Expleo, a global technology, engineering and consulting service provider, has announced that it has provided eir with a robotics programme that has transformed the company’s responsiveness to standard customer requests and increased customer care ratings. The deal is valued at €1m.

Enhancements to transform sales and self-serve customer journeys

The project is part of eir’s large-scale customer-focused digital transformation programme, made possible by a multimillion-euro investment into digital enhancements to transform the sales and self-serve customer journeys.

eir is Ireland’s largest telecoms provider, and its customer operations team receives thousands of calls every day. Prior to engaging with Expleo’s hyperautomation team, 18% of those calls related to requests for 13 common, repetitive processes, including moving home, adding authorised users, and changing installation appointment dates.

eir sought a new way to interact with customers which would be both cost-effective and time-effective while also improving overall customer and employee satisfaction.

L-R: Brian Chapman, chief information officer, eir; Sinead O’Gorman, managing director, customer operations, eir; and Rebecca Keenan, global head of intelligent automation, Expleo.

Using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and process optimisation techniques, Expleo streamlined the 13 requests identified by eir, enabling customers to manage their requests online, 24/7, without ever having to pick up the phone. Customers who prefer to speak to someone on the phone can still do so.

Using AI and robotics, Expleo’s technology is enabling eir to process more than 10,000 customer requests each month, with about 70% of those requests being fully automated.

Typically, 80% of requests are completed within the same day. The solution relies on the principle of hyperautomation, which sees process-burdened organisations automating at scale across multiple tasks to see significant cost and time benefits.

Freed up time

By helping to greatly reduce the number of calls coming into eir’s contact centre, Expleo’s solution has freed up time for the company’s customer service agents to focus on customer-facing activities that are more complex to resolve and require the management of a trained team member. In doing so, it has helped to reduce the average time it takes for a caller to speak to an agent to below three minutes.

Agents have also been trained by Expleo on the implementation of robotics and are now involved in identifying areas that would benefit from hyperautomation in the future.

In a highly customer-centric industry with high levels of switching between providers, the robotics programme has had a significant impact on eir’s customer satisfaction rating. It went up 22 points in 2022 versus the previous year. Complaints, meanwhile, have decreased by 65%.

Rebecca Keenan, global head of intelligent automation, Expleo, said: “Businesses are seeing huge value not just in automation, but hyperautomation: many are burdened by simple, repetitive tasks when they could be taken care of by robots.

"eir’s digital transformation programme is an excellent example of this and our partnership helps them ensure that as many high-volume but straightforward tasks as possible are being automated. In turn, customer service agents have more time to focus on customer-facing tasks, while also learning new skills in the area of automation.

Digital transformation

“As enterprises continue to embrace digital transformation, the role of hyperautomation will grow, enabling organisations to innovate at speed and excel in customer experience.”

Brian Chapman, eir’s chief information officer, said: “The communication service we provide to our customers is essential. It is our job to ensure the two million people we serve have the communications infrastructure they need to live, work and connect all across Ireland, every single day.

"When they need us that interaction has to be seamless. eir has undergone a huge IT transformation in recent years, implementing new systems to provide best-in-class care journeys for our customers.

"By automating many of our processes we can improve the outcome for our customers and the agents who work with them. We partnered with Expleo to implement a transformational robotics programme. Expleo has been a valuable partner to eir as we work to remove barriers and complexities from our IT services, ensuring that eir is easy to work with and work for.”