

woman leaning against wall, smiling at phone

91%

of customers say a positive customer care experience makes them more likely to buy again. *

Our partner wanted to accelerate digital innovation and improve outcomes in their digital interactions with customers. To this end, they launched a comprehensive initiative to modernize their approach to creating user-friendly digital experiences within the capabilities of their existing technology stack.

 

In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the enterprise to quickly pivot their customer care operations to a work-from-home model while addressing a surge in demand for customer services. As wait times lengthened, our partner set out to quickly deploy a self-service option that offered immediate assistance with simpler requests while allowing agents to focus on more complex cases.

2 women sitting on a couch with a laptop and credit card

80%

of customers say customer experience is equally important as product quality. *

Business, Functional & Technical Requirements

 

Quickly connect customers and prospects to the services they need with minimal effort through any available communication channel.

Money sitting in a jar

Enable resolution-focused capabilities through AI-powered digital assistants that automate tasks for experts, managers, and customers while driving efficiency, reducing costs, and achieving results more effectively.

Person typing on computer with dashboard on screen

Empower customer care agents to deliver world-class customer service with clickless-context, real-time insights, and recommendations.

Large lit-up question mark symbol

Launch virtual assistants to handle simple FAQs and actions so that customer care agents only handle challenging inquiries.

Solution/Tech Stack Overview

 

Logic20/20 delivered the strategic, architectural, and development expertise needed to drive our partner towards their dual goals of improved tools for agents and a self-service platform for customers, both driven by AI.

 

To address the first goal, we laid the groundwork for CI/CD, microservices, and AI/ML capabilities to increase the speed of application development and utilize automation to empower the customer care team to deliver world-class customer experiences at the pace the business needed. Our team built innovative social media and messaging platforms, delivering faster access to customer account activities, real-time AI on each conversation through topic modeling and sentiment analysis, dynamic agent routing, and 360-degree views of customer conversations. We integrated Apple Business Chat on our partner’s mobile app to enable direct, responsive service for iOS customers and built integrations with Facebook, Twitter, and other social channels. We also enabled digital care agents and managers to personalize their customer-facing personas, offering a more human experience to customers using digital platforms.

Customer care platform screenshot

Sample screenshot from our partner’s customer care agent platform (Source)

 

For the second goal, we built a virtual assistant to handle simple FAQs, allowing customer care agents to handle more challenging inquiries. The two-week deployment of the platform was made possible by microservices, cloud infrastructure, and agile DevOps best practices, allowing the team to build a fully functional service that still met our partner’s customer-obsessed standards.

 

On the back end, we built connectors between customer care and our partner’s major business systems (billing, CRM, services management, etc.). We also set up the workload according to DevOps best practices, which enabled frequent deployments. Finally, we enabled an ambitious service roadmap based on a robust, scalable technical architecture.

 

High level architecture diagram 

Capabilities Deployed

Data Science and AI

We worked closely with our partner to lay the groundwork for AI/ML capabilities and deployed Logic20/20 data scientists as part of the first dedicated AI team at the company.

Security and Compliance

Preserving the integrity and security of personally identifiable information (PII) is of utmost importance to us and our partners. We created a new authentication process to expand the number of secure channels customers could use to pay their bills.

Service

We used AI to improve our partner's ability to serve their customers, simplifying and expediting processes for both care agents and customers. Our tools work seamlessly across systems to ensure a smooth and consistent experience for all.

Accelerated Product Development

Our comprehensive knowledge of DevOps best practices and Agile methodologies enable rapid feature development that evolve intelligently and bring products to market faster. 

Sales

Our AI-based tool analyzes customer conversations and surfaces relevant information to Care Agents; simplifying and improving their ability to sell new products and services.

Architecture

Our understanding of Cloud, DevOps, and Agile processes to define governance standards allows for high-performing and scalable products to quickly emerge. With our team’s technology and business acumen, we’re able to deploy enterprise-wide initiatives by establishing code sharing & architecture frameworks, strengthening the DevOps mindset, building advanced analytics, reducing cycle time, and evolving/consolidating services. 

Impact

 

As a value-driven strategic partner, Logic20/20 invests in the success of our partners and project teams:

Our partner’s new AI-driven customer care platforms have handled over 20 million conversations YTD in 2021 and contributed to dramatic improvements in NPS and CSAT scores. Employee attrition in the customer care center has decreased considerably. The enterprise also generated massive savings in their bottom line—over $100 million to date—by lowering the cost-to-serve, partly due to automated insights that would have historically been handled manually by customer care agents.

 

“We measure customer satisfaction on every channel,” one of our partner’s vice presidents said in a recent interview, “and the messaging scores are very close to the assisted scores, which are damned near perfect—something a traditional chatbot could never achieve.”

  

3 Lessons Learned

 

People working around a table.

Lesson 1: Project team composition is very important for successful delivery. This includes aspects of role mix and the ratio among on-shore, near-shore, and offshore team members. We found that, to be successful, you need to have 70-80% of the team located onshore, while the rest can be nearshore or offshore.

Two men talking

Lesson 2: An Agile approach requires frequent interactions with the business. This enables our team to test how well the implementation aligns with business vision, which tends to change in real time. To effectively achieve our partner’s vision, we implemented the practice of frequent (weekly) demos.

using chatbot

Lesson 3: Fail fast. Small proof-of-concepts are the key to remaining agile before diving into full implementation. Define a scope that enables solid decision-making but allows you to adapt to changing circumstances and requirements.

  

Partnering Model

 

As a value-driven, full service, product-focused consulting company, Logic20/20 has a proven track record of realizing tangible outcomes for key initiatives across our partner’s organization. Having partnered with this enterprise for several years, our product experts and niche business and technology capabilities help business leaders drive scalable solutions to market quickly.

 

The teams and consultants we deploy operate at the intersection of business and technology to ensure fast product development and quick adoption by internal and external customers. We work closely with our partners to build teams with niche skillsets and relevant experience that up-level the products and teams they support.

 

Part of our value as trusted partners is the way we help our clients, stakeholders, and teams connect the dots across the business. Our project leads work closely with each other to share knowledge from across the company to ensure their projects are up to date with initiatives happening across the business.

 

Full delivery teams deliver projects from end-to-end.

Integrated teams collaborate with Partner employees.

Experts advise on unique technical challenges. 

Commercial Construct & Performance Management

 

As a value-driven strategic partner, Logic20/20 invests in the success of our partners and project teams:

 

Project

• Account team support

• Delivery team management

• Leadership oversight

• Recruiting, interviews, and resourcing

Facilities

• New building investment

• Building supplies and equipment

• Logistics, cleaning, and snacks

• Integrated with our partner’s campus

Team Morale

• Practice support

• Training relevant to our partner

• Diversity, equity & inclusion initiatives

• Team, company, and office events

• Designated career managers

Commercials

• Resource refunds and adjustments

• Absorbing cost-of-living /market adjustments

• Absorbing level adjustments

• Contract pass-throughs