#AsiaeCommerceAwards highlight: giga!'s chatbot GINO small talks with consumers

StarHub’s giga! is Singapore’s new fully-digital mobile service that was officially launched on 30 May 2019. The giga’s mobile service al in an app is created to provide consumers with a better, simpler, more intuitive mobile experience; from products, features, payment modes, delivery tracking, digital engagement to customer service.

The brand’s single-minded focus to be the most customer-centric digital telco in an app, who not only listened to feedback and allowed critique of its brand to be aired in public, effectively addressed the needs of consumer by providing quality customer support that is lacking in the industry. 

To ensure that the brand stand out among competitors, giga embarked on the “giga’s fully interactive AI Chatbot” campaign, which resulted in giga! winning the silver for Best Use of AI and bronze for Best Use of UI / UX Design at MARKETING INTERACTIVE’s Asia eCommerce Awards 2020. 

Challenge

Recognising the needs of consumers wanting consistent and reliable connectivity from their telco providers, giga was launched to meet those needs as well as to provide consistent offers to delight existing customers resulting in giga’s subscriber growth quarter on quarter and highest NPS industry scores to increase by 42 in August 2020.

With the ever-changing competitive landscape, there were two key challenges within Singapore’s telco sector that brought about opportunities to grow giga subscriber base and meet consumer needs.

1. Intensified Competition
   The telco war is fast and furious, and it’s been more vocal than ever, now with new players joining the ranks of MVNO operators in Singapore. The scene is cluttered with more than 10 major players serving a price sensitive population of 5.7million in Singapore and with a mobile penetration rate of 152%.

2. Evolving consumer demands

• Digitally savvy customers who are savvy about the numerous contract-free telco offerings in the market and are not brand loyal. Unless they find a telco that treats them well.

• Data-hungry digitally savvy customers who are driven by high smartphone penetration, wanting value plans without being tied to a mobile contract laden with terms and conditions.

• The Singaporean consumer’s demand for high-quality, reliable, seamless online experience and the need for safe and secure transactions.

• The importance placed on a customised and mobile-optimised experience with the shift towards a “mobile first” mentality.

• The need for their operators to be responsive to feedback and queries. 

Strategy

giga’s strategy involved visualising the end state where the brand started with the customer experience and worked backwards to the technology. With that in mind, giga is set up with its own technology platforms (supported by vendors) and customer care support. giga’s technology innovation includes:

1. Real-time mobile service platform - which enables customers to purchase boosters, packs immediately along with real-time usage monitoring and alert triggers.
2. App and web development platform that is nimble, scalable platform that enables seamless and consistent customer journeys across both the app and web.
3. Digitised payments providing frictionless payment flow.
4. Digital ID verification technology that is real-time, fraud detection capability. giga is the first telco in Singapore to launch digital verification.
5. Delivery partner that offers next-day delivery for orders submitted before 6pm. Delivery hours are 9am-9pm daily including weekends and public holidays.
6. Digital customer care platform - omni-channel AI-powered chatbot named Gino, serving customers on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, giga app and Web.

GINO, the interactive chatbot has the ability to engage with intelligent conversations on channels such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Web and giga app. GINO offers predictable questions dealt with self-service smart bot supported digitally human enabled interaction. It also offers small talk enablement with localised language “Singlish”. GINO is trained regularly on multiple aspects to enhance customer experience through continuous machine learning.

This omni channel support powered by our AI chatbot GINO 24/7 and live chat was able to address the lack of customer support within the industry. 

By involving customers and incorporated their feedback in its creation and design process, it allowed giga to openly address problem areas and create a product and user journey that customers truly wanted and enjoyed using. The message of bringing customers the “best mobile service in an app” was carried thru Word-of-Mouth and Viral Marketing, delivered through social and mobile touchpoints. 

Execution

GINO was launched to provide timely support for customers by constantly appearing on the top right corner of every page in the giga app. Characteristics of GINO, the AI Chatbot includes:

1. Conversational maturity

Integrating specific natural language processing (NLP), GINO has the capabilities to understand the context of a conversation in multiple languages. GINO can also identify the intent of a question–what is needed– to provide an accurate first response, and also propose options to confirm or clarify intent.

2. Omni-capablility
   GINO converses seamlessly across multiple digital channels and retains data and context for a seamless experience. GINO serves non giga and giga customers on Facebook, Whatsapp, web and App.

3. Emotionally intelligent
   GINO can infer customer personality traits and understand sentiment and tone during an interaction to deliver a personalised experience or escalate to a live-agent when necessary.

4. Free to explore
   GINO can reach, consume, and process vast amounts of data– both structured and unstructured–to surface insights from any source - to gather relevant data to solve customer issues quickly. GINO has close to 10000 Intents today.

5. Pre-trained
   GINO is pre-trained to understand brand-specific or industry-specific knowledge and terms. GINO is also pre-configured to resolve common customer requests of the industry such as how to port-in, how to sign up, troubleshooting network problem or an APN setting. 

Result

GINO handles 90% of conversation volumes, enabling the business to run on an efficient cost model by reducing the need for live agent chat and it has more than 80% ChatBot Match Intents, thereby providing customers with top-notch customer support through the provision of accurate answers that meets their needs.

Through the campaign, the brand achieved the Highest Seedly Rating reviews among all Telco in Singapore to hit 4.5 ratings, to achieve Best Telco Mobile App and Best Ease of Porting for telcos (Seedly ratings, 2020), and it is also the highest rated app on the app stores amongst competitors in August 2020.