Teams and AI chatbots work together to create a streamlined digital helpdesk by leveraging query data

Typically, for a chatbot to work, it needs to organize the intent of the questions by categorizing them, and then it needs to prepare the answers to create FAQ data. A lot of uptime and advanced know-how is needed and takes time to implement. However, to reduce the help desk's workload, implementation needed to happen as soon as possible, but because help desk inquiries increased during the COVID-19 global pandemic, there were time constraints to building the chatbot.

Under these circumstances, the Business Support Department accepted PKSHA's proposal to provide support services for FAQ creation. Mr. Kazushi Otsuki of PKSHA Workplace Co, Ltd, which provides the PKSHA Chatbot, looks back at that time as follows.

"PKSHA Workplace provides a service that uses AI to generate sets of questions and answers from the customers' original email, chat inquiry information, and existing manuals. By doing this, it can help create highly accurate FAQs and significantly reduce previous preparation costs. When we implemented the system for NTT East, we were able to build it in a short period of time by automatically grouping and de-duplicating similar QA based on tens of thousands of past requests," says Otsuki.

Thus, the Business Support Department started using PKSHA Chatbot in December 2020.

Hybrid support through Teams and AI chatbot integration

The web version of the PKSHA Chatbot was placed on the company's internal portal, allowing for chat requests. However, there was still room for improvement as a help desk operation.

"Whenever we want to review a request while we are out of the office, we need to log into the in-house system. It was still not an efficient operation," says Tsukamoto.

Meanwhile, the global pandemic led to the active use of Microsoft Teams as a communication platform at NTT East. Business chats and online meetings, as well as internal phone calls, switched to Teams calls.

"Surprisingly, Teams calls are being used by NTT East. It is very convenient to receive incoming calls to the office on our smartphone, even when we are out of the office or working remotely. It is not only used internally; we also offer it to our customers as one of our telecommuting solutions," said Tsukamoto.

As these environments and tools evolved, the Business Support Department integrated Teams and the PKSHA Chatbot in November 2021. By loading the PKSHA Chatbot on Teams, which we are familiar with in our daily work, we have evolved to a more convenient and user-friendly way to respond to requests. PKSHA Chatbot is currently being used as PKSHA AI Helpdesk for Teams, extending its helpdesk functionality. It also has a staffed response function, which not only allows questions to be asked directly from Teams chats but can also switch to a human response for questions that cannot be answered by the AI chatbot.

The implementation of a third-party application on the company's Microsoft Teams instance was carefully considered to meet the company’s strict security standards.

Efficiency improvements with fewer people and higher quality of responses

We have an AI chatbot that answers simple questions in Teams and seamlessly switches to an operator for more complex questions. How has this hybrid helpdesk approach changed the Business Support Department? Orikasa, Takahashi, and Tsukamoto share their responses.

"We have seen an increase in the chatbot utilization rate. In the past, most calls were made by phone, with chatbots around 10 percent of calls, but that number has grown to 35 percent. In addition to the fact that they are able to answer the phone without fail, as opposed to a phone call that is difficult to get through, I think the peace of mind that comes with knowing that 'in case of an emergency, they will switch to a manned service' is also a great benefit. The reduction in response time and automation of inquiry response has resulted in a reduction of about three man hours of operation," says Orikasa.

"When the operator takes over the response, we can share the material visually on Teams, so we feel that we can give a clearer answer than before. Teams also lets us see other people's interactions, so we can follow up on their responses. We are now able to respond to inquiries as a team rather than alone," says Takahashi.

"When we have complicated explanations, there are many cases where the message is not understood, even though it was delivered over the phone. But with Teams, we can go back and review past conversations, so there is less chance of miscommunication. We believe that the ability to review history will lead to knowledge sharing, and by analyzing the content of each individual's responses, we will be able to instruct and train operators more effectively," says Tsukamoto.  .

By integrating PKSHA's chatbot with Teams, the Business Support Department not only increased the chatbot utilization rate, but also improved the quality of human responses. Mr. Orikasa describes the significance of the project as follows.

"Improving the speed and quality of responses is directly related to improving NTT East's customer service. We are now able to successfully play the role of a chatbot that responds instantly and the role of a person who answers complex questions," says Orikasa.

Teams as a Platform for DX Promotion

Digital experience promotion is not something that can be achieved overnight, and the implementation of the PKSHA Chatbot in the Business Support Department has also been steadily effective over time. Beginning with trials, various functions were implemented step-by-step, and all members of the team worked, one by one, to build a track record of success, making sure to proceed with a sense of conviction.

Manami Isogai, in charge of SE Promotion in the Design Configuration Support & Planning Group within the Business Support Department of the Business Innovation Headquarters, NTT East, is enthusiastic about further improving service quality in the future.

"The challenge now is how much we can reduce the time between the chatbot's first response and the manned, full-fledged response. I believe that the accumulated data will become a treasure for stepping up our efforts, so we will continue the cycle of analysis and improvement," says Isogai.

Pioneering efforts are also being made to make use of the data collected.

"We recently conducted a PoC on automatic FAQ generation by AI. This is an attempt to have AI analyze the logs that are stored daily and do FAQ creation. Once this creates a pattern, we will be able to greatly reduce the amount of time spent on FAQ creation, and people will be able to focus more on answering customer questions," says Orikasa.

"We believe that by digging deeper into the response data, we can gain insight into the level of understanding of the products in each area, as well as effective ways to explain new services as they are introduced. We will continue to support the business digital experience with the PKSHA Chatbot as a starting point," says Otsuki.

Lastly, Orikasa offered the following outlook on promoting digital experience in the Business Support Department.

"We were also consulted by the department that manages other commercial products within the company about the PKSHA Chatbot that can be used by Teams. Ideally, we would like to have a single point of contact and be able to make requests to all departments, so we plan to expand horizontally. The project this time was an opportunity to expand the capabilities of the operational digital experience by combining Teams with third-party products. We are currently experimenting with low-code development using the Power Platform to enable project progress management in Teams, and working to further improve the quality of customer support and digital-experience staff development. We want to use Teams as a platform to promote the business digital experience," says Orikasa.

Starting with adapting the chatbots to the internal help desk, the Business Support Department of NTT East Business Innovation Headquarter has implemented a series of Business digital experience initiatives. This experience will be shared throughout Japan to support the continued growth of our customers and build a prosperous society.

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