Contact Center
Digital and personal: the Swiss Post Contact Center is for everyone
What sets baby boomers, millennials and Gen Z apart from each other? They prefer different communication channels for questions they have about Swiss Post: the older generations prefer to make a call, the younger ones chat or send a WhatsApp message. The Swiss Posts Contact Center is responding to these preferences with new digital solutions.
Chatbot, WhatsApp or phone call? Each generation prefers different communication channels. Customers’ needs are changing, and with them also Swiss Post’s Contact Center and the work of its approximately 300 employees. The Swiss Post Contact Center not only receives 130,000 telephone enquiries and 40,000 written enquiries per month, it also gets 10,000 live chats, 35,000 messages via chatbot, 4,000 WhatsApp messages and 4,000 enquiries via social media.
This wide range of contact options enables us to respond very personally to our customers’ concerns.
The right solution for everyone: flexible communication channels at Swiss Post
The Swiss Post chatbot is a digital assistant that is available around the clock – including Sundays or even at midnight – and automatically answers simple customer enquiries, for example about the status of a parcel. For more complex issues, the bot forwards the enquiry to a member of staff at the Contact Center. The chatbot undergoes continuous training to further optimize customer service.
If the chatbot reaches its limits, customers can use live chat in real time talk to an employee, who has access to the conversation with the chatbot beforehand and can therefore pick up seamlessly where the bot left off. Live chat is offered in several languages.
Swiss Post can also be reached using WhatsApp Artificial intelligence (AI) answers simple questions directly, for example about consignment tracking. For more complex issues, the conversation is forwarded to a specialist at the Contact Center, who will provide personal assistance during opening hours.
Swiss Post’s e-mail automation system uses artificial intelligence to analyse incoming e-mails and messages from contact forms and record information such as consignment numbers. The AI suggests suitable processes and automates individual process steps. This saves time and administrative work. At present, however, the
e-mails are still answered personally by employees.
Thanks to new technologies, routine questions can be answered more quickly. This increases customer satisfaction and takes the pressure off employees.
With the voice-to-text service, the customer’s issue is recorded as a voice message on the phone and immediately and automatically converted into text. The text message is forwarded to the relevant specialist, who receives the text immediately before the customer on the phone is connected, allowing the specialist to respond immediately with a specific answer to the issue. This allows the Contact Center to provide a better, faster and more flexible response to customer needs.
With robotic process automation (RPA), digital robots run pre-programmed processes and handle routine tasks such as complaints, for example about a parcel that has not arrived, significantly reducing the subsequent workload for employees.
For the older generation in particular, phone calls and personal visits to branches are still the preferred method for clearing up issues in direct contact with an employee.