Lower costs, higher satisfaction

Digital Dialog GmbH is a customer service leader with proven industry expertise. Most of its services are perfectly tailored to the publishing industry. The Düsseldorf, Germany-based company acts as a sales and service interface for its customers. Its focus is on inbound and outbound communications, contact center support and both non-voice and digital services. Thanks to its bots, Digital Dialog is a 24/7 service provider that reliably takes on outsourced tasks for its customers.

Competitive publishing powerhouse

As a wholly owned subsidiary of Rheinische Post Mediengruppe — one of the five regional newspaper publishers with the highest circulation in Germany — Digital Dialog must be able to act as a powerful cost-cutter in its core business. However, this undertaking is anything but trivial: for newspaper readers, morning reading is as important as their daily coffee; in most cases, delivery failures or delays lead straight to a phone call that the contact center must handle with empathy.

“Nevertheless, we have set out to make customer service more cost-effective — and we succeeded in many respects with Genesys Cloud,” said Corinna Kaussen, Authorized Signatory of Digital Dialog GmbH. “The voicebots were designed to help us improve our service to readers by allowing them to voice their concerns without having to wait in line.”

To ensure a smooth transition, Genesys partner VR Voice was responsible for implementing the project.

Voicebots answer the calls

To achieve the desired cost effects without compromising on quality, VR Voice worked with Digital Dialog to set up two Genesys Cloud AI voicebots. The result has been a tremendous success.

“We can now have the bots handle a wide variety of different calls. As a result, we have achieved our goal of automating the handling of repetitive first-level inquiries and freeing up agents to provide customer consultations,” said Kaussen.

For instance, at Digital Dialog, the bots handle the same number of calls as 15 full-time employees. It did not have to reduce headcounts when it implemented the bots; instead, it filled open positions with automation and gave employees the opportunity to qualify in more advanced areas. Now, more than 40% of all calls are handled entirely by the bots.

“The fact that this works so well is also due to the fact that our customer uses humanized bots, which are not even perceived as complete automation by a good proportion of customers,” said Karsten Raßmann, Managing Director of Genesys partner VR Voice.

Engaged employees, empowered workforce

The AI bots take over necessary tasks like storing credit notes in SAP, initiating subsequent deliveries and ensuring that vacation expenses are donated to social causes. They also provide the digital codes that customers can use to read an e-paper in the event of a replacement. The required agents work flexibly from home and can conveniently use Genesys Cloud from there. Announcements in the IVR can also be made flexibly if, for example, there are increased delivery difficulties in a delivery area due to weather conditions.

Digital Dialog has also connected its own reporting system to Genesys Cloud, providing it with valuable business insights. With Genesys Cloud Workforce Engagement Management (WEM), personnel deployment and forecast planning are also being leveraged within Genesys Cloud, as is quality management and sentiment analysis.

“Our quality manager is very pleased to have access to WEM capabilities because it means she can access all data from a single solution,” said Kaussen.

KPIs on the rise

The most important KPIs have risen sharply thanks to the use of AI-powered voicebots. “We are currently recording an availability of well over 95%,” said Kaussen. The service levels meet agreed-upon goals.

Because the bots recognize entire sentences, not just keywords, newspaper readers find it easy to interact with the new technology.

“I can say quite clearly that automation and customer centricity do not have to be in conflict with each other,” concluded Kaussen. “The voicebots equipped with artificial intelligence are an absolute gain for us. The return on investment in just three months also speaks for itself.”