Mastering Complex Calls: How Food Technology Company Transformed Customer Service with AI-Powered Tools

In today's contact center landscape, handling complex customer interactions efficiently is crucial. A leading food-for-work technology company in the US faced unique challenges in managing high-stakes, time-sensitive inquiries. Their contact center, the crucial link between businesses and the vast network of partner restaurants, grappled with a surge in call volume and complex customer inquiries. Time-sensitive orders involving multiple parties like customers, catering partners, and delivery services demanded agents be able to coordinate and troubleshoot various issues in real time. The Senior Manager of Quality Assurance at this food technology company recently shared insights on how AI-powered tools have revolutionized their customer service operations.

The Challenge: Navigating Complexity in Food Service Coordination

Contact center agents for this company deal with complex scenarios daily. They handle orders for businesses, and sometimes, it's for a HUGE group of people, like a company with hundreds of employees. They take orders, make changes, cancel orders, and fix delivery problems all the time – and they need to do it quickly. Sometimes, the agents have to deal with multiple issues at once. For instance, a customer might call because their order is late AND the restaurant forgot a key ingredient. That means coordinating with the delivery driver, the restaurant, and the customer – all within a short amount of time. The senior manager of quality assurance at this company explained the pressure: "If you order a pizza and it's late on a Friday night, it's one thing, but our customers might have ordered lunch that may be late for 400 employees. That’s a big deal! They need their food on time, and it’s our job to make sure that happens."

To make matters even more challenging, thier knowledge base is HUGE (more than one thousand individual articles). It's like a giant library with tons of information, and sometimes, the agents need to find specific details quickly. "Our knowledge base can be really dense," Michaela says. "It’s filled with detailed processes, sometimes in documents that are over 1,000 words long. Our newer agents are sometimes overwhelmed, trying to find the answers they need in these big documents."

It’s clear that their contact center agents needed a way to manage the complexity, speed up their problem-solving, and make sure they’re always providing amazing customer service.

The Solution: Harnessing the Power of AI

This food-for-work technology company set out to find a solution that helped maintain their high level of customer service while at the same time giving their agents the tools they need to handle whatever situations are thrown at them. They found their answer in Level AI, a leading provider of AI-powered tools for contact centers.

Level AI’s suite of tools gave them the solutions they were looking for:

• Agent Assist: They implemented Level AI's Agent Assist, an AI-powered tool that acts as a real-time knowledge guide for agents. It listens to conversations and proactively suggests relevant articles and information from the knowledge base, ensuring agents have the precise information they need to resolve customer inquiries quickly. This real-time solution eliminates the need for agents to search through lengthy documents, providing them with the right answers within seconds. Essentially, Agent Assist acts as a super-smart cheat sheet that puts the information the agent needs to provide exceptional customer service front and center so they spend less time searching and more time interacting directly with customers.
• Manager Assist: Manager Assist gave supervisors visibility into the real-time activities of the contact center, providing valuable insights into customer sentiment and potential issues and even highlighting important parts of the conversation. With Manager Assist, supervisors could identify calls where customers expressed frustration or were at risk of churning, allowing them to intervene proactively and provide support to agents before the situation escalated. This gives agents the confidence and support they need to handle tough calls. It also frees up agents, as they no longer need to stop their work to explain the situation to their manager.
• Auto-QA: Instead of relying on subjective criteria like tone, the Auto-QA tool shifted the focus of quality assurance toward customer experience and solution-oriented metrics. This ensured that the company’s efforts were aligned with delivering positive outcomes for customers.
  

A Symphony of Success

The implementation of Level AI tools transformed their contact center, leading to a harmonious blend of efficiency and customer delight:

• Improved Efficiency: Agent Assist, with its real-time knowledge access, helped them transform the day to day experience of their agents and also their customers. Since implementing Agent Assist, they have seen a 13% decrease in their overall call handle time. How?
  
  First, calls started getting answered much faster. Remember all that time agents spent searching through those giant knowledge base articles? Agent Assist helped them find the information they needed in seconds, cutting down on the time it took to handle each call. It was like having a super-fast shortcut that helped agents get to the solution much quicker.
  
