What challenges did Villeroy & Boch face before AI implementation?

During peak hours, callers faced queues and the hotline could handle only a few calls at once; routing callers to the correct service area or employee quickly was difficult.

Source

GCPEvidence: Medium50/100

Villeroy & Boch: Voicebot Anna automating call routing with Dialogflow (Germany)

Use case typeVoice automationUpdated Nov 1, 2020

Villeroy & Boch launched the trilingual voicebot Anna with BOTfriends and Google Cloud to streamline call center operations by automating call routing. The bot uses Dialogflow Enterprise Edition, Cloud Speech-to-Text, Cloud Text-to-Speech, and BigQuery to route callers to the right service area or employee and to help handle peak call volumes.

Organization: Villeroy & Boch
Industry: Consumer & Food
Location: Germany
Published: November 2020

Reported outcomes

Calls processed per quarter: More than 15,000 calls

Other quantified impact

Average waiting time: 1.3 minutesTotal calls handled: More than 43,000 calls

Why do we believe this?Outcome claims, sources, and evidence checks

Normalized claim

Calls processed per quarter: 15,000 calls increase

Google Cloud Customer StoryNov 1, 2020Customer storyExplicit claimMedium evidence strength

Anna has accepted more than 15,000 calls per quarter.

Normalized claim

Average waiting time: 1.3 minutes

Google Cloud Customer StoryNov 1, 2020Customer storyExplicit claimMedium evidence strength

customers just wait an average of 1.3 minutes to be put through to the right person or service area

Normalized claim

Support team size: 66.7%

Google Cloud Customer StoryNov 1, 2020Customer storyInferred claimMedium evidence strength

enabling one employee to maintain voicebot replacing three-person call center team

Normalized claim

Total calls handled: 43,000 calls increase

Google Cloud Customer StoryNov 1, 2020Customer storyExplicit claimMedium evidence strength

Our voice has accepted more than 43,000 calls so far

Normalized claim

Automation rate: 60%

Google Cloud Customer StoryNov 1, 2020Customer storyExplicit claimMedium evidence strength

We’ve already reached an automation rate of 60%

Why do we believe this deployment?Customer identity, provider attribution, maturity, and source checks

Customer: Villeroy & Boch
Provider: GCP
Maturity: Unknown
Linked source: Google Cloud Customer Story

No explicit deployment-stage evidence found.

Customer identity supportedSource describes one deploymentMaturity evidence evaluated

Primary read

Use case focus

Showing 3 of 3

1Voice automation
2Customer support automation
3Workflow automation

BOTfriends and Villeroy & Boch built and operated the voicebot Anna using Dialogflow Enterprise Edition, Cloud Speech-to-Text, Cloud Text-to-Speech, and BigQuery. Incoming calls are transcribed, matched to service-area data stored in BigQuery, and converted back to speech while the bot orchestrates automated call routing in three languages.

Technologies

Dialogflow Enterprise Edition Cloud Speech-to-Text Cloud Text-to-Speech BigQuery

The bot processed 15,000 calls per quarter, reduced average waiting time to about 1.3 minutes, replaced a three-person call center team with one employee maintaining the bot, and handled more than 43,000 calls overall.

Architecture

Villeroy & Boch and BOTfriends built voicebot Anna on Google Cloud using Dialogflow Enterprise Edition for conversation orchestration, Cloud Speech-to-Text for transcription, Cloud Text-to-Speech for response generation, and BigQuery as the data store for service-area routing information. Calls are forwarded through a cloud phone provider integrated via API, then routed automatically based on transcribed caller requests and the service-area directory in BigQuery.

Implementation partners1

BOTfriends

Sources & evidence1

Evidence: Medium50/100Evidence strength