Back office services go virtual with artificial intelligence and chatbots

Business process management firms are using artificial intelligence and chatbots to enhance security in the work-from-home environment

In mid-April, business processing management (BPM) company Startek put together a work-from-home (WFH) solution for a key e-commerce client in Bengaluru. Using predictive and behavioural analytics based on artificial intelligence (AI), the Colorado-headquartered firm devised a mechanism that ensures business continuity, and took less than 18 hours to implement.

Rajiv Ahuja, Startek’s president, explains that there was no playbook to refer to in the first two weeks of the nation-wide lockdown, but the company quickly realised that the pandemic was no passing phenomenon. “Therefore, it was important to leverage cutting-edge AI tools and predictive analytics to monitor performance and ensure business continuity.”   

Startek focussed on improving end-point security, as its employees had begun working remotely (some 55 per cent of its 47,000 employees globally, more than a third of whom are based in India, now work from home). The AI-based solution masks out all credit card or other personal details. “A watermark containing a code is left behind on the image, the moment there is a breach in security like taking a photograph or a screen grab,” Ahuja says, adding that the product was developed in partnership with a global software company. 

Startek also deploys sequential image mapping techniques to prevent impersonation and monitor employee productivity. The AI-based app automatically alerts the supervisor if an agent is tired or is missing from in front of the system for extended periods. “The backend AI software basically carries out all the tasks that would have been done by a supervisor in the production bay,” Ahuja adds.

Using web cameras, the app can also detect the presence of a foreign device or entry of unauthorised persons near the specialist system, and sends real-time alerts in the event of a violation. The app allows the supervisor to closely monitor browsing history too. In the case of banking, financial services and insurance projects, contact routing or queueing of incoming calls is executed through the agent’s smartphone, using an integrated customer relationship management application.

 

Shanmugam Nagarajan, co-founder and chief people officer at customer experience software and services company [24]7.ai, says the Bengaluru-based firm has seen a huge uptick in demand for its AI-powered chatbots and voice bots in the wake of the pandemic.

“We have been offering our clients both artificial intelligence and human intelligence for quite some time now, but not at the cost of replacing human agents. It is a combination of the two,” he says. These bots are powered using data from millions of real call-centre conversations that the company has delivered since its inception in 2000.

[24]7.ai has also deployed AI-driven features such as facial recognition systems of its agents in place of system loggins. If an agent is not present before his desktop, he is logged out.  

Nagarajan says that while the adoption of bots has “accelerated” during the pandemic, it could also form a permanent fixture in basic customer experiences in banking and telecommunications. The company has moved 98 per cent of its clients to the WFH model. The rest cannot be transitioned, since they are mission-critical clients.

Startek, too, is investing in conversational AI bots that monitor employee productivity and generate an automated report of the workday. It has deployed facial recognition systems in place of agent loggins. Agents will be automatically logged out if they are not present in front of their desktops. 

The French services firm Teleperformance, which employs some 70,000 people in India, is another company that is using an in-house AI tool — TP Trackmax — for its work-at-home agents. “It helps with monitoring and tracking real-time agent behaviour and enables compliance with security standards,” says Aditya Arora, chief executive officer, Teleperformance India. The solutions include detecting sleep and inactivity for extended hours.

Teleperformance has just launched its cloud-based command centres in Mohali, Kolkata and Gurgaon, to help it monitor its remote operations. “When our agents log into our cloud gateways, we leverage secure access controls in the form of strict employee policies, fraud prevention protocols and multi-factor authentication, to create a watertight identification process and build trust in the digital era,” Arora adds.