Z-Bot (AI Voicebot)

ZTERS

AI Data

PROBLEM

ZTERS is a company that specializes in nationwide event and construction site rentals, offering a variety of services such as commercial waste services, dumpsters, portable toilets, temporary fencing, and portable storage solutions for construction and event sites across the United States. In most cases, ZTERS does not fulfill the order themselves – instead, it relies on its network of local vendors to fulfill the order.

As part of their operational processes, every time a new order comes in, ZTERS employees must make phone calls to local vendors in the area of service and place a new order. In addition, for each order, they must make additional phone calls to the vendors at various stages of order completion (for eg. checking the ETA of delivery or scheduling the removal of an item etc.).

Hence, for each transaction, ZTERS employees spend a lot of time calling vendors, navigating their IVR’s, staying on hold and eventually communicating with the vendor.

OBJECTIVE

The goal for Z-Bot is to leverage AI to execute some of the least productive tasks that are repeated with every transaction, thereby allowing ZTERS employees to focus on more important tasks.

For eg. For checking ETA on a delivery, 80% of the time, there is no issue, but other times there might be a complication. Zbot is intended to be a tool for employees so they can focus on the important 20%.

SOLUTION

We started by identifying the various call types that Z-Bot could potentially carry out. For eg. Checking on the ETA of an item delivery. Next, we listened to past call recordings and created a call flow for each call type (identifying the happy path and possible deviations). Finally, we built a voice-enabled AI solution that can navigate IVR’s and carry out a conversation with a human to carry out a specific intent.

When calling a vendor to schedule the removal of a product, Z-Bot can handle a variety of conversation paths to reach its end goal. It can handle questions like:

What item needs to get picked up?
Can you repeat that?
Hold please!
Where are you calling from?
Do you have an account number?
And more

RESULTS

Z-Bot is currently implemented for scheduling the removals of portable toilets and dumpsters and checking on the ETA of deliveries. Each phone call that Z-Bot makes averages ~5min, including navigating IVR’s, staying on hold and communicating with the vendors. ZTERS has ~1,000 removals every month resulting in thousands of potential man-hours saved.