The high dependency on the contact-center model proved to be a challenge with sudden increases in volumes.  The hotline center’s labor resources were scarce, especially against the backdrop of various government-imposed restrictions during pandemic. Customer access to a dedicated human interface with tele-support required much longer wait times during this period.

While enterprise-wide adoption of generative AI (gen AI) remained challenging, Towngas started exploring ways to successfully implement these technologies to gain significant competitive advantage.

Dependencies to be provisioned using gen AI aimed to:

• Provide a seamless customer experience and services in real time without any delays in order placement
• Automate contact center workflows with AI insights
• Maintain consistent quality through monitoring and feedback mechanisms

Towngas faced business challenges such as labor shortages and high turnover rates, resulting in the need to reskill existing tele-agents or to quickly onboard new agents—steps that entailed huge time and cost commitments. With the pandemic, there was also the substantial increase in call wait-times when handling service appointments because ofgovernment-imposed restrictions.

There were also language barriers. Maintaining consistency and quality across channels and agents arose as a new government requirement for contact call centers.

The technical challenges included data security and privacy concerns, and the difficulty of integrating different systems and channels to provide a seamless customer experience.

Towngas needed to optimise its digitalization efforts to achieve an all-inclusive solution by bringing automation to its CRM functions. The company aimed to serve its existing customers through a single platform built on AI to provide a single version of the truth to the contact center team.

Artificial intelligence is disrupting many different areas of business. The technology’s potential is particularly apparent in customer service, talent, and application modernization. According to the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV), AI can contain contact center cases, enhancing the customer experience by 70%. Additionally, AI can increase productivity in HR by 40% and in application modernization by 30%. One example of this is reducing labor burdens by automating ticket assistance through IT operations. However, while these numbers indicate transformation opportunities for enterprises, scaling and operationalizing AI has historically been challenging for organizations.

Towngas was able to apply and capitalize on the IBM^® watsonx^™ Assistant’s contact center capabilities to its benefit—by improving CX by 100%.

The new Towngas Tinny virtual assistant provided several improvements, including:

• automatic call diversion
• interactive voice response
• better workforce management
• real-time monitoring and analytics
• conversational AI capabilities

Implementation of the Tinny chatbot: Towngas engaged IBM Business Partner Mobinology Asia to revamp its entire contact call center with a voice assistant to help deflect around 15% of calls away from human agents. Mobinology built the chatbot Tinny with IBM watsonx Assistant technology along with its own SYVA AI chatbot platform to architect the CRM for Towngas. The Tinny chatbot effectively replaced the phone-tree system with conversational AI capabilities.

Increased customer satisfaction: The 24x7 self-service chatbot solution delivered 100% reduction in customer wait times. Tinny provided immediate 24x7 support, removing dependency on human interaction and related critical situations (crit-sits). The omnichannel experience that triggers during appointment making also improved the CRM workloads—leading to a truly digitized experience.

A 50% increase in customer self-service. Now consumers can access a bouquet of support services at their own pace and ease, even from remote locations, without losing the contact center call. Chatbot Tinny is mobile friendly, launching without delays.

Using IBM watsonx Assistant, the Mobinology team was able to offer Towngas an effective virtual assistant that prevented dead-ends for callers. Towngas witnessed marked improvement in its NPS rating, leading to retention of loyal customers.

The ease of building and deploying a customer service chatbot: The Tinny virtual assistant was straightforward to build, launch and scale with IBM watsonx Assistant. Timeliness was the need of the hour. Because Towngas is the sole provider of territory-wide gas in Hong Kong—providing for 75% of the region’s households—it had the responsibility to ensure households were able to function, even during the toughest of times.

Using IBM watsonx Assistant, companies like Mobinology can seamlessly deploy—sometimes within hours—on a website, on a telephony system and on SMS, and can bring down the cost of a call. The solution helps address routine employee questions and removes volume from help desks so that agents can focus on the high-value questions that require a human to solve.

The Towngas digital transformation is a milestone in AI for business

The key benefits gained with AI and how organizations can confidently incorporate AI and machine learning into their business is well represented with the chatbot Tinny.

Chatbot Tinny was not just about handling general customer inquiries for Towngas’s residential customers but to make the entire conversational tree easier and less complex. Two million residential customers of Towngas can now self-serve their requirements with ease.

The Tinny virtual assistant on IBM watsonx Assistant now handles around 180,000 inquires per year.  

Partnering with Mobinology and IBM for success:

Mobinology led the end-to-end build to deployment, and IBM watsonx Assistant delivered consistent and intelligent customer care using conversational AI.

By creating a seamless customer experience for Towngas, IBM and Mobinology were able to provide:

• a robust scalable platform for CX for residential customers
• an increase in customer self-service
• a correct course in real-time to optimize performance—continuously improving experiences and expectations.

Approximately 90% of chatbots that go live are discarded within 18–24 months. This is not because the market is not growing, but because of the dependency on developers to deploy and maintain the solutions. Towngas has bucked this trend with its deployment of its chatbot Tinny.

Built with IBM watsonx Assistant, the chatbot has helped Towngas create efficient end user experiences without friction. An AI and data platform such as watsonx can help empower businesses to apply foundation models and accelerate the pace of gen AI adoption across their organizations.

IBM watsonx Assistant has delivered two important objectives for Towngas:

1. Call center modernization: Organizations need to help their customers receive needed information or complete a task through the channel of their choice without long hold times, increasing customer satisfaction and retention.
2. Customer experience transformation: Organizations need to deliver consistent and personalized customer experiences.

Towngas today is scaling its digitization, making services available to its ecosystem and its diversified business. Towngas continues to reap benefits with a consistent and personalized experience without migrating its tech stack.

IBM watsonx Assistant is a market-leading, conversational AI platform designed to help you overcome the friction of traditional support and deliver exceptional experiences to prospects, customers and employees.

Powered by large language models (LLMs) you can trust, and an intuitive user interface, watsonx Assistant empowers your teams to build AI-powered voice agents and chatbots that deliver automated self-service support across all channels and touch-points, with seamless integration to the tools that power your business.

Founded in 1862, Towngas (link resides outside of ibm.com) was Hong Kong’s first public utility. Today, it is one of the largest energy suppliers in Hong Kong, operating with world-class corporate management and leading-edge business practices. For the past years, Towngas has been growing with Hong Kong, evolving from a simple gas company supplying fuel for street lamps to its current leading position in the energy industry in the greater China region. The company’s core business in the territory consists of the production and distribution of gas, marketing and sale of gas and gas appliances, as well as comprehensive after-sales services. Expanding its business horizons in recent years, Towngas has diversified its business into telecommunications, building services, engineering and the new eco-energies.

Headquartered in Hong Kong SAR, IBM Business Partner Mobinology (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a software solutions provider founded in 2008 and specialized in providing business applications for customers in Hong Kong and Macau. Well-versed with latest technology knowledge in AI, cloud computing and mobile technologies, Mobinology’s subject matter experts empower its customers with advanced solutions to rapidly deploy, reinvent and extend their strategies and applications to create unprecedented competitive advantages to meet their strategic business needs. Mobinology’s  solutions, which are highly adaptive and scalable, include  board-range of applications in digital transformation, mobile device applications, conversational AI, cognitive analytics and customer relationships management.