Customer service costs are steadily rising as the pandemic has accelerated digitalisation in companies. Aligned with that, consumer expectations for good customer service have also risen. “Few of us are excited to be able to call our service provider about an error in the invoice,” says Hermanni Hyytiälä.
Failure demand occurs when a customer must contact a service provider repeatedly and possibly through different channels to resolve their problem or to receive the service they need. That represents a growing problem in both the public and private sectors, causing unnecessary workload in most services. Aiwo has verified the results of academic research: Up to 70 percent of customer contacts can be labelled as failure demand. “In many organisations the costs are increasing due to the workload failure demand causes. In addition, it usually has a negative effect on the customer and employee experience”, describes Hermanni Hyytiälä, the Nordic leading expert in failure demand.
Aiwo’s AI-powered analysis identifies failure demand
A Finnish company, Aiwo, is the first AI-based solution that can identify failure demand from customer contacts. The innovation is based on Hyytiälä’s expertise in failure demand, an area which he has been researching for the past 15 years. “Identifying failure demand has previously required manual consulting work, for example, in listening to customer calls or going through customer feedback. Creating a situational picture of failure demand has required several months of manual work. However, in the rapidly changing economy, a report based on historical information does not help to solve the current situation”, says Hyytiälä.
With the new technology developed by Aiwo, companies are able to visualise a real-time situational picture of existing customer service events – quickly and cost effectively. This has brought a completely new starting point not only for the development of services, but also for cost control.
“This feature has produced data that is very important to us and the tool is sure to be put in good use! The data met our expectations and it also provides absolutely brilliant reinforcements for the observations made by our customer service team.”
Marika Ilmola, Head of Customer Service Operations, Ensin Palvelut Ltd.
Good service costs less
Failure demand is an increasing problem in service organisations and it has consequences at many different levels: the customer is dissatisfied, the organisation is overwhelmed, employees are tired and costs go up.
Reducing failure demand brings several benefits to companies simultaneously: improved service quality and availability, increased customer and employee satisfaction, and significantly reduced customer service costs.
“There is a huge savings potential for companies in identifying failure demand. For example, for telecom operators failure demand can be more than 70 percent of all customer contacts. In the financial sector the percentage can be somewhere around 30-60%.”
Pekka Törmälä, Executive Director, Aiwo
“Identifying failure demand can generate concrete suggestions of how the company’s operations can be made truly customer-centric. This way failure demand would not be generated in the first place. In fact, customer-oriented and good service costs the company less, ” Hermanni Hyytiälä continues.
Failure Demand
- Failure to serve the customer will cause the customer to return with additional requirements
- Failure Demand is a growing challenge in service organisations and is causing increased costs, overcapacity and customer dissatisfaction
- The phenomenon has extensive international academic research from the past 30 years
Aiwo
- Aiwo is a Finnish SaaS-service, founded in 2018.
- Aiwo the first and only AI-based solution in the market to identify failure demand
- Aiwo’s customer contact intelligence offers an easy way to create and analyse a real-time situational picture of the volume, root causes and the cost of failure demand for an organisation or a company.
Ask for more information
Hermanni Hyytiälä, Chief Development Officer, Aiwo
hermanni.hyytiala@aiwo.ai / 045 670 3775
Pekka Törmälä, Executive Director, Aiwo
pekka.tormala@aiwo.ai / 050 423 2636
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