  This meant that agents could help more customers in a shorter amount of time. They were no longer bogged down by long calls and could jump right into the next interaction, ready to help another customer in need.
  
• Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: It wasn't just about getting calls done quicker; the changes made a big difference in how customers felt, too. With agents able to quickly resolve issues and provide solutions, customers were happier. The faster resolution times and personalized service provided through AI-powered assistance contributed to a noticeable increase in customer satisfaction and CSAT scores. Customers felt heard, understood, and valued.
  
• Elevated Service Levels: By automating routine tasks and providing real-time guidance, Level AI empowered agents to focus on more complex interactions and helped them achieve a 23% reduction in call hold time during peak lunch hours, with 94% of calls served within 30 seconds.
  
• Reduced Customer Churn: You know how sometimes you try a new restaurant, and it’s amazing, but then the next time you go, it's not as good? Well, this food technology wanted to make sure their customers always had a great experience so they could keep coming back for more.
  
  With the help of AI, they found a way to identify customers who might be thinking about going somewhere else. Imagine having an assistant whose job is to analyze every interaction and who can spot warning signs before things get out of hand. Now, with tools like Manager Assist, they can tag conversations where a customer might be unhappy or thinking about switching companies.
  
  That information pops up right away so the manager can jump in and help the agent make things right. They can give the agent some extra advice or even call the customer back to apologize if something goes wrong. It’s like having a safety net to catch customers before they slip away!
  
  Since this company started using AI to help identify unhappy customers, they’ve seen a big decrease in customer churn. That means more customers are sticking with them because they know they can always count on getting amazing service.
  
• Increased Agent Engagement: Level AI helped them make their agents feel more confident and empowered. Agent Assist and Manager Assist made their jobs easier, giving them the information and support they needed to feel like they were doing a great job. Customer service is a challenging job - and anything companies can do to increase agent satisfaction has massive immediate cost implications (by saving money on recruiting, hiring and training), but also on the customer experience by making sure your best agents stay engaged and feel supported by your organization.
  

"Our agents are overwhelmingly positive about Level AI. They feel much more supported and confident in their jobs because they have real-time assistance and resources right at their fingertips. Now they don't have to worry about searching through the knowledge base when something goes wrong – they have the answers they need instantly."

A Human-Centric Approach to AI

This food technology company’s success with Level AI is a testament to its strategic approach to AI implementation. They saw AI not as a replacement for their human agents but as a powerful tool to augment their capabilities. AI was integrated strategically to handle the “heavy lifting” of knowledge retrieval and information processing, freeing up agents to focus on what they do best: building genuine connections with customers, providing empathetic support, and delivering personalized solutions.

They also invested heavily in training for both agents and managers, ensuring that everyone understood how to leverage the AI tools effectively. They prioritized gathering regular feedback, constantly refining and improving the system based on the insights they gained.

At the core of their AI implementation, they maintained a relentless commitment to delivering a consistently exceptional customer experience. This customer-centric focus ensured that AI tools were deployed strategically to enhance personalization, efficiency, and, ultimately, customer loyalty.

“Level AI is a game-changer compared to other tools we've tried. Some of those tools just didn't work for us and did not give the expected ROI. But Level is completely different – it's exactly what we needed.”

Advice for Organizations Embracing AI

For organizations considering AI implementation in their contact centers, their contact center leader advises a thoughtful approach: "Be really thoughtful about the training for both agents and leadership... and really explain how they can leverage these tools to enhance their experience at work."

A Recipe for Success

By embracing Level AI’s generative AI-powered solutions, this food technology company has not only overcome the complexities of food service coordination but has also set a new standard for customer service excellence in their industry. The company’s journey demonstrates the transformative power of Level AI to enhance contact center operational efficiency, improve customer satisfaction, and foster a more engaged and empowered workforce.

"Our main goal is to keep getting better and better, delivering top-notch service while making things more efficient. That's why Level AI is a perfect fit. It gives our agents the real-time support they need to handle calls more effectively, and it helps us keep our average call times down."

Now, they’re not just delivering great food, they’re building lasting relationships with customers, and that’s something to celebrate for Level AI team.