WEngage’s innovation machine is running at full speed to develop practical and effective solutions for customers and employees. Like the new ‘WEmail’, an AI-driven application for advanced e-mail processing. CustomerFirst spoke with Nadiem Zaman, Global Business Development Director, and Brecht Audenaert, Lead Innovation Developer, about this application and WEngage’s other innovation projects.
Gen AI innovation for email
WEmail is an ambitious development from WEngage, aiming to increase the quality of customer interactions. The application provides customer advisors with all the tools they need to process e-mail interactions as efficiently as possible: a summary of the conversation, an overview of all relevant data, links to (question-related) content from, for example, FAQs or product manuals. In addition, a suggested response is already provided, generated by a Large Language Model (LLM).
‘Above all, we want to take customer contact to the next level. This tool can take over routine tasks, allowing employees to focus on more complex issues. This should not only increase efficiency, but also make the customer experience more personal and focused,’ explains Nadiem Zaman. Initial customer feedback has been very positive, agrees Zaman. ‘Especially within sectors such as utilities and consumer goods, we see that companies are enthusiastic about the potential of the tool to streamline their processes and increase customer satisfaction.’
Brecht Audenaert, who directs WEmail’s technical development, adds: ‘The unique aspect of our application is the flexibility it offers to customer advisors. With a simple additional instruction, the customer advisor can have a new reply generated. This instruction can, for example, come from sources such as a customer relations management (CRM) system with customer-specific case information, which the LLM does not have access to. This also makes the tool very easy for clients to start using; for smaller firms, a few PDFs with relevant information are often sufficient. For larger organisations, we can integrate with a content API or even go further with a direct integration into their CRM system. The great thing is that this not only reduces the workload for employees, but also increases customer satisfaction’.
Challenges also exist, Audenaert notes. ‘With every technological development, there are challenges. One of the biggest is constantly optimising the underlying AI models and methodologies so that they get better and better at processing and interpreting customer requests. We also need to ensure that implementation runs smoothly across different companies with varying systems.’
Acceleration in AI innovation
Nadiem Zaman has now been working at WEngage for a year and a half, shaping the innovation and globalisation strategy with the team. ‘The WEmail project fits well with our corporate identity and was born out of a desire to encourage innovation within the company. We held (and still hold) weekly sessions within the company, where colleagues from different departments come together to discuss what is going on in the market. Ultimately, this led to the question: How can we make the work for our customer advisors more fun, easier and more efficient? The shift to remote and hybrid working models due to the pandemic presented an opportunity to automate processes.’
'This fundamentally changes the work: less repetitive and more focused on improving the quality of customer interactions'
Audenaert explains how WEmail fits into this bigger picture of innovation strategy. “Last year, we started a cooperation with the University of Ghent, specifically with the Data Science for Business department led by Professor Dirk Van den Poel. Here, two MaNaMa students come and carry out their thesis project with us every year; they thus get the chance to actively co-develop one of our projects. This cooperation has now led to successful results two years in a row. Last year, for instance, we focused on an application to predict volumes with Machine Learning models. This year, everything has gained momentum, partly thanks to advances in generative AI such as Large Language Models, these are going to fundamentally reshape our industry.’
Change in customer service
For customer advisors, this means a fundamental change in their work, Zaman argues. ‘It means they no longer have to answer e-mails repetitively. Where previously they might have had to process five to 10 emails an hour, they now have time to check and adjust the generated responses. This fundamentally changes their work: less repetitive and much more focused on improving the quality of interactions.’ Audenaert adds: ‘The test results show a 20-25% reduction in average handling time, depending on the complexity of the e-mails. For simpler interactions, such as a general information request, we even see savings of 40% and more.‘
The work on WEmail is far from complete and Zaman is looking to the future. ‘We continue to develop the tool further and are now testing it with some major clients. The goal is to roll out the tool on a wider scale and keep innovating, not only for emails, but also for other customer contact channels. We are far from finished!
Continuous improvement by WEngage AI
Zaman emphasises the positive impact of this technology. ‘The system has been running for a while and we can now really see the impact it is having. It is not only an improvement for customers, but also for the customer advisors. It helps them excel in their work, which not only improves quality but also makes the work more enjoyable.’
With WEmail, WEngage shows that it is not only committed to technological efficiency and innovation, but also to improving both the customer and employee experience.
Smiling, Zaman responds when asked about future plans: ‘What else is on our roadmap? We have exciting projects in the pipeline! We are working on a language-agnostic system for all written interactions (with or without WEmail), so that each customer expert can answer interactions in their own language. Those answers are then translated back into the language of the end customer. And that’s not all; we are also working on automatic quality monitoring using LLMs. The industry is changing rapidly and WEngage is helping to set the course!’