CHALLENGE

Streamlining common queries and dunning processes

Hrvatski Telekom (HT) is the leading telecommunications company in Croatia. They sell telco and ICT products and services to customers and businesses across the country. One of the major issues they faced was collecting debts from end-customers who were late paying their balances. They were using an automated recording over a voice call to inform customers that their account would be suspended but the majority of users would ignore the call.  

Additionally, with their business customers, two types of requests that were most common and contributed to the high number of calls to their contact center:

1. Technical support for fiscal register service:

Businesses were often looking for technical support with their POS machines, leading to long wait times to speak with an agent. Additionally, during the busy summer months in Croatia, businesses are often looking to activate additional machines and deactivate them when the tourist season ends, which can become a lengthy process for both them and HT agents. 

2. Dunning and troubleshooting

Any inquiries around viewing payments due, processing payments, and technical difficulties around bills and e-bills tend to clog the customer service telephone line. Most of these inquiries are repetitive and can be quick to resolve – but reaching a busy agent in a call center takes time.

To address these common requests from business clients, HT needed to find a way to automate responses and offload this work from their customer support agents so they can commit more time to other complicated tasks. At the same time, they needed to find a more effective way to engage with customers who have outstanding balances and prompt them to complete their payments. 

To do this, they needed a conversational experience platform that could offer a full-rounded communication solution from chatbots and cloud communication services, to a customer data and engagement solution.  

AI-powered chatbot solutions and automated messaging to make common queries more efficient

Thankfully, HT did not need to look far for a solution provider as they were already in a long-standing partnership with Infobip.  

• Decreasing the number of calls to the HT call center 
• Improving the satisfaction of their business clients 
• Improving the rate at which customers paid their bills 

1. WhatsApp chatbots for business clients

The first solution consisted of two chatbots that could resolve the repetitive issues around payments and fiscal registers. Infobip’s chatbot building platform, Answers, allowed HT to create chatbots that could recognize user intent and provide quick resolution to queries through its Natural Language Understanding (NLU) engine.  

The chatbots were deployed over a single channel, WhatsApp, as it is popular among users in Croatia, allowing HT to offer convenient and fast service to their clients.  

The first chatbot resolved queries around technical issues for fiscal registers:  

Customers could use the self-service chatbot to get instructions on how to activate and deactivate POS machines, add or update products, and upload certifications. The chatbot would push all data from that conversation to the customer data platform, People CDP, to collect and store important information like permanent and temporary deactivation. Moments, Infobip’s customer engagement platform, is used to trigger an email with the deactivation or activation form the customer requested over the chatbot.

Now, customers have 24/7 technical support for POS machines without the lengthy call queue and are only transferred to speak with an agent if necessary. 

The second chatbot helps customers with payment and troubleshooting requests:

Customers can request to view outstanding balances and monthly bills, activate e-billing, and get assistance with troubleshooting payment issues over the WhatsApp chatbot. The customer simply provides the necessary authentication information, which is verified via API with HT’s billing system, and the chatbot provides a PDF response with the desired information. If customers have requested to receive e-bills, an email confirmation is triggered over Moments to ensure a smooth and reassuring experience for customers.  

For technical issues, customers can initiate a reboot over the chatbot. After verification passes and the connection has been checked, the chatbot returns the result of the troubleshooting action. In the case that it is not successful, the customer is swiftly redirected to speak with an agent over Infobip’s cloud contact center, where the agent is able to access the chatbot conversation for context. 

2. Automated dunning messages on Viber and SMS

To improve the responsiveness of their customers and the rate at which end users paid their bills, HT decided to leverage Viber and SMS messaging to reach customers directly. 

They began automating messages on these popular channels to improve their visibility and reduce the chance of their dunning efforts going unanswered. By proactively reaching out to customers about overdue payments, they aimed to lower the number of unpaid balances and reduce the number of customers calling asking for their accounts to be reactivated. 

At the start of this process, HT used Infobip’s Professional Services to help design and build the chatbot. But after some time and high-quality education around Infobip products, they were ready to develop chatbots themselves. This was critical to them because as partners, HT better understands how their own clients can best use Infobip products that are offered in their telco packages. 

Significant increase in issue resolution and completed bill payments

Overall, HT saw a decrease in the number of calls to their call center, alleviating the repetitive workload on their support agents.  

When it comes to their business clients, more than half of all technical queries for fiscal registers are resolved through the chatbot without an agent getting involved and there was a significant increase in issue resolution for payments and technical support.  

The WhatsApp chatbots have allowed HT to resolve technical issues which are often the most common problems telcos see reported to their customer service departments.  

Their proactive dunning messages on Viber and SMS have also seen great results, with 57% of customers who received these automated messages paying their bills within five days. With such success on Viber, HT decided to also leverage the channel for promotional campaigns like for special offers or to promote gamified experiences on their mobile app. 

HT has found successful support solutions for themselves through Infobip’s conversational experience platform while at the same time offering high-value products and services to their clients through this partnership.