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Sitel is a global company that offers end-to-end CX solutions across multiple channels. With the goal of empowering brands to build stronger relationships with their customers, they partnered with Aivo. And today they are the winners of the Outstanding Partner category in the Aivo Awards 2022.
André Carlini, Brazil Channel Partnership & Alliances Manager at Aivo, spoke with Lúcia Andrade, Global SME Director at Sitel, about the partnership with Aivo, their success stories and the digital transformation in terms of CX for 2023.
The Partnership with Aivo, a Success Story
Tell us a bit about Sitel, what does it specialize in?
Sitel is a global customer experience company that serves consumers across multiple channels. It helps in the consumer process, from human service to automation to digital service across all these channels. So, both through voice and chat channels, WhatsApp and several more, wherever the consumer is, Sitel will be serving in the best possible way, bringing an interesting experience, looking for a better process for that consumer.
How did this partnership with Aivo happen, and what value did you find in this partnership for customers?
The partnership with Aivo started almost 5 years ago. We started talking to Aivo, to understand what the technology was like. As Aivo has its own AI, we did several tests, understood what the consumer experience would be like using this platform and came up with a very interesting partnership. We use Aivo's technology with this AI, and we put our effort behind it. We build from the strategy, the persona, the tone of voice, create the content and do the implementation.
Aivo's platform is super user-friendly, so we can do this implementation work with our UX Writers. We also monitor the results and keep the bot updated and training. Because it is usually thought that because they have artificial intelligence, they don't need to do any training afterwards. Customers usually have no idea what it takes to keep a chatbot running well. So, we do this maintenance work to provide the best results and all this in partnership with Aivo. When we started, it was a partnership that we had done just for Brazil. Then, it ended up going to a larger proportion where Aivo today is a global partner of Sitel and serves several other countries. So, great, it turned out that we grew together.
What success story do you think we have had together?
We have several very good projects with Aivo, but if I have to highlight one of them, it would be our Havaianas project. The Havaianas chatbot, which started as a chatbot only for Brazil and today we have it in 6 languages and serving 32 countries.
We have customers in LATAM, United States, EMEAR, and we built a persona in Sitel which is Iana. We made an adaptation of this character to these other languages, adapting the tone of voice for the bot, but keeping the identity we created for Iana. And we have great results with this project, we reached a 98% understanding rate, which is very high. I want to say that this work of maintenance, training, and updating of Iana, is very well done. We work every day so that it is always updated with launching content, integration with campaigns. This result is great and we have about 90% retention. Which means that only 10% we transfer to human support and 90% we manage to solve with Iana itself. We started with Aivo working together on this opportunity, and it ended up becoming a global case.
Evolution towards 2023: Artificial Intelligence, Cobots and the Metaverse
How do you see communication between people and companies in the coming years, starting from the digital transformation and the challenges for customer service?
I see that today, especially after the pandemic, most people do home office, even in companies that did not have this culture. So automatically everyone had to go digital. I see that today the company's own customer service to its employees ends up being digital, and there are technologies that help in this service to employees.
The bot is one of them, even in Sitel we use the chatbot for customers, employees and candidates. So, this provides excellent support for human resources, which can be compatible with other areas, such as IT. So, of all the questions that people would ask in the HR room or go to IT for help, we manage to solve most of them with the answers within the bot, and help this employee relationship with the company. Making it closer, also providing a more human tone of voice according to the company's profile.
And currently, what is your innovation strategy within Sitel? What technologies are you betting on?
We are betting on the evolution of artificial intelligence. Today we are still at a time when it needs a human effort behind. It will always be necessary because we want to personalize this content, we want to be in control, but I think there will be a big evolution in the next year in terms of maintaining this artificial intelligence.
We are also betting on the cobot (collaborative bot), because it is something that helps a lot in this part of the telephone service. We make it so that, instead of the person having to use the traditional ARU (audible telephone unit), they can say directly what they want, and we direct them directly to their intention.
This makes the service much easier, reduces the HT, instead of staying in an IVR waiting, arriving at the destination where they expect to be served, they can directly find the result they expect. We bet a lot on the cobot. It has been a product that we sell a lot in Europe, and we believe that, in Brazil, next year there can also be a lot of opportunities.
What are the main trends you see for 2023, when we talk about technology and customer experience? Or what priority should companies focus on in the coming years?
For 2023, one of our bets, and one that we have been having a lot of conversations about, is the metaverse. In 2022, we did a lot of research, we talked a lot about how the metaverse can be integrated with our products. How can we act as a customer experience company in this environment? We also see a lot of digital humans, where avatars are already transforming into something more human, more realistic.
2D was left behind a long time ago, we moved to 3D and today they are digital humans. So, it's something that connects well with the metaverse and makes a lot of sense for us, as we work building personas, bringing this identity to brands and service in these channels. In 2023, I think the question of the metaverse and digital humans is coming very strongly.
Related article: Conversational AI over video: the first step towards the metaverse
Want to become an Aivo partner?
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