AI Knowledge for Field Service

What if end-customers, customer service agents, and field engineers can get correct, consumable, compliant, and consistent—in other words, trusted—answers from a single source of truth and proven expertise, including step-by-step troubleshooting, parts recommendation, or product advice guidance?

That can help transform today’s arduous field service journeys to easy, effective, and efficient journeys, which is exactly what the eGain AI Knowledge Hub does!

A novel approach to KM, the eGain AI Knowledge Hub unifies and orchestrates all the building blocks needed to deliver trusted answers and problem-solving expertise across contact center agents, field engineers, and ecosystem stakeholders such as channel partners and FSPs (field service providers.)

• Content and knowhow is first ingested from trusted sources, using pre-built connectors, knowledge created and curated in the hub at warp speed, delivered as trusted answers across communication channels and touchpoints, and optimized for better business value, all with the power of knowledge workflows, AI, and analytics
• GenAI is leveraged to accelerate the KM lifecycle with conversational AI delivering knowledge in a consumable and conversational manner

There is more! eGain’s AI knowledge is a “whole-product” offering that extends beyond best-in-class technology, which is the eGain AI Knowledge Hub™. It includes a risk-free pilot called “Innovation in 30 days™”, a proprietary and proven AI knowledge implementation method for quick business value, managed services to sustain and expand value over time, educational services such as free courses and certifications in KM, offered by the eGain Knowledge Academy™, best practices, thought leadership and customer success stories on eGain.com: a partner ecosystem, and an ever-expanding community of thought leaders and practitioners.

The eGain AI Knowledge Hub has delivered transformational business value to enterprise clients, enabling them to reduce service cost while elevating experiences and productivity. Among the metrics it helps improve are:

• Field service avoidance (e.g., truck rolls “saved” (i.e., avoided))
• Product exchange/returns avoidance (e.g., No Fault Found, No Defect Found)
• Customer satisfaction (e.g., NPS)
• Field engineer onboarding (e.g., time to competence)
• And more!

Here are three sample success stories from our blue-chip clients:

Client overview

The client is a well-known provider of home appliances from ovens to refrigerators and washing machines.

Challenges

• Reducing field service costs without compromising customer satisfaction
• Improving field engineer and contact center agent productivity

Insights

• AI knowledge can help contact center agents and field service techs of any experience level resolve customer problems with contextual, step-by-step conversational and process guidance
• It can deliver on the “holy grail” of field service, where any technician is able to handle any kind of customer problem!

Solution

The company deployed the eGain AI Knowledge Hub for use by contact center agents and field engineers. The AI reasoning capability in the solution delivers personalized troubleshooting guidance to contact center agents and field personnel, personalized to their experience and skill levels. For example, novice engineers are forced to go through a structured dialog while tenured engineers are allowed to take shortcuts to resolution.

Results

• “Save the call” problem resolution, which is the metric used by the manufacturer to count the calls where a truck roll was avoided through effective problem resolution over the phone, improved by a whopping 25%, saving the organization $50M over 5 years.
• Customer satisfaction showed a marked improvement when AI knowledge guidance was used in the problem resolution process.
• Where there was the inevitable truck roll, first-time fix improved, helping avoid repeat visits and improve customer satisfaction.
• Agent and engineer adoption skyrocketed as the knowledge hub gained trust by delivering correct, contextual answers and helpful conversational guidance.

Client overview

A market leader, the client manufactures a complete portfolio of dental operatory equipment. Customer support is a key part of their value proposition.

Challenges

• The complex nature of their products makes customer support challenging
• Legacy knowledge system bolted onto SharePoint was struggling to deliver answers and troubleshooting expertise
• The customer support team needed to provide product recommendations, not just troubleshooting

Insights

• AI knowledge can be equally effective in resolving client problems in B2B and B2P (Business-to-Partner) scenarios just as it can in a B2C scenario, even though the issues will be more complex
• With the Great Retirement still in progress, this is critically important in being able to capture, curate, and leverage advanced, “white collar” knowledge

Solution

The company took advantage of eGain’s one-of-a-kind “Innovation in 30 days” pilot, where the customer service team was able to experience the eGain Knowledge Hub in a production setting—free of charge for 30 days with expert guidance to success. Impressed with the rich, out-of-the-box functionality, including knowledge personalization, multi-faceted search, and AI capabilities, and positive feedback from users, the company selected and deployed the eGain Knowledge Hub for two use-cases:

• Provide digital self-service for end-customers, dealers, and field engineers
• Augment field engineers, contact center agents, and dealers as they provide human-assisted support to end-customers. Level-2 contact center agents were also fielding questions from distributors and field engineers, not just end-customers

Results

• The eGain Knowledge Hub became a single source of truth, delivering consistent, trusted answers and expertise across channels
• As trust increased, adoption exploded. For example, dealer registrations and knowledge use skyrocketed by a whopping 200%!
• The company plans to extend knowledge use to live chat and app, while leveraging more AI—GenAI for better findability and faster content creation and reasoning for conversational guidance

Client overview

The client is one of the leading mobile operators in the UK. The case study is about “No Fault Found” (NFF) or “No Defect Found” product exchanges or returns, where the mobile handsets are not defective and contact center agents could not resolve the customers’ problem that could have preempted the unwarranted transaction, which is expensive for the business. NFF is also applicable to other industries such as manufacturing and tech, where free product exchanges or returns have become table stakes for playing in the industry.

Challenges

• Escalating reverse logistics costs were eating into the carrier’s operating margin
• Mobile phones were getting more tech-heavy and complex, making problem resolution a challenge
• Scale up customer service while containing costs

Insights

• Common: AI knowledge dramatically improves common customer service metrics such as First-Contact Resolution and call handling quality
• Hidden: AI knowledge also delivers huge hidden ROI. An example is the reduction of unwarranted product returns and exchanges when contact center agents are unable to help resolve customer problems when the customer is unable to figure out how to use today’s tech-heavy products

Solution

• eGain Knowledge Hub deployed across thousands of contact center agents for omnichannel customer service

Results

• Reduced unwarranted handset exchanges by 38%
• Improved FCR (First-Contact Resolution) by 19%
• Boosted service quality by 23%