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Call Steering—Omni-channel customer engagement success stories

T-Mobile Germany's award winning call center application

Natural language understanding technology increases customer satisfaction and effciencies

Company profile

T-Mobile International (T-Mobile), a world leader in mobile communications and one of Deutsche Telekom’s three strategic business units, started out in 1993 as T-Mobile Germany GmbH, an independent trading company. T-Mobile International was established in 1999, and since that time, the company has grown to become one of the largest international mobile communications carriers and one of the most successful mobile phone operators in Europe.

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Deutsche Telekom uses Nuance Natural Language Understanding

“ We are committed to thinking and acting with a strong orientation toward service and segments, offering our customers state-of-the-art products and services. By using Nuance’s innovative speech technologies to create a call center application that is fast, accurate and reliable, we are experiencing an increased self-service success rate. ”

Klaus Dieter Liedtke
Head of the Mobilbox Department
T-Mobile Deutschland GmbH

Challenge

  • DTMF and single-word recognition phone application did not reach the level of service expected or deserved.
  • Cumbersome self-service resulted in many callers opting out of self‑service

Solution

  • Natural Language Understanding (NLU) self‑service application for simplified navigation
  • Fully automates over 400 business processes
  • "Guided Tour" provides introduction to self‑service application

Results

  • €10 million savings per year
  • Over 75% increase in automation
  • Successful automation of more than 36 million calls per year (100,000 per day)
  • High levels of customer satisfaction

Background

In 1998, T-Mobile became aware that its existing call center phone application—which used DTMF and single-word recognition—did not reach the level of service that its customers expected and deserved. Because the touch-tone system was cumbersome to navigate, many callers grew frustrated, preferring to wait in queues for a call center agent rather than use the self-service option. Seeking to differentiate its brand and gain competitive advantage through superior service, T-Mobile Germany decided to provide a self-service call center application that effectively balanced usability with automation in order to increase business efficiency while ensuring a rewarding customer experience.

T-Mobile replaced its touch-tone system with a new customer care speech application based on Nuance’s Foundation Speech and Dialog Technologies, which have helped hundreds of businesses achieve their customer service and financial objectives. The result was T-Mobile’s Speech-Enabled Customer Care Portal, an innovative speech self-service application focused on transaction success.

In 2004, T-Mobile launched its new self-service call center application, which now fully automates over 400 business processes by allowing callers to interact with the system using natural, conversational language. To complete a transaction or resolve a problem, callers can navigate the system quickly and easily by simply speaking their request. The system offers various options for commonly requested services and information, including:

—Tariff and option change
—Card cancellation
—Contract information
—Product information
—News
—Direct link to other applications, eg. SMS‑News, Mobilbox, or Account‑Service

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