At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies’ customer contact centers were overwhelmed due to shutdowns and resource constraints. Working with Microsoft, John Hancock, a trusted source for investing, insurance, retirement, and financial advice, implemented Azure Bot Framework SDK, Azure Bot Service, and Azure Cognitive Service for Language to provide support for common customer issues and questions. This allowed call center representatives to focus their efforts and expertise on the most complex cases, resulting in better customer experiences, reduced wait times, and manageable workloads.
“The call reduction due to chatbot innovation equates to impressive cost savings we’ve been able to reinvest in our customer contact centers and that support the customer experience.”
Tracy Kelly, AVP, Contact Center and LTC Operations, John Hancock
Call centers see spike in traffic
For over 160 years, John Hancock—the US arm of the global financial services provider Manulife—has been a trusted resource for investing, insurance, retirement, or financial advice. “One of our mantras at John Hancock is: Decisions made easier, lives made better,” says Sheridan Folger, Manager of Digital Services and Lead Product Owner of Cognitive AI team at John Hancock. “Helping customers make the right decisions involves providing them with accurate and relevant information, guiding them through the decision-making process, and addressing their concerns or questions.”
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, John Hancock’s customer contact centers—like other customer contact centers around the world—saw a spike in traffic and the company sought ways to ensure their customers continued to get the answers they needed, when they needed them.
“In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected all types of contact center operations,” says Prince Perapadan, Director Enterprise IT Lead–AI Cognitive Chatbot Platform owner at John Hancock. “At John Hancock, we were evaluating how we could activate our customer service teams in life insurance and long-term care so we could together manage high volumes of inquiries and reduce wait times.”
With its mission to give customers the confidence to make the right decisions, John Hancock dedicated itself to adopting a sustainable solution—for its customers and its call center representatives. “To reduce wait times and support our call center teams, our Enterprise Operations and IT Leadership team formed a working group tasked with implementing an AI chatbot assistant in our contact centers,” says Perapadan. “The goal of the project was to set up chatbots that could handle general inquiries, thus moderating the total number of message center, and phone inquiries so our agents could focus on more complex issues while upskilling in AI.”
Adopting a complementary AI solution
Using Azure Bot Service, the company worked with Microsoft to engineer a bot, hosted on customer-facing websites, that could offer support for routine questions and processes, thereby freeing up much needed capacity for the call center representatives. “The process for choosing Microsoft to work on an AI solution was due to Microsoft's expertise in AI,” says Folger. “Plus, Microsoft’s cloud platform met our organization's specific needs and requirements.”
This comprehensive solution includes Azure Bot Framework SDK, Azure Bot Service, and Azure Cognitive Service for Language—all AI tools that can be used to develop chatbot/virtual assistant solutions. “We chose these solutions because of their ability to integrate with our existing technology infrastructure and provide us a scalable and customizable solution for our customer service needs,” says Folger.
The model for these initial successes was replicated across multiple lines-of-business using bots based on the Azure Bot Framework SDK to offer tailored support for teams. These bots complemented teams’ efforts in scenarios such as secure self-serve password resets and case escalations to the call center. Designing supportive solutions that utilized the power of AI to build conversational experiences through Azure Bot Service meant John Hancock could better support call center teams and improve the customer experience.
“Our Microsoft Azure Bot platform and Cognitive Services journey has been quite amazing,” says Perapadan. “This partnership has enabled us to architect and build into production, a rapid-responding, seamless, intelligent AI-powered virtual assistant. Our virtual assistants support both our customers and our contact centers, providing true 24/7 assistance, transforming our digital offerings along with our customers’ digital experience.”
“Introducing conversational AI via a virtual assistant has helped us take a bold step forward in our digitization efforts and our goal of providing outstanding customer experiences,” says Folger. “The Azure Bot Framework SDK has helped us provide our customers with the ability to perform self-service options 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. With the virtual assistant’s ability to answer inquiries, perform tasks, and provide forms, day, or night we have reduced wait times and increased customer options.”
An additional benefit of the solution is that the customer service team is being upskilled as low-code AI developers to ensure the continued success of the project. “Training our customer service representatives as low-code developers gives them the necessary knowledge and skills, tools, and resources to effectively assist customers. We’re creating the jobs of the future,” says Perapadan.
“Our virtual assistant project has enabled our customer service representatives to focus on the more complex scenarios they face daily,” says Folger. “Creating an intelligent hand-off from our virtual assistant to our customer service representatives via live chat has helped us solve customer inquiries faster, further reduced average handle times, and call wait times for clients, and created an overall seamless, positive customer experience.”
Everybody wins
“The virtual assistants have allowed us to deflect calls from the contact center enabling our customer service associates to focus their efforts on value added conversations,” says Tracy Kelly, AVP, Contact Center and LTC Operations at John Hancock. “The call reduction due to chatbot innovation allows us to reinvest in our customer contact centers and better support the customer experience.”
Folger reports these investments include expanding customer support channels and implementing more personalized solutions to assist customers more quickly and develop new services. “Our AI chatbot solutions have resulted in better customer experiences by providing immediate and accurate responses, reducing wait times, and freeing up agents to focus on more complex issues,” says Folger. “In addition, they have enabled us to handle an even larger volume of inquiries.” Now, the company has the solution it needs to support its customers and employees, and everyone stands to benefit.
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