The challenge

For many telco executives, it’s clear that customer experience is key to guarding market share. However, as organizations scale, maintaining a positive customer experience becomes a costly challenge. Adopting an automation-first strategy helps solve that problem—and here is the case study to prove it.

As the Caribbean’s largest telco, Digicel had a responsibility to their customers—to deliver the best-in-class communication experiences they demanded. And as daily interactions in digital channels became more commonplace in their customers’ lives, they wanted to make sure they were meeting them there.

Before Ada:

• 800k live chat interactions and ~5.5 million phone interactions per year
• 90% of brand interactions via voice
• Disparate regional call centres with different, individual skill sets

Seamless support to fit digital lives

90%+ of Digicel’s support interactions were received via phone. At scale, this model could not support their efficiency goals. Digicel had already launched a company-wide digital transformation effort to keep pace with their 13 million customers’ evolving expectations and boost their bottom line, and customer service was a key element of this ambition. 

Neil O’Hanlon, Director of CX at Digicel, led this charge. He knew that in order for this project to succeed he would not only need to use the right tools and strategies, but also influence millions of customers to adopt new behaviours that would benefit everyone. 

He needed a strategy that would be easy to adopt internally and by the customer. And a digital tool to complement it that would support the 5 local languages and the nuanced local requirements of the 30+ regional markets they were serving.

After evaluating different vendors, Neil and Digicel chose to partner with Ada to automate and scale their customer experience with industry-leading conversational AI. 

After Ada:

• 135k engaged conversations per month; increased chat volume without increasing headcount
• Single multilingual automated support bot servicing 5 languages across 31 markets
• 4x increase in contact through digital channels over voice; $750k saved in 2020

Actually promoting valuable brand interactions

With Ada’s implementation team, Digicel was able to meet all of their language and regional requirements by launching a single CX chatbot. The solution is conversational in the 5 languages their customers needed: Hatian Creole, Spanish, French, Dutch, and English.

With Ada, Digicel could also distinguish between 32 regions to ensure customers received relevant content such as pricing, plans, and top-ups. Most importantly—the high recognition and containment rates seen with Ada’s conversational AI meant Digicel could scale confidently, and move away from reliance on costly phone-first support operations.

For the first time ever, Digicel was empowered to rebel against the widespread practice of discouraging support inquiries. Instead they promoted their customer service options— actually encouraging valuable customer conversations with their CX chatbot, Ruby.

Improvements across every support channel

Neil accomplished what he set out to do. For him, modernizing Digicel’s legacy support operations didn’t mean completely abandoning the old. Instead he was able to champion a full range of support options to match the preferences of a diverse customer demographic. All while keeping costs down and increasing efficiencies to protect Digicel’s position as a market leader. 

After promoting Ruby and digital support channels, Digicel saw conversations through their website and MyDigicel app quadruple in comparison to voice. With 135,000 engaged automated customer conversations taking place each month, he’s been able to scale the impact of the existing support team, while saving $750k in costs yearly.

Most importantly, Digicel’s customers benefit. By leveraging Ada’s full feature set, Digicel was able to drive a better customer experience at multiple touch points. Upcoming back-end integrations will allow customers to receive tailored, convenient, and quick self-serve solutions. From checking active plans and add-ons to prepaid expiration and bill due dates.

Freed from redundant interactions, live chat agents are more responsive than ever before—90% of chats responded to in less than 10 seconds.

The market-variable, dynamic content available in multiple languages means Digicel customers receive the relevant experiences they demand—with a personalized touch that wins their loyalty.