Telstra
Telstra gives contact-centre agents two GenAI tools for answers and customer summaries
Telstra piloted two generative AI tools for frontline staff in 2023: Ask Telstra, which answers questions from internal knowledge bases, and One Sentence Summary, which condenses a customer's history. Telstra reports that 90% of agents who used the summary tool saved time and became more effective, and follow-up contact fell by 20%.
Key figures
Copied exactly from the sources. Copy any figure with its citation.
90%
Employees who used One Sentence Summary in the 2023 trials and reported saving time and working more effectively1
20%
Reduction in follow-up contact in the One Sentence Summary trials1
over 80%
Frontline team members in the Ask Telstra pilot who agreed it positively affects customer interactions1
84%
Agents using Ask Telstra who agreed it had a positive impact on customer interactions, per Microsoft's customer story2
What it took
The problem
Telstra is a leading Australian telecommunications and technology company. Its customer service agents work across call centres and retail stores and have to find answers in large internal knowledge bases. They also have to read a customer's recent notes and transactions before they can help. Customers often have to repeat themselves, and agents lose time looking things up.
What they built
Two internal tools for frontline staff. Ask Telstra lets an employee ask a question in a search box and get an AI-written answer drawn from Telstra's internal information. One Sentence Summary turns a customer's recent notes, interactions and transactions into a short overview of their history and status. It appears as a button in the customer-record software.
How they did it
Telstra built both on Microsoft's cloud. Ask Telstra uses Azure OpenAI Service together with Azure AI Search, which finds the relevant internal documents. One Sentence Summary uses a large language model from Azure OpenAI. Neither source names a model version.
Ask Telstra was trialled in mid to late 2023 with about 200 frontline team members. Their feedback shaped the next version, which went to another group in call centres and retail stores. One Sentence Summary was tested in 2023 by a group of agents that Microsoft puts at 100. Telstra said in February 2024 that both tools would reach all contact centre and store teams during 2024.
Results
Telstra reports that 90% of employees who used One Sentence Summary saved time and worked more effectively, and that follow-up contact fell by 20%. For Ask Telstra, Telstra reports that over 80% of the pilot team members agreed the tool positively affects customer interactions. Microsoft's customer story gives 84% for the same question.
All reported figures
| Measure | Figure | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| Employees who used One Sentence Summary in the 2023 trials and reported saving time and working more effectively | 90%1 | |
| Reduction in follow-up contact in the One Sentence Summary trials | 20%1 | |
| Frontline team members in the Ask Telstra pilot who agreed it positively affects customer interactions | over 80%1 | |
| Agents using Ask Telstra who agreed it had a positive impact on customer interactions, per Microsoft's customer story | 84%2 | |
| Frontline team members given Ask Telstra at the start of its pilot, which Telstra dates to late 2023 (Microsoft's story says mid-2023) | 2001 |
Lessons for your project
Start with two narrow tools that remove a specific frustration. One answers staff questions from the knowledge base; the other shows a customer's history in one line so customers need not repeat themselves.
Pilot with a few hundred agents and let their feedback shape the next version before a wider rollout, as Telstra did with Ask Telstra.
Put the tool inside the screen agents already use. One Sentence Summary sits as a button in the customer-record software.
Measure follow-up contact as well as agent opinion. A fall in repeat contacts is closer to a business result than a satisfaction score.
Caveats
- The Microsoft customer story blocked automated access, so it was read from an archived copy (web.archive.org).
- Both sources come from Telstra and its supplier Microsoft. No independent evaluation of the figures was found.
- Telstra does not say how the 90% and 20% figures were measured or how many agents were in the One Sentence Summary trials. Microsoft's story puts the figure at 100 agents testing it.
- Telstra's release says over 80% for Ask Telstra. Microsoft's story gives 84% in its summary but says over 80 percent in its body text, and gives no sample size.
- The sources name Azure OpenAI Service and a large language model from OpenAI's service but no model version, so the model is shown as undisclosed.
- Only the year 2023 is given for the pilots, so the deployed date is the year. The 2024 rollout to all contact centre and store teams was described as planned in the sources, and Microsoft's story says full deployment would not come until early 2025.
Sources
- Telstra scales up AI adoption following promising pilots of generative AI solutions improving customer experience.
Telstra · 2024-02-07 · Press release · telstra.com.au
- Telstra dials in elevated customer service with Azure OpenAI Service
Microsoft · 2024-02-23 · Vendor case study · microsoft.com
Summarized in our own words from the sources above. Spotted an error? See corrections.