Bosch Service Solutions – 2023 Digital Award Winner, Contact-to-Resolution

How has Bosch used artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to transform the contact center experience? Irfan Ali, director of Digital, Automation and Innovation at Bosch Service Solutions, talks with David Ketchin, managing director for The Hackett Group in Europe, about the dramatic results they’ve achieved. Bosch received a Digital Award from The Hackett Group in 2023 for their work.

Welcome to The Hackett Group’s “Business Excelleration^® Podcast,” where week after week we hear from AI strategy consulting experts on how to avoid obstacles, manage detours and celebrate milestones on the journey to world-class performance. This episode is hosted by managing director of The Hackett Group across Europe, David Ketchin. David is joined by Irfan Ali, director of Digital Automation at Bosch Service Solutions.

To begin, David explains how The Hackett Group invites their clients every year to share their success stories with digital implementations. These concepts and ideas are more complex, but the benefits secured are more impressive. The entries received are assessed by a panel of judges, and they’re looking for evidence of proven benefits, implementation at scale and innovation. The Bosch Service Solutions implementation covers all key points at significant levels.

First, Irfan introduces Bosch Service Solutions as the people you would call if involved in an accident, stuck in an elevator or had issues with home appliances. Bosch Service Solutions is in the business of customer experience. This project is set apart because they have superior customer experience and have used digital transformation to set it apart even more. They have had 12 million automation minutes in a period of five years. Their solution was set into four parts. First, they looked at all the tasks in the system and evaluated if it qualified for the three R’s: repetitive, rule based and routine in nature, and then they quickly automated them. They also looked at text using artificial intelligence (AI) based models. AI would read and understand the intent of the emails and extract key information. They also implemented voicebots to understand and answer questions from callers after hours. If the voicebots were not able to answer, then it generates a ticket with the transcript of the call so the customer doesn’t have to repeat themselves. Then, when available, a team member can efficiently answer the question of the caller or schedule an appointment with a technician. They are constantly improvising and building upon to make the customer experience even better.

Bosch Service Solutions started this project keeping key performance indicators in mind since it drives behavior. Their goal was to help the client, and they were aware of the technology we wanted to use. They had to step back and focus on the whole picture. They had a blueprint for how the contact center should look, and they could keep adding as they had more ideas. Bosch Service Solutions got the foundation of operations right and ensured they had the right systems in place. They build client and organizational trust, along with the implementation of AI solutions, to handle queries and build new services. They have increased skills and benefits by keeping their eyes on the long term and executing on the short term.

Next, Irfan discusses the biggest hurdles for the project. The first was technology in that humans are very complex and throw in a lot of challenges. They had to work through how to communicate to the stakeholders, how to ensure you’re really bringing the right user experience to remove friction with AI, and how to bring clients on board in your organization to accept and not resist the new technology. The benefits of the digital contact center, or DCC, is with the automation minutes. There is higher efficiency and lower processing time. They use voicebots to generate revenue after office hours and create office appointments to generate even more revenue. The future plans for Bosch Service Solutions include different versions of the DCC and how to use calls in generative AI in the contact center. They want to leverage data to build a customized model to address the needs of the client and integrate analytics into the customer experience.

Time stamps:

0:54 – Welcome to this episode hosted by David Ketchin.

2:50 – Introduction of Bosch Service Solutions.

4:30 – What sets this project apart?

9:34 – In navigating this project, was there a structured plan or development as you go?

12:20 – Biggest hurdles for this project.

14:16 – Benefits of the digital contact center or DCC.

16:25 – Future plans specifically with Gen AI.