D2C AI Strategy
Assess current state capabilities and develop a cost-effective AI implementation strategy
Challenges
This D2C vendor wanted to implement AI to provide quicker and easier customer support.
The majority of customer support issues were similar. While the organization worked to eliminate the root cause, it wanted to implmenet AI agents that could resolve these repeat issues as they were causing customers friction both in the occurrence and the wait to fix.
The organization was already developing and training its own AI models. The question was should they develop their own agent or "buy" one from a 3rd party.
Results
The results were:
Witin 30 days, we identified the 3rd party agent that most met the needs.
It took roughly 45 days to implement and train the new tool on the client data and reliably accomplish the necessary task.
So within 90 days, the agent was implmented and customer satisfaction scores rose immediately.
As the root cause for the customer service cases were fixed, the agent was easily repurposed to action other customer support.
Solution
In order to understand whether to buy or build the desired agent, we first had to assess the quality and accessibility of the relevant data.
Accordingly, we led that assessment of the relevant data and agreed that the data was accessible.
Next was the Buy vs. Build assessment. We gathered information about 3rd party tools. Alongside this information, we met with the teams who were developing and training the internal AI models.
The evaluation of 3rd party tools confirmed there were tools available that were fairly easily integrated into current data repositories. These agents came with many of the capabilities that were needed so training would be minimal.
The team responsible for developing the internal AI confirmed they were too early in the development and the roadmap had other priorities. Thus the decision was to buy now, and develop later once the internal models were tested.
Buy Online - Pick Up in Store
Customer and employee experience assessment for a big-box retailer
Challenges
The service was not performing up to expectations. Repeat sales through this channel fell and customers complaints increased. Incremental purchases associated with this channel did not match in-store purchase averages.
Employees complained about the service and did not actively support it so fulfillment was slow - contributing to customer dissatisfaction.
Solution
Through surveying customers and employees about their experience with the BOPUIS service, we found several ways to improve the service.
1. Improved communications about order status.
2. Moved the fulfilled orders to front of store from storage area.
3. Separated order pick-up away from customer service counter and signed it well.
4. New orders were assigned to a single store associate to fulfill in their entirety.
Results
Repeat orders increased by 35%
Incremental purchases tied to order pickup increased by 25%
% of same store sales revenue from this channel grew by 12%
Customer satisfaction score increased by 50%
Employee satisfaction scores increased by 60%.
Channel Portal
Partner portal experience assessment for a B2B Software Company
Challenges
Partners complained that the portal was "clunky" and not intuitive to use. As a result, Partners were not using the portal as intended and were "going around" the portal to complete tasks and register deals. The result was the business could not accurately track Partner sales.
Solution
As a result of the audit, page flows, information search and utilities were improved.
Single sign-on was instituted to improve logging on the portal.
Forms were updated to only require essential information auto-populated with partner information when available.
Search was re-organized and older, out of date articles deleted from the library.
Results
Partner usage of the portal increased to near 100%.
Partners increased their rating of the portal from 2 stars to 5 stars.
The Business saw a decrease in Partner support calls of 30%.
The Service Experience
Customer Service experience assessment for a Manufacturer
Challenges
Customers complained that obtaining the normal service around order entry and status was very manual and took too long resulting in delays and customer dissatisfaction (extremely low NPS scores). Customers shared openly that because the Company was so hard to do business with, they split their orders between the Company and other manufacturers.
Solution
Leveraging the learning from the interviews, the ordering and fulfillment process were re-imagined and road-mapped. Improvements were prioritized with the more analogue changes happening quicker and technology improvements planned over 3 years.
The roadmap was communicated to customers.
Results
In the 3 months following publication of the roadmap and implementation of some of the more analogue improvements to process, Customer satisfaction increased by 20%.
The Company saw an increase of 12% in new orders.