Telkomsel customer support teams speak volumes—with help from copilot based on Azure OpenAI Service

Driving toward a world of possibilities

Like a handful of glistening green stones scattered across the sea, Indonesia stretches across a broad territory—about 735,000 square miles. Nearly 279 million people live on over 17,000 islands and speak more than 700 languages. That diversity of language and culture speaks to the isolation that separated the inhabitants for centuries. But they communicate freely today, thanks to the innovation of telecommunications companies like Telkomsel, Indonesia’s leading digital telco company.

Telkomsel’s lofty goals reflect its commitment to Indonesians: “We are here as a driving force to open up a world full of opportunities and unlimited possibilities through the use of integrated digital solutions and services.” Its innovative drive and commitment to customer service have been key to realizing that goal. But as Telkomsel’s menu of services and applications expanded, keeping customers supported without burning out its customer service agents became a looming concern. Acting proactively, Telkomsel developed a customer service chatbot. Limitations of the AI technology of 2017 precluded the company’s vision for fast yet personalized support. So when Microsoft introduced Azure OpenAI Service, Telkomsel was ready with a blueprint for its ideal virtual assistant.

Solving the puzzle of perfect support

The diversity of Telkomsel’s more than 159 million mobile subscribers and its 8.5 million fixed broadband customers is complicated by geography and the company’s customer support goals. “The mammoth scale of Indonesia itself and our enormous customer base requires sophisticated engineering and a high degree of innovation,” says Derrick Heng, Chief Marketing Officer at Telkomsel. “But most importantly, our vision is to enable a better digital lifestyle for the people of Indonesia. That means personalized customer support—our customers are much more than a number at Telkomsel.”

Providing that personal touch was beginning to take a toll on the customer support department, though. “We needed our customer service agents to deal with complex issues without the distraction of routine inquiries,” says Aisha Rahmi, E-Care Team Supervisor at Telkomsel. “My staff were burning out because they faced long queues of waiting callers. Customers could get impatient.”

The company hoped to prevent customer service agents from being overburdened and to shorten wait times for customers when it piloted its original customer service chatbot in 2017. But that first version couldn’t answer many of the questions sent to it, and those customers ultimately were redirected to customer service agents. Feeling more urgency to have their issues resolved quickly, those customers then required even more empathy and tact.

Telkomsel leadership evaluated available AI technologies, but with a related requirement in mind that entities in more unilingual nations don’t experience. Most people in Indonesia speak Bahasa Indonesia, the official national language of the country, and many speak at least one or two more local languages. That variety of language usage creates a plethora of accents in the official and national language—sometimes a stumbling block for human agents, but a potential showstopper for traditional AI chatbots. If a potential chatbot couldn’t communicate with Telkomsel customers easily and accurately, customer trust and loyalty would erode. “We needed to create an intuitive and accurate virtual agent, for which we needed to use generative AI technology,” says Bharat Alva, Chief Information Officer at Telkomsel. His team chose Azure OpenAI Service. “Azure OpenAI Service provided the intelligence that delivers accurate, personalized results for our customers,” he emphasizes.

Introducing the Veronika virtual assistant

Telkomsel envisioned its groundbreaking virtual assistant as a young Indonesian woman, who is polite, helpful, and excited about life in a communication-rich, modern world. Thus Veronika was imagined.

A host of capabilities supports the engaging interactions that Telkomsel visualized. “With the ChatGPT model accessed through Azure OpenAI Service, we’re using the best AI technology now available,” says Danang Andrianto, Vice President of Customer Journey and Digital Experience at Telkomsel. He appreciates the Azure Machine Learning and natural language processing features embedded in Azure OpenAI that propel growth of the knowledge base and enhance customer interactions, respectively. Heng lauds the reception Veronika evoked throughout Indonesia. “We have enhanced Veronika’s ability to interact with customers, using natural and empathic language, which makes customers feel as though they are being assisted by a human,” he says. “The new Veronika also incorporates light-hearted humor and a touch of emoticons into the conversations. She can craft responses by intelligently combining the latest information from multiple FAQs and Azure OpenAI to supply more insightful answers.”

The enormous volume of customer call data demanded a strong technological backbone for Telkomsel’s next-generation virtual assistant. “With Azure OpenAI, we’ve created a scalable architecture that can handle up to 5 million transactions per month,” explains Alva. “It also delivers the robust security that we require—and we deployed our Veronika virtual assistant in two weeks.”

A win for customers and customer service agents

Perhaps even Veronika’s sophisticated machine learning capability couldn’t have predicted the wins Telkomsel experienced just months into the launch of its virtual assistant. “I’m thrilled to share that since introducing Veronika, we’ve seen a leap in customer self-service interactions from 19 percent to 45 percent,” enthuses Heng. “This boost is driven by a 140 percent increase in average messages per user, particularly for Digital Lifestyle products.” He shares Rahmi’s support for her customer service agents, who can now spend more time with the customers who need them the most. “Our agents used to handle 8,000 calls a day, but now that volume has dropped to 1,000 calls, and cross-selling has increased,” he continues. Adds Rahmi, “Our customer service agents receive inquiries from multiple social media channels: Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and Instagram. They look forward to using the speech-to-text feature in Azure OpenAI to respond quickly to those messages.”

“Generative AI enables accurate and natural conversation,” explains Wong Soon Nam, Chief Strategic Planning Officer at Telkomsel. He looks forward to continuing the innovation that has propelled Veronika to celebrity status—the virtual assistant has 50,000 followers on the Veronika Instagram account. “However, to make virtual AI feel more personal, we need to enhance it with technology such as voice AI, virtual animation, and image generation,” says Nam. Telkomsel’s successes with Veronika evoke inspiration for future innovation. “We’re focusing on new business opportunities with AI now, such as in B2B and B2C product innovation, and of course, generating new business, new revenue for Telkomsel,” he adds.

For Heng, deploying the new Veronika app shows rich potential for intelligent tools. “This is only the beginning,” he concludes. “We think of AI as our copilot at Telkomsel. Our people appreciate the support they get from Veronika, we look forward to our continuing relationship with Microsoft, and our customers look forward to even greater interactions with our customer service agents backed up by Veronika.”

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