Telstra Leverages Microsoft Azure Copilot Ai to Enhance Contact Center Service
The company fine-tuned its 'Ask Telstra' tool to better present staff with summarized customer insights drawn from their CRM application.
In this Microsoft case study Kim Krogh Andersen, Group Executive of Product and Technology at Telstra, shares their Telco AI journey.
One key project has been the adoption of Microsoft Copilot to augment and enhance their contact center services.
Customer service agents must source answers to customer questions from a vast amount of information. This can understandably take time, as can getting up to speed on past customer queries and complex interactions. The company fine-tuned its Ask Telstra tool to the company’s vast internal knowledge base to put the necessary data at the fingertips of customer service agents.
Ask Telstra
When Telstra was developing its generative AI solutions, Ask Telstra and One Sentence Summary, it was an obvious choice to leverage its strategic partnership with Microsoft to build the tools on the underlying Azure platform, creating two solutions based on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.
It combines the intelligence of Azure OpenAI Service with the precision retrieval capability of Microsoft Azure AI Search, drastically hastening search speed and accuracy. About 200 customer service agents trialled the solution in mid-2023.
Beyond already improving help requests for both customers and customer service agents, Ask Telstra is surprising the company with other unforeseen benefits. New agents found that Ask Telstra gave them a big boost to becoming more effective, faster. Staff spent less time asking for help from their managers, who frequently were busy with other conversations, proving very helpful in onboarding new staff.
One Sentence Summary puts the gist of recent customer history in front of the agent almost instantaneously. It incorporates Microsoft Azure Machine Learning with Azure AI Search and Azure OpenAI Service to summarize the recent history of a customer.
The tool appears as a clickable button in the customer’s history as accessed from the Telstra customer relationship management (CRM) software. Within the intensely detailed, text-rich CRM customer history screen, agents click the One Sentence Summary button and are presented with a simple, uncluttered interface that succinctly summarizes the customer’s situation. That means less time to understand customer needs and a more seamless transfer from one agent to another.
One of the most valuable aspects of One Sentence Summary is its delivery of sensitive customer information. Agents appreciated how the tool enabled them to more quickly understand and tactfully engage with customers who were experiencing challenging or sensitive circumstances such as those in need of financial assistance.
Becoming an Ai-Powered Enterprise
This productive start validates Telstra’s plan to infuse AI technology throughout the organization. “We’re unlocking value and growth as technologies like generative AI proliferate at speed,” says Kim Krogh Andersen, Group Executive of Product and Technology at Telstra. “By collaborating and sharing our individual strengths with partners like Microsoft we can ignite innovation and deliver the best products and services for our customers.”
Krogh Andersen’s AI team is ready for the challenge. “Becoming an AI-fueled organization is very much a journey of continuous learning,” muses Glynn. “The pace of change over the past year has been truly remarkable. It’s crucial that we adapt, collaborate through partnerships, and share knowledge so that we can unlock the huge transformational potential offered by AI.”
