Case Study
Major Home Warranty Provider Reduces Operating Costs by 47% with Conversational AI
At-a-Glance
Dispatching hundreds of thousands of service providers every year from one contact center is a labor-intensive and costly operation. For one of the nation’s largest home warranty providers, leveraging SmartAction’s AI-powered virtual agent to automate the dispatch process led to 47% savings in operating expenses.
Success by the Numbers
offloaded from live
agents
from live agents
per year
operating expenses
Challenge
This major home warranty company relied on their live agents to answer all inbound calls and handle service requests in their entirety. In addition to having a working knowledge of home systems and appliances, the agent had to uncover the root issue and find the right local service provider that covered the area. After confirming availability, the agent would then coordinate the dispatch to the property.
Solely relying on live agents to serve customers led to long hold times and even longer average handle times. The company knew it had to improve the customer experience immediately, or risk losing business from mishandled calls and frustrated customers.
Solution
The company chose to partner with SmartAction for their all-in-one conversational AI solution that combined best-in-class AI technologies with fully managed services. By integrating with the company’s data systems and tailoring natural language understanding (NLU) models to listen for expected intents, customers could simply explain their issue using natural language.
Once the AI virtual agent determines customer intent, it checks to see if the customer qualifies to have their home appliance or system serviced. If the issue can be solved over the phone, the virtual agent engages the customer in a multi-turn conversation to triage and troubleshoot common issues for their AC, plumbing, or appliances.
If the issue cannot be resolved over the phone, the virtual agent helps the customer schedule an appointment. Once an appointment is booked, the virtual agent can proactively send text reminders about an upcoming appointment or provide ETA information. Lastly, the virtual agent can also assist with appointment confirmations, rescheduling, and cancellations.
Results
By implementing the SmartAction solution, the AI virtual agent successfully offloads 46% of dispatches from live agents, leading to a reduction in AHT by more than 282,000 minutes per year. For the dispatch group, this translates to a 47% reduction in operating expenses – a net savings exceeding $200,000 per year.
