Proactively steering customers to the optimal support resources in real time with Lenovo Smart Avatar
Challenge: Optimizing Customer Support in the Digital Age
When a customer experiences an issue with a product, they expect the vendor to provide fast and effective support. But for many enterprises, fulfilling every support request via agent-assisted channels would be prohibitively costly and time-consuming.
By leveraging our own products, services and customer support expertise, Lenovo created Smart Avatar—a first-of-its-kind AI solution that can automatically direct each Lenovo PC customer to the appropriate support resources in real time.
The combination of seamless self-service experiences and responsive agent-assisted channels is bringing big benefits to Lenovo. Smart Avatar has already delivered $10 million in cost-avoidance and a 15.4-point increase in customer satisfaction—and the solution could deliver similar benefits for companies across a wide range of industries.
Challenge: Investing in Self-Service Satisfaction
Lenovo is the world’s largest PC manufacturer by annual units shipped—and we want every customer to get maximum value from their devices. To help achieve this goal, Lenovo has invested heavily in customer support. The eService ecosystem includes our websites, the Lenovo Help App, and Lenovo Community forum, as well as chatbots and social media accounts.
Ronendro Singh, Global eService Operations at Lenovo, says: “When customers want to find information about repairs and servicing, or to purchase additional services such as extended warranties, 98% of them come to our self-service channels. Every year, over 200 million customers engage with these services—so it’s crucial for us to offer the best possible experience for every visitor.”
Challenge: Striving for Continuous Improvement
We continuously analyze customer satisfaction scores across the Lenovo eService ecosystem to measure performance and identify opportunities for improvement. So, when we saw that satisfaction scores for our websites were an average of 20 percentage points lower than for our agent-assisted services, we decided to act quickly to enhance the customer experience.
“By using session replay technology to record and analyze real-world customer journeys, we identified several scenarios in which customers were struggling to get the information or services they were looking for,” Singh continues. “To make it easier for our customers to get great support on our websites, we looked for a way to remove friction from key journeys.”
Solution: AI-Powered Personalized Support
Lenovo identified several improvements to the support journey. At the front end, we decided to update the look and feel of our product homepages, making them faster and easier for customers to use. We also targeted improvements to our diagnostic pages, adding “easy” and “expert” pathways to allow experienced and non-technical users to find the support they need.
And we didn’t stop there. As well as improving the usability of our sites, we wanted to personalize the experience to each customer’s specific needs. First, we needed a 360-degree view of the customers visiting our sites—including their devices, service histories, warranty statuses, and more.
Sunil Kumar, Head of Data Science and Analytics – International Service Support at Lenovo, says: “We knew that AI had the potential to transform the self-service support experience. So, we decided to leverage Lenovo’s in-house expertise to develop a solution.”
Solution: Lenovo powers Lenovo
Working with technical experts from across Lenovo, the Data and Analytics team created a data lake to store accurate, timely data on device serial numbers, repair and service records, support chat logs, and customer satisfaction scores. To drive value from this data, the team developed an AI-powered personalization engine that assigns each customer a digital persona based on these characteristics.
Figen Tek-Puentes, Senior Manager, WW Support Web at Lenovo, explains: “Our AI engine is at the heart of a brand-new eService solution: Smart Avatar. The solution works by detecting patterns of browsing behavior that show when a customer is struggling to find what they need on a Lenovo support site. Based on context from their current web session and their digital persona, Smart Avatar pops up a box on the page to provide highly personalized assistance.”
Solution: Streamlining Customer Journeys
Lenovo has configured Smart Avatar to help customers in multiple support scenarios. For example, if a visitor has remained on the site for a prolonged time without providing their details, Smart Avatar will ask the customer if they would like the site to try and detect their device serial number automatically—accelerating their support journey.
Smart Avatar provides a customized page for service recommendations.
Figen Tek-Puentes continues: “Smart Avatar allows us to interpret online customer behavior and proactively reach out with customized assistance. We began with a pilot project for Lenovo customers in North America, and the results were so positive that we rolled out the solution to all our global sites within a matter of months. Today, Smart Avatar is helping global customers to get faster access to our excellent service support resources.”
Result: Measuring the Impact of Transformation
As its eService transformation continues, Lenovo is already measuring the positive impact of its AI initiative on everything from operational costs to customer satisfaction.
Singh says: “In less than a year, Smart Avatar has helped us resolve millions of customer struggles that might otherwise have led customers to contact an agent-assisted service—enabling us to avoid more than $10 million in operational costs.”
By gaining a deeper understanding of individual customer needs and preferences, Lenovo is also making it easier to delight website visitors with value-added services. Singh confirms: “We have seen Lenovo PC Group service revenues increase between 10% to 20% year-on-year [YoY], which is a testament to the power of personalized services.”
Result: Fast Support, Happy Customers
Most importantly, our new approach to support is allowing Lenovo to delight customers with higher-quality experiences on self-service support channels.
Customer experience scores for our eService websites have increased by 7.3 points, and the number of customers who rate the Lenovo support website as helpful has climbed by 15.2 points. Overall customer experience scores have jumped by a massive 15.4 points, and bounce rates across all Lenovo websites have dropped by 8.7%—showing that more customers are finding the information they need.
Result: Planning Proactive Support Services
Looking ahead, Lenovo is planning the next stage of its eService transformation. We intend to harness data on customer personas to offer personalized product homepages, with custom tiles to direct users to the relevant how-to guides, manuals, and diagnostic pages for their specific products.
Singh comments: “As well as personalizing the content that we present to customers on our websites, we are preparing to roll out proactive support services via email. For example, when a customer purchases a new PC, they will receive a tailored message including direct links to all the support resources for their product.”
To find out how Lenovo Smart Avatar could help your organization shape a seamless, high-quality support experience, visit Lenovo.com or speak to your Lenovo contact.
