KYOCERA Document Solutions Japan Inc.
General Electric (Electrical and Electronic Equipment) SoftwareCC DM
transcosmos helped KYOCERA offer greater convenience for its customers with the power of voice AI. By offering AI-powered voice agent services during non-business hours, successfully spread out incoming calls.
Challenge
Extend support hours to satisfy customer needs
- Reinforce and use an unmanned operational model as an option to offer extended customer support services flexibly after the current 9:00 to 17:30 business hours plus weekends and holidays to satisfy customer needs.
Make more robust BCP for customer support centers
- Build a framework that can serve customers who need support during sudden peak times, without making them wait.
- Build a framework that can support customers even in times of center closures, or in an extremely understaffed situation due to potential natural disasters and pandemics.
Service
Customer support framework using AI-powered voice assistants (voice AI)
- Offered end-to-end support from conducting pre-deployment testing, creating scenarios, verifying service effectiveness, to deploying and tuning voice AI.
- Applied highly accurate voice AI services during non-business hours, automating the order receiving process for supplies.
- Built an auto-notification framework to pass order information received by voice AI to order processing teams.
- Designed customer-centric communication scenarios for voice AI and live agents for both in and out of business hours.
Benefits
Delivered a hybrid service model combining voice AI and live agents for both in and out of business hours.
- Continuous tuning made voice AI achieve more than 50% call completion rate, successfully expanded support coverage (voice AI can now offers first response to almost all inquiries).
- Voice AI service option for customers being placed on hold helps retain customer satisfaction.
- Voice AI-only service framework in place for sudden center closures (BCP).
- Voice AI service coverage expanded to include services for English speaking customers.
Delivered the English version of the voice AI services. Voice AI now serves English speaking customers when designated English support members are not available.
We have decided to deploy AI-powered voice assistants to serve customers during non-business hours and to put business continuity plans in place for our customer centers. Now that the service has proven to be successful, we have asked transcosmos to make the voice AI service channel ready even during center operating hours. We believe it critical to design and implement support channels that won’t make our customers wait. To guide more customers to voice AI service, transcosmos has presented us with many proposals that would make the service even better, and has carried out initiatives to make it happen. We are grateful to transcosmos for offering us these services since the framework not only translates into higher customer satisfaction, but also cuts our operational man-hours. We have high expectations of transcosmos in helping us further drive digital transformation (DX) at our customer support centers.
Mr. Atsushi Iwatsubo
Chief
Contact Center
System Support Section 1
Services Business Division
* The comment, position and other information above are at the time of interview conducted in February 2022
A hybrid customer support model, combining voice AI and live agents
KYOCERA Document Solutions Japan Inc. (Kyocera DSJ), a document solutions company, sells and provides rental and maintenance services for a wide array of office equipment and products, including multi-function copiers and printers, application software, and multi-function devices. transcosmos has long been managing customer support services for the company’s multi-functional copiers.
Given changing customer needs and the current social landscape, Kyocera DSJ wanted to thoroughly serve customers who need support, not only during non-business hours that include night hours, weekends and holidays, but also during periods of unexpected spikes in incoming calls, as well as in times of center closures due to large-scale natural disasters and pandemics. To achieve that goal, Kyocera DSJ asked transcosmos to help the company prepare for such situations.
Given the request, transcosmos made a proposal to deploy a hybrid operational model, combining voice AI and live call agents.
Automated order receiving process for supplies, and designed & tuned voice AI scenarios to boost both the accuracy of AI response and the call completion rate
transcosmos conducted pre-deployment testing to verify the effectiveness of voice AI services before making the voice AI respond to all incoming inquiries. Kyocera DSJ gave the green light to begin pilot testing, starting with receiving orders for supplies, which accounts for about 30% of all incoming calls, during non-business night hours, plus weekends and holidays.
In addition to creating scenarios for voice AI, transcosmos assisted Kyocera DSJ in designing an end-to-end order processing flow, from receiving orders for supplies to completing the order.
In designing the scenario - the critical success factor for voice AI - transcosmos and Kyocera DSJ had a series of hearing sessions and discussions to make sure they are on the same page before moving on.
In addition to creating voice AI scenarios, transcosmos repeated a verification and tuning cycle from a customer perspective, checking operatability, service flows, response times and other details meticulously, thereby increasing the accuracy of voice AI services. The continuous improvement cycle made the voice AI service exceed a 50% call completion rate, and Kyocera DSJ decided to expand the scope of the service coverage.
transcosmos successfully enabled Kyocera DSJ to extend the service hours, achieving 24/7 service hours.
24/7 customer service significantly increased customer convenience
During the daytime, Kyocera DSJ uses the voice AI services primarily for calls that exceed live agents’ service capacity. Now that orders and inquiries are served either by the live agents or the voice AI, Kyocera DSJ’s customer center offers greater convenience for its customers.
Moreover, with the voice AI-only service framework in place for unpredictable situations, Kyocera DSJ can handle temporal spikes in incoming calls flexibly.
With the aim of making the services even more convenient for customers, transcosmos is helping Kyocera DSJ drive initiatives that make the most of AI, such as implementing the English version of the voice AI services to support Kyocera DSJ’s English speaking customers, which only designated members offered before.
Building on cutting-edge digital technologies and our operational know-how, transcosmos will continue to assist Kyocera DSJ in propelling and achieving customer support DX.
Services for KYOCERA Document Solutions Japan Inc.
