Case Study: Telia Finland Oyj

CUSTOMER PROFILE

THE GOAL

Telia Finland Oyj is constantly seeking to enhance the customer experience by knowing and serving customers better. Metrics that it uses to benchmark its performance in terms of customer experience in its contact centers include Average Handling Time (AHT) and the number of recalls.

In the past, customer service agents needed to navigate multiple tools, systems and processes as they sought to resolve customer queries on the phone or on chat. In a typical interaction, they had to switch between multiple applications to source and capture data in order to ensure the customer gets the product, service or change they needed.

The information available to agents when a customer called in was often outdated; what’s more, the data didn’t offer much insight into the customer’s personal needs or call context. Not only did this result in higher AHT, it also meant that customers were not left with an impression that the telco knew and understood them. Aftercall work was also a significant contributor to AHT.

Telia Finland Oyj embarked on a program to improve customer experience through intelligent automation tools and technologies, including robotic process automation (RPA), attended automation (NEVA), artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics.

These tools would put customer information at sales and service agents’ fingertips as well as relieve them of mundane, manual tasks such as extracting customer information from legacy systems. The goal of the program was to vastly increase productivity and efficiency across the 3.5 million customer contacts Telia Finland handles each year.

THE SOLUTION

Telia Finland Oyj selected NICE’s NEVA (Attended Automation) solution to be at the core of its intelligent automation program. By deploying NEVA, the network operator would be able to automate a range of desktop tasks for its agents and provide them with real-time guidance via customer data summaries as well as compliance guidelines and best practices.

NEVA essentially serves as an easy-to-use user interface that helps agents to interact more easily with legacy systems and convenient summaries of customer data.

Machine learning models and advanced analytics provide insights that help agents to offer better and more personalized advice and service—for instance, an analysis of the customer’s potential pain points and product recommendations that address their needs.

NEVA was integrated with the existing RPA platform to automate aftercall work such as capturing call notes and customer data. When the RPA robot cannot automatically complete one of these tasks, it alerts the human agent to intervene.

Key to the success of the implementation was the focus on change management and end-user enablement and adoption. Telia Finland Oyj followed a development and deployment process which were based on Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), establishing cross-functional Agile teams to drive the program.

End-users were deeply involved in the definition and development cycle of the use cases in the earliest stages of the program. The people and change team coached end-users and established a user network to drive peer-to-peer training to get users up-and-running as quickly as possible.

THE RESULTS

Since the deployment of NEVA, Telia Finland Oyj has reduced AHT by 30-50 percent across use cases involving multiple legacy systems and complex processes. With customer insights on their desktops, agents are guided through compliance steps and empowered to deliver a better customer experience. Tying attended automation and RPA together has helped Telia to vastly improve the level of automation in its contact center. The cost savings are also significant.

THE FUTURE

For Telia Finland Oyj, this is just the first step in a program to bring AI to employees’ desktops. Over time, the technology will be rolled out to more Telia colleagues, such as service representatives in its stores.