Enhancing Customer Experience Through Voice Virtual Assistants: A Case Study by Principal Financial Group
Transforming Customer Experience: Principal Financial Group’s Journey with AWS and Genesys
In today’s fast-paced digital environment, enhancing customer experience is paramount for any financial services company. This post, co-written by Mulay Ahmed and Ruby Donald, Assistant Directors of Engineering at Principal Financial Group, delves into how Principal used cutting-edge technology to modernize their customer call experience, ensuring more personalized interactions.
About Principal Financial Group
Principal Financial Group® is a leading global financial services company dedicated to helping individuals, businesses, and institutions achieve their long-term financial goals. With extensive US contact centers managing millions of annual customer calls, Principal sought to improve and modernize their customer call experience.
The Challenge
Faced with the need for a more personalized and seamless customer interaction, Principal embraced a cloud-first strategy leveraging their robust AWS Cloud infrastructure. The main objectives were to:
- Understand customer intents through natural language, transitioning away from traditional touch-tone systems.
- Enhance self-service capabilities for customers.
- Route calls accurately based on specific business rules.
- Equip engagement center agents with contextual data for better service.
The Solution: Voice Virtual Assistant (VA)
To address these challenges, Principal developed a voice Virtual Assistant (VA) using an Amazon Lex bot. This innovative solution allows customers to engage in self-service transactions or be routed to specific call center queues based on their expressed intents.
But building the VA was just the start. Continuous monitoring of its health and performance became crucial to enhancing its capabilities. By focusing on reducing fallback intent rates and improving functional intent fulfillment rates, Principal aimed to elevate the overall customer experience.
Insights Through Reporting and Analytics
In tandem with the VA, Principal recognized the importance of a robust reporting and analytics system. They implemented an integrated voice VA reporting solution using an Amazon QuickSight dashboard, enabling them to derive actionable insights from customer interactions.
Key Components of the Reporting Solution:
The reporting solution was designed to capture critical performance metrics, including:
- Customer interactions and VA performance.
- Target metrics and intent fulfillment rates.
Data sources included:
- Genesys Cloud interactions.
- Business-specific data such as product and call center operations.
- API responses and metrics.
Workflow Overview
The solution’s workflow involved a series of interconnected AWS services:
- Customers interact with Genesys Cloud.
- An AWS Lambda function is called for routing.
- The Amazon Lex V2 bot processes customer intents.
- Fulfillment functions execute the required logic.
- Conversation logs are sent to Amazon CloudWatch for operational monitoring.
- Interaction reports are generated and stored in Amazon S3.
This workflow not only streamlines customer interactions but also allows for data-driven insights that facilitate continuous improvement.
Design Considerations
Several key design considerations guided the implementation of the VA solution:
- Cost Optimization: Utilization of Amazon S3 Bucket Keys to manage costs effectively.
- Data Encryption: Ensuring data security both at rest and in transit.
- Integration with Genesys Cloud: Achieving seamless connectivity through AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).
- Logging and Monitoring: Utilizing CloudWatch for proactive resource management.
- Data Privacy: Adhering to compliance and protection requirements for personal data.
Visualizing Success: The QuickSight Dashboard
With the new reporting and analytics system in place, Principal can monitor and visualize the performance of the VA effectively. The QuickSight dashboard consolidates data from multiple sources, enabling Principal to identify improvement areas and enhance customer experience further.
Conclusion
Through this innovative approach, Principal Financial Group successfully integrated advanced technologies to streamline their customer engagement process, resulting in reduced call times, increased agent productivity, and improved customer service.
Looking ahead, Principal is committed to enhancing this solution foundation and aims to automate the deployment and testing of new Amazon Lex bot versions in their upcoming developments.
For more insights into Principal’s journey and how they are transforming their customer experience, stay tuned for our next post.
About the Authors
Mulay Ahmed serves as an Assistant Director of Engineering at Principal, specializing in architecting complex enterprise-grade solutions on AWS Cloud.
Ruby Donald is also an Assistant Director of Engineering at Principal, leading the Enterprise Virtual Assistants Engineering Team and boasting extensive experience in delivering software at enterprise scale.
Disclaimer: This communication serves an educational purpose and does not constitute a recommendation. AWS and Amazon are not affiliates of Principal Financial Group.