Mitel Enhances Customer Experience with Engaging Communication Solutions

“When discussing artificial intelligence, customer support centers, and user experiences, I believe that’s the most compelling scenario to demonstrate return on investment,” remarked Luiz Domingos. Each second an agent saves while documenting a call’s outcome, and each minute spared in data collection about the customer, translates into significant value.

Domingos serves as the Chief Technology Officer at Mitel, a Canadian communications company with a history spanning five decades. Prior to joining Mitel after its acquisition of Unify last year, he managed the Unify communications software and services segment at Atos. We previously had a conversation with Mitel’s Chief Marketing Officer, Eric Hanson, who provided us insights into the company’s current goal of delivering tailored communication solutions across various channels for complex enterprises.

Mitel’s offerings go beyond a standalone package; they also integrate with other communication platforms. For instance, a recent collaboration with Zoom was announced. “Our solutions are highly integrated,” Domingos stated, “and we are focused on developing applications and solutions that create what we define as a hybrid solution. Essentially, we’re linking Zoom with the more traditional unified communications systems that Mitel provides, as our clients have invested significantly in those infrastructures and are content with them. They aren’t seeking to switch to a pure Zoom solution. We’ve partnered to establish a common client application that will operate within Zoom Workplace. In this arrangement, calls will be managed through a Zoom client that is also linked to our PBX system.”

The concept of “unified communications” is critical here, as it amalgamates a business’s channels for engaging with customers and employees. While UC is often regarded as a business and marketing term, at its core, it provides the technological foundation necessary for an enhanced customer experience.

Upon our inquiry about AI’s involvement, he pointed us toward Domingos for further insights.

Mitel’s Path in AI

“We have been actively engaged in this area,” Domingos noted. “At Mitel, we are implementing what we refer to as ‘virtual agents.’” These agents involve a combination of AI assistants (supporting customers) and AI copilots (aiding representatives). “They handle some calls, gather information, and resolve inquiries without needing a live agent,” Domingos elaborated.

This initiative has been in progress since 2019 with the introduction of Google CCAI [Contact Center AI], which initially presented some usability challenges and required extensive programming. However, with the advent of generative AI, Domingos mentioned, things have dramatically changed. “It’s much easier to have an agent acting as a partner for the representative throughout every call and the engagement process, enabling the assistant to address straightforward cases or expedite resolutions.”

Mitel’s current virtual agent offering, named Talkative, manages the initial customer interaction in the contact center. “Talkative is embedded in our products now. It functions as a front-end interface for contact center calls,” Domingos stated. “It’s omnichannel, accommodating not just voice but also other conversational platforms like chat.” This solution delivers responses for both chatbot and speechbot applications. Contact centers find it advantageous, as it allows human agents to concentrate on more specialized tasks, according to Domingos.

Talkative in Action: Healthspan

Healthspan, a vendor in the U.K. specializing in longevity solutions, plays a key role in promoting health during the aging process. A significant segment of its offerings involves vitamins, minerals, and dietary supplements. We connected with Rob King, IT and facilities manager at Healthspan’s Guernsey headquarters, one of the U.K. Channel Islands. Already a user of Mitel’s MiVoice Business suite—which encompasses voice, messaging, mobile communication, and conferencing abilities—Healthspan sought to integrate a virtual agent to enhance its contact center performance.

“Our customer service center is vital to our business,” King shared. “With 55 agents located in Gosport, the south coast of England, our operation is consistently busy. We have a team dedicated to handling sales orders by phone, while customer service is another critical area—we pride ourselves on providing excellent customer service, which means offering multiple channels for customer interaction.”

The organization transitioned from a voice-only inbound contact center to one that now incorporates Talkative. “Talkative allows us to facilitate live chat on our website,” King explained. Their human agents were already engaged in a Mitel environment managing voice inquiries. “Integrating Talkative into our Mitel platform enables us to provide live chat and AI capabilities on our site,” he added. “A chat icon allows customers to initiate live conversations with our team. These chats integrate into our Mitel system, which also handles voice calls.”

The chatbot serves three purposes. “It lets customers initiate live chats with contact center agents, check order statuses using their order numbers, and, most excitingly, it now includes AI capabilities. This functionality autonomously retrieves answers from a controlled database, providing information to customers effectively. For instance, we offer over 300 products and if a customer inquires about solutions for joint issues, it swiftly searches our prepared resource database for an appropriate response.”

The ChatGPT technology is utilized in the background, but responses originate from Healthspan’s knowledge reservoir. The advantage? “It has significantly reduced repetitive inquiries that typically occupy agent time, allowing them to focus on direct voice calls.”

In just the first month of operation, Talkative remarkably resolved 90% of product inquiries, specifically through a chatbot dubbed Product Professor. “That’s the name we internally coined for our chatbot. We ensure customers are informed at the end of their interaction that they’re receiving AI-generated replies,” King clarified.

Explore further: Oracle’s ambition to automate the entire customer service lifecycle

Addressing Knowledge Base Challenges

Employing AI virtual agents to streamline contact center interactions can lead to unwanted outcomes if the AI lacks a solid, comprehensive, and current knowledge base. We all know that without proper information, AI might fabricate responses.

Mitel encountered this in its operations. “We developed an assistance application that gathers insights from our offerings,” Domingos explained. “Now, instead of contacting support or submitting tickets, our service teams or partners frequently rely on the chatbot to find answers they need. We continue to enhance its capabilities; we’re currently nine months post-launch.”

Mitel aims to transfer that experience to its clients. “When establishing a contact center, our goal is to implement the [AI-driven] chatbot and provide training options for our customers. We invite them to share their data for training purposes. If customers prefer, we also offer a toolkit that allows them to conduct the training themselves.”

As a provider of health-related products, Healthspan assumes responsibility for maintaining its own knowledge base. “Our regulatory team, directly employed by Healthspan, compiles the entire knowledge base,” King mentioned. “Given that we deal in supplements and vitamins, regulatory compliance defines what information we can share. Thus, we maintain an internal team that continually verifies the accuracy and relevance of the information before it goes live. The database remains entirely under Healthspan’s control, so the AI accesses specific URLs from our website; it does not expand its search to the broader web. I oversee uploading the correct URLs into the Talkative platform. It’s quite a collaborative effort.”

It took around eight weeks to bring Talkative online. “Its launch has been tremendously successful,” King stated. “Implementation was straightforward, and it has garnered substantial usage.”

Enhancing Employee and Customer Experiences

An enhanced employee experience is among the intended advantages of deploying AI assistants within the customer experience domain. For Domingos, there’s a tangible ROI in reducing the human agent workforce as AI manages simpler inquiries. This allows human representatives to dedicate more focus to intricate challenges. However, this is not merely about AI displacing jobs. Working in a contact center can be quite demanding, leading to high turnover, and some suggest that contact centers are often understaffed to begin with.

Regarding customer experience, Healthspan’s analytics indicate that their clientele heavily utilizes Product Professor. Domingos elaborates on Talkative’s overall impact: “It elevates the contact center’s profile in its role of supporting and assisting customers. For customer experience, it means quicker resolutions; customers no longer have to endure lengthy 30-minute waits or follow-up calls.”

Explore further: Customer experience management in the age of agentic AI