Conversational bots (chatbots) offer tremendous value to an organization, whether through saving time, reducing cost, generating sales, providing “after-hours” support or even just engaging users in a new unique way. They provide customers with the ability to get quick responses while staying in their channel of choice. With the potential of a 30 percent improvement in operational efficiency, the benefits are extensive.
The challenge
TELUS Digital has more than 75,000 team members requiring swift and effective IT support. Prior to implementing a chatbot solution, simple tasks like unlocking accounts and resetting passwords accounted for 29% of the tickets received by an already busy IT Service Desk. In addition to decreasing team member productivity due to support wait times, the IT Service Desk was dedicating significant resources to handle basic requests, limiting their availability to work on innovative value-add IT projects for the company. This presented an opportunity to automate and seek out time-saving methods.
The TELUS Digital solution
In an effort to increase efficiencies for both IT Service Desk Staff and team members, a conversational bot was created to facilitate password resets and account unlocks. The return on investment of the TELUS Virtual Helper conversational bot was realized a short three months after implementation.
The TELUS Virtual Helper conversational bot:
- Diverts calls from the IT Service Desk
- Provides 24/7 support
- Allows IT Service Desk agents to spend less time on the phone
- Interacts with the back-end system to perform a “transaction” prompting team members to enter employee information in return for the ability to reset or create new passwords
- Leverages cloud technology, such as the Google Dialogflow framework, to manage all interactions, including TELUS Digital middleware that connects the chatbot with Active Directory changes.
The results
- Over 1,000 unlock and reset calls are deflected to the bot per month resulting in a savings of 50 IT Service Desk staff hours each month
- Team members are able to access accounts in half the time (One minute and 15 seconds via TELUS Virtual Helper vs. three minutes — not including wait time — via email/call)
- Strong internal adoption rates with 25% of team member requests completed via TELUS Virtual Helper
- IT Service Desk experienced reduced attrition levels and increased employee engagement due to refocusing on more challenging work
With 24/7 support and a reduction in call queues, TELUS Virtual Helper provides time and resource savings in addition to increased team member satisfaction.