Royal Mail has cut e-mail
enquiries to its corporate and consumer websites by half using
neural network-based technology to deliver better online answers to
its 4.5 million monthly visitors.
The system, 'Ask Sarah', uses software from Cambridge-based
Transversal. It integrates with
Royal Mail's growing range of online services such as parcel
tracking, redirection and redelivery. If a customer types a parcel
tracking number into Sarah it instantly brings up details of
current delivery status.
Sarah has cut some queries by 96% and slashed calls to the
contact centre, overall halving the number of queries that require
human intervention. This has freed staff to answer more complex
queries and increased job satisfaction, said a Royal Mail
spokesman.
Visitors to the Royal Mail website increased by 1 million to 4.5
million a month between 2007 and 2008. They have been attracted by
a growing number of network-enabled services such as online
postage, parcel tracking, redirections and redeliveries.
Daily analysis of on-site behaviours showed that customers were
asking Sarah a lot of questions about the delivery status of
parcels. Ask Sarah now recognises parcel tracking reference numbers
and links automatically to Royal Mail's parcel tracking system,
showing customers current delivery status of the item.
Stephen Mitchell, Royal Mail's digital operations manager, said,
"We've seen customer satisfaction rise and inbound enquiries drop
dramatically since introducing Sarah. We believe this trend will
only continue."
The project began this year and launched in June. Ask Sarah has
two separate knowledge-bases, one for consumers, the other for
corporate issues. Royal Mail captured the language and procedures
of its own contact centre advisors in Sarah to provide "real world"
interactions between Sarah and customers.
Royal Mail analyses customer searches daily, and uses questions
that don't have a ready answer to direct development of new
content.