Vivo, in collaboration with Microsoft, creates Generative AI for call center assistant

Vivo, in collaboration with Microsoft, created a solution that transforms generative artificial intelligence into an assistant for its call center agents. The initiative, called “I.Ajuda”, is already used by 11 thousand Vivo customer service agents, the company’s entire call center workforce.

The project makes generative artificial intelligence available to the attendant as a tool to increase the quality and agility of the service provided to the consumer. Internal data show that, with the use of technology, several indicators were positively impacted, including the average service time, which decreased by 9% in the case of individual customers and 4% in the case of companies. Other results already identified are the growth in the level of calls resolved at the first level, that is, at the first contact with the call center; and increase in the service evaluation score.

“We started I.Ajuda in the middle of last year. This agility and pioneering spirit were possible thanks to Vivo's long history in the world of data and AI, technologies that we have already applied internally for a few years to improve the customer experience and generate efficiency gains. This project combines both objectives: in a few months it created a positive impact on indicators that evaluate the increase in satisfaction of our customers and that also help to measure the level of efficiency of the operation”, says Ricardo Hobbs, vice-president of Strategy, New Business and Artificial Intelligence from Vivo.

The implementation of I.Ajuda was carried out in partnership with Telefónica Tech, Vivo's corporate segment. The project is the result of collaboration between Vivo and Microsoft, announced in April 2023, when the operator announced that it would integrate the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. The initiative aims to develop and implement technology use cases in various areas of Vivo, in addition to establishing an artificial intelligence laboratory to promote the topic internally within the company.

The solution is built on Azure OpenAI Service, which includes layers of cloud protection, security, and compliance. As a result, all information is processed and stored within Vivo's closed environment and meets the standards established by the company.

“With the use of technology, Vivo has even more resources to improve its call center operations, offering more quality and agility in the dynamic customer service scenario. Artificial intelligence acts as a game-changer, enabling unprecedented contextual analysis of customer conversations. With Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, the company is not just answering calls, it is shaping experiences, optimizing processes and redefining customer service success”, says Andrea Liberman, vice president of Partners and Channels at Microsoft Brazil.

With the project, the call center agent now has a chat tool to ask questions and queries regarding customer queries. Chat is the generative AI interface, supplied with content from more than 30 systems and 2,000 processes that were previously the information base used by the agent during interactions with the customer.

Through chat, AI acts as the agent's co-pilot, generating agile, simple and direct responses and eliminating repetitive steps in the process of obtaining information, making service more agile and accurate. Now, on a single screen, the agent has access to all the necessary information and in a maximum of 10 seconds. Internal data shows that the operation is already using generative AI with a recurrence of 87% in customer service.

The solution is based on machine learning, so the more it is used, the more it learns and improves. An essential element of this process is feedback from the call center agent, who assesses whether the suggested response was positive or negative. In addition, Vivo has CT Bots, an elite customer service team who are “bot trainers”. CT Bots, made up of those who were the best agents in the company's call center, was created a few years ago and currently has 26 employees whose job is to analyze feedback and information provided by artificial intelligence, in order to guarantee accuracy and calibration of the tool.

Vivo already envisages new possible stages of I.Ajuda. In the future, the tool will be able to suggest offers to the agent that would possibly be of interest to the customer, for the purchase of a new service, plan or service upgrade, among other possibilities. Furthermore, you can transcribe the conversation between the agent and the customer into text, to analyze and identify flaws or possible points for improvement in the process, thus contributing to the learning process and evolution of the tool. Always, of course, respecting privacy and current legislation.