Case Study
Purchasing Power Achieves 17% Improvement in NPS with AI Virtual Agents
At-a-Glance
Purchasing Power is one of the fastest-growing voluntary benefit companies in the industry. Looking to free up their live agents to allow more handling of human-only interactions and less of order management and password resets, they enlisted SmartAction to bring self-service automation into the fold of their customer service strategy. Automating these repetitive tasks led to a 17% improvement in NPS while reducing 25% of live agent calls. They achieved ROI in only three months!
Success by the Numbers
Promoter Score
Challenge
As a leading employee purchasing program for consumer products and services, Purchasing Power has the immense task of handling customer care requests that range from providing information on financial assistance programs to lending a hand to shoppers looking for the right product.
As they scaled their operations, Purchasing Power’s contact center was pressured to do more with less, while prioritizing an exceptional customer experience. Although initially hesitant to hand off their customer experience to conversational AI, Purchasing Power decided to consider technology options that would ensure the highest level of service and the least amount of effort to implement and support.
Solution
Purchasing Power partnered with SmartAction to develop an engaging AI virtual agent, with the aim to automate several complex tasks and free up their agents. That way, live agents could spend more time truly helping customers and not get distracted with repetitive call types.
Intelligent Front Door: an AI virtual agent greets the customer instead of a lengthy phone tree menu. Intent is captured and customer is then authenticated. Depending on intent, the customer is then transferred to a live agent or remains in self-service.
Hold Time Notification & Callback: In the event of a live agent transfer with additional hold times, an emergency message is implemented to advise customer of a wait. Customers are also given a callback option when wait times to reach a live agent are longer than usual.
For calls within self-service:
Order management: customers can check on the status of their order and get delivery details (e.g.: order still in process, order shipped, order delivered).
Account management: customers can update their account information such as billing address, shipping address, credit card(s) on file, and more. This module also enables a customer to reset their password through an omnichannel experience, in which a link is sent via SMS to the number provided on file.
Results
In only 3 months, Purchasing Power recognized a return on their initial investment. By revamping their customer experience with an AI virtual agent, Purchasing Power reduced agent call volume by more than 25%, equaling to hundreds of thousands of savings on a yearly basis. Most importantly, by providing their customers with a better care experience, their Net Promoter Score improved by 17%.
Roadmap
Since the successful launch of their self-service solution, Purchasing Power has decided to expand their order management capabilities by automating returns. This application will enable customers to return a purchase within the eligibility window. The reason for return will then be collected and additional criteria will be confirmed based on return reason (e.g., has manufacturer’s seal and/or arrived non-operational, et cetera.)
As to Purchasing Power’s decision to partner with SmartAction again, Tiffany Anderson, Director of CX Process & Initiatives states, “I think everyone is beginning to learn that building a bot is easy but building a good one is hard. And that’s especially true when it comes to the voice channel.”
