Mitihoon – July 18, 2024 – Bangkok, Thailand – “Hello! Mari is happy to serve all customers. How can I help you today?” This is how True Corporation’s generative artificial intelligence greeted a customer during a recent demo of her newfound ability to converse naturally. The customer then went on to explain he’d like to change mobile packages. After a chat with “Mari” to understand his options, he was quickly able to subscribe to a new plan.
- True Corporation has unveiled the third generation of Mari, a virtual service agent available via chat, over the phone, or even as a humanoid robot.
- Mari uses generative artificial intelligence to provide service using natural, conversation language.
- She is rapidly evolving to reach more customers and handle a wider range of uses.
This kind of casual chat with a virtual service agent represents a revolution in customer service. Although automated digital customer services have existed for decades, they were often plagued with clunky interfaces, lengthy menus, or options that didn’t meet users’ specific needs. With generative AI, all this is set to make way for natural conversations.
At True Corporation, Mari is already assisting customers every day. But for a mobile operator like True Corporation, customer service information requires a very high degree of accuracy. Virtual agents must also somehow capture the brand’s personality, adjust their tone based on the speaker, and know which cases to hand off to human agents. To find out how Mari balances experimental technology with a need for precision, True Blog met with the teams pulling “her” strings behind the scenes.
The Mari Ecosystem
Mari is becoming a familiar face—or voice—for True’s 50 million customers. She greets visitors on the company’s website, can be reached by calling 1242 and can even be met in the real-world, in the shape of a humanoid robot. This constitutes a complex ecosystem with different AI engines best suited for each need.
“Mari is uniquely tailored to the different channels by which customers can reach customer service. Imagine you’re asking to compare price plans or devices, for example. Via chat, Mari could show you a table to compare a few different options—just like what a salesperson would do in a shop by showing you a pamphlet. But if a call center agent read out specs for five devices on a call, you’d hang up on them after 30 seconds. That’s Mari voice and Mari chat are not the same,” said Kiattisak Srimadee, Head of True Voice Department.
The True Voice team built the natural language processing engine of the call center’s Mari. But training and fine-tuning her responses was done by the call center itself. Thanachai Chuklin, who is head of the call center’s Strategy, Resourcing & Transformation Department said, “Getting the right tone and voice is very important in call centers. We’re quite happy with what we’ve achieved now but we’re still looking to improve. It takes a lot of testing to get the right intent, style and mood,” he said.
Compared to Mari voice, the chatbot version of True’s virtual service agent doesn’t require a voice engine. But it too must contend with exacting requirements for accuracy and tone. And both platforms also share the need to find the right customers—as not everyone is ready for generative AI.
“With COVID, we saw more and more people pushed to digital channels and they’ve grown increasingly comfortable with and accustomed to getting service online as opposed to visiting a shop or speaking to a human call center agent. But that doesn’t mean they are ready for Generative AI. We have to carefully assess their intent when they reach out to Mari. Very simple requests are best handled by click-through menus. If their needs are more complex, we can point them towards a generative AI,” said Napong Valaisathien, Head of the Digital Platform & Experience Department, the team driving Mari’s chat platform.
Growing Powers
When it comes to service, the gap between those who’d rather talk to humans versus those who prefer AI-powered virtual agents is closing fast. In a survey conducted during “AI Gets Real,” an event where True presented real-world AI use cases, 26% of respondents already say they prefer to chat online with a virtual agent versus 20% who would prefer to chat with a human agent. But when it comes to voice, 38% said they’d prefer to talk to a human agent, while 16% would prefer to speak with a virtual agent.
Thanyalak Suthijindawong, Senior Leader, Digital Platform, said, “We are constantly improving Mari’s chat capabilities. We start from the customer and then we brainstorm what we can improve from their perspective. We work very quickly, in two-week sprints, to bring out new features in collaboration with system analysts, developers, business analysts and quality control.”
Currently, the Mari chatbot already handles nearly 2 million contacts per month, with Mari handling nearly 90% of them and human agents handling the rest. Thaks to an accuracy of about 90-95%, Mari is able to beat global benchmarks for customer satisfaction.
Currently, the chatbot can resolve technical faults for home internet users, compare devices and assist customers wishing to change plans. Because the voice version of Mari uses a different engine, and the inherent difficulty of conveying complex information over the phone, the timeline of features is slightly different for the call center. But both versions of Mari are now live and used by real customers.
Mr. Kiattisak said, “Gen AI is a real challenge. From an ethical standpoint, we need to make sure everyone gets treated fairly. AI mistakes, or what’s known as ‘hallucinations,’ aren’t acceptable. We can’t have Mari offering price plans that don’t exist, or priced incorrectly. We need to be very cautious. That’s the hard part with AI. We need to be very accurate.”
In the future, it’s possible to even imagine Mari in shops. Veerasak Pongtanyavichai, Head of Innovation Center Department, has developed a humanoid robot version of Mari capable of conversing naturally. “For now, we plan for the Mari humanoid to be mainly a showcase of what’s possible. She can act as an ambassador for True at major events. But in the future, she could act as an assistant for salespeople in shops. Just like the chat and voice versions of Mari, her goal is to be helpful for everyone,” said Mr. Veerasak.
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