Steering toward innovation in the public transport sector

Making travel easy

Owned by the City of Oslo and Akershus County Municipality, Fremtind Service manages payment collections for 83 toll roads. With more than 650,000 registered accounts, the company handles about 108 million toll passages each year, generating valuable revenue for reinvestment in the region’s transport infrastructure. Aligned with a vision to make travel easy, Fremtind Service is always looking for new ways to improve customer experience.

While a Genesys PureConnect on-premises solution had served the company well, Fremtind Service wanted to take advantage of a more agile cloud model. “We were introduced to Genesys Cloud and immediately became intrigued,” said Richard Vogt, Operations Manager at Fremtind Service. “The idea of open APIs and omnichannel interactions, without dealing with hosting, was very attractive. It had a great roadmap and the price wasn’t bad either.”

Predictable, stress-free service

Within less than two years since deploying the Genesys Cloud solution, Fremtind Service has unified operations across its Oslo and Belgrade service centres. “The Genesys Cloud desktop was easy to pick up,” said Vogt. “It brings predictability and takes away stress for our agents. Also, we’ve not had a serious outage in 22 months. This is by far the most stable platform we’ve ever used.”

In an average week, Fremtind Service deals with 4,000 phone calls, 1,000 chat exchanges and 2,500 email contacts, in addition to 1,200 chatbot and 1,950 automated email interactions. The centres also support sales and reporting for the police and other government departments.

“By consolidating everything into one solution, we’ve reduced administration and average handle time for customer payments and inquiries,” said Trond Martinsen, Traffic Manager for Fremtind Service. “We’re less vulnerable to downtime and our agents can work anytime, anywhere. They just need an internet connection.”

Experimenting with blended AI

Taking advantage of the Genesys Cloud open APIs, Fremtind Service connected KPI reporting tools and wallboards. And customer service has been re-architected with a bot-first approach. Core to this was a blended AI strategy — welcoming customers and directing them to use chatbots.

“We decided to start small with robotic process automation for specific communications like email,” said Vogt. “This was important for educating our staff and building AI experience for our technicians.”

Now, more than half of all chat inquiries are solved automatically. If the bot can’t answer a question, the contact is instantly escalated to the first available agent. The agent uses the Genesys desktop to see the chatbot conversation, along with the customer’s full history. This makes it easier to resolve issues on the spot.

Across-the-board improvements

Fremtind Service has seen a 30% savings on licensing costs, in addition to having less need for buy-in IT support. In addition, it’s much easier to track KPIs. “The analytics we get from Genesys Cloud have transformed the way we manage resource scheduling, reporting and other important daily tasks,” added Martinsen.

Agent productivity has risen by 5%, aided by better control of workflows. Service levels also have improved — with 70% of phone and chat contacts answered within 30 seconds. Email response times have been cut from 5 days to 24 hours.

Customer feedback has been positive, too. SMS and email surveys collected through the Genesys Cloud platform confirm that 95% of calls are resolved the first time, contributing to a consistent satisfaction score of 90% or higher.

Fremtind Service plans to add voicebot technology and expand AI functionality. “We’re thinking about creating a chatbot for Facebook and making a bot-assisted, frequently asked questions service available on our website,” concluded Vogt.