Telkomsel

Telkomsel Scales Its Customer Service Operations with Facebook Messenger

Products Used

Facebook Messenger

The Story

Telkomsel Scales Its Customer Service Operations with Facebook Messenger

Established in May 1995, Telkomsel is Indonesia's largest cellular operator serving over 178 million customers.

Available on: Messenger

The Goal

GraPARI - Telkomsel's customer service center - operates a 24-hour call center, that handles all customer care issues. As Telkomsel scaled its services across Indonesia, there were more customers that needed care. To maintain a high standard of customer service operations, Telkomsel needed a scalable solution to deliver an excellent experience whilst managing their operational costs.

We are able to transform our customer service operations and save on manpower hiring cost of 30% with the implementation of a bot. With Messenger, I can see us reaching more customers and moving Telkomsel's customer service from one that is human assisted to a digitally self service operation.

Andri Wibawanto, Vice President Customer Care Management, Telkomsel

The Solution

Telkomsel wanted to provide customers with a convenient and efficient way to reach out for any questions they may have.

Partnering with Kata.ai, Telkomsel launched an artificial intelligence-based customer service chatbot called “Veronika” on Facebook Messenger. It is designed to help customers with credit top up & bill payments, arranging appointments, accessing basic account information, and providing information on the latest promotions.

Veronika is powered by impressive AI that understands Bahasa Indonesian and English. When a user greets Veronika on Messenger, the in-built NLU (Natural Language Understanding) module will identify the key service category they are seeking and provide a relevant answer based on a pre-defined conversation flow. For example, if someone types “I would like to pay my bill”, the NLU module will categorize this under “bill payment” service and respond accordingly. The bot is also able to ask a customer to rephrase the question if they did not recognize the service they were seeking.

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Demonstration of Veronika, Telkomsel's customer service chatbot

Currently, 96% of incoming inquiries on Messenger are handled by the bot, with only 4% being redirected back to a customer service agent. As such, urgent cases were escalated more quickly and directed to an agent for resolution. This translated into potential operational cost savings of approximately 30%.

There was a 93% reduction in waiting time for customers. Previously, it took an average of 4.5 minutes before a customer was directed to an agent. Wait time was reduced to 5 seconds on Veronika. Within 5 months since its launch in August 2017, Veronika has served more than 470,000 unique users.

As Telkomsel continues to expand its services, it is planning to shift its digital customer service channels from one that is assisted by online agents to an entirely self-service system through the bot.

The Results

96%

of incoming inquiries on Messenger were handled by the bot

470K

unique users are using the bot since its launch in August 2017

30%

saved on operations costs

93%

reduction in waiting time for customers inquiries to be responded to

Facebook Products Used

To create cost efficiencies when scaling its customer service operations