Ocado deploys email AI to improve customer service

The world's largest online grocery retailer, Ocado, has deployed a new AI-driven customer service center to help manage incoming queries.

This "machine learning-enhanced contact" system, as it is being called, has been created to help automate the categorisation of customer emails using AI software. The company believes this will help remove the need for input from a human operator to flag important messages or provide email summaries.

"Working in an omni-channel contact centre can be challenging, with the team receiving thousands of contacts each day via telephone, email, webchat, social media and SMS," said Debbie Wilson, Ocado contact centre operations manager.

The "ML-enhanced" system has been developed using Ocado's own team of in-house analysts, using programming language Python and open-source software TensorFlow.

"The new software developed by Ocado Technology team will help the contact centre filter inbound customer contacts faster, enabling a quicker response to our customers which in turn will increase customer satisfaction levels," Wilson added.

Customers will likely encounter a better overall experience following the deployment. The AI can scan through the body of an email and detect keywords or phrases, such as an order complaint, and raise or lower its priority.

Under the old system, each customer email would be read and categorised by an Ocado employee before being passed to a relevant department. While manageable for smaller businesses, an increase in growth will often lead to longer response times for the customer.

This can be particularly problematic for a company like Ocado. Founded in the UK in 2010, the grocery retailer operates entirely online and is reliant on contact centres for engaging over 500,000 customers.

Zak Stone, product manager for TensorFlow on the Google Brain team, said: "We're thrilled that TensorFlow helped Ocado adapt and extend state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to communicate more responsively with their customers."

"With a combination of open-source, TensorFlow and Google Cloud services, Ocado and other leading companies can develop and deploy advanced machine learning solutions more rapidly than ever before," added Stone.