MRV&CO, one of the largest construction and development companies in Latin America, has adopted Generative AI to develop innovative technologies and improve its customers’ experience. With the support of Microsoft, the company created the Sofia project: a customer service chatbot for the Sensia Incorporadora brand, focused on high-end properties. The tool has led to impressive results, such as increased lead conversion and reduced service time, boosting sales opportunities.
The challenge of maintaining quality at the same scale as growth
The group already had successful experience using traditional AI to support sales at MRV, which focuses on affordable real estate through the MIA virtual assistant. However, for Sensia, which is a new brand, the company saw an opportunity to create a unique solution that could adapt to the different needs, questions and preferences of customers – without following a rigid and predefined flow.
Faced with the growing demand that was beginning to overwhelm human operators, which traditional AI – based on standardized responses – was unable to meet immediately, MRV Engenharia, with the aim of improving efficiency, personalization and availability of service (in addition to increasing the lead conversion rate), kicked off the Sofia project. The initiative, developed with BlueShift, a Microsoft partner company specialized in AI solutions, helped in the adoption of Microsoft Azure Open AI Service, ensuring the necessary tools for innovative, safe development capable of meeting the developer’s needs.
Meet Sofia, a solution built with Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service
It was then that MRV decided to explore the possibilities of generative AI, which uses natural language models based on neural networks, capable of generating coherent and creative responses from a prompt, that is, an initial instruction that defines the objective, context and tone of the conversation.
Regarding the choice of Microsoft technology, Natasha Resende, responsible for the Cognitive Intelligence Center at MRV, highlights the role of security: “With the OpenAI API, we were able to create a secure environment, where we could place all the commercial information of the projects without making it available directly to the market.”
Sofia, a virtual assistant available 24/7, uses the GPT model to chat with Sensia customers via WhatsApp or the company's website. The virtual assistant is able to understand their intentions, questions and preferences and respond naturally, fluently and coherently, consulting a database with information about the construction company's developments. This personalization helps customers find properties more easily, since Sofia tells them which developments are closest to them, the property's features, price, etc.
The solution developed was also integrated with the Zendesk platform, enabling effective management of interactions and a continuous workflow between AI and human operators, who receive accurate information to follow up on the service. If the chat is inactive for more than six hours, Sofia also transfers the service to an agent, avoiding the loss of potential business.
Sofia also has a clear commercial objective: to qualify leads and forward them to brokers, who receive a history of the conversation and have more arguments to carry out an assertive and personalized approach.
Qualified leads to boost the sales team's work
The results of implementing Sofia were impressive: MRV doubled its lead conversion rate, going from 20% to 40%. If the deal is confirmed, this impact could represent approximately R$100 million in annual sales value (PSV). With the adoption of Sofia, 93% of requests were resolved without human intervention, representing an effective increase in the automation of simpler tasks, which allows agents to focus on analytical and sensitive issues.
There was also a reduction in service time: initial responses went from two hours to immediate; to finalize the contact and forward it to a broker, the time to complete the contact and forward it to a broker dropped from three days to a few minutes. Furthermore, due to the ease of use of the tool, it was not necessary to hire specialized operators, as the solution is intuitive. And the existing technical team was trained to perform maintenance when necessary.
Expand personalized service with AI for all MRV customers
With Sofia's successful experience for Sensia Incorporadora, MRV's management and technical team are now focusing their efforts on developing a generative AI solution capable of improving service to MRV's customers, whose base is much larger.
“We have already started experimenting with GPT with MIA, our virtual assistant for MRV. It is a very large project, we want to review the entire customer journey using generative artificial intelligence, making it more personalized according to the customer's moment and more humanized. In addition, we want to help the salesperson with AI,” comments Caio Almeida Reis, corporate sales manager at MRV.
About Microsoft
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