AI Anna Delivers Fashionable Interactions for JustFab Callers

The technology is a true virtual agent, rather than “just speech recognition,” says Justin Borah, director of global member services technology and product management at JustFab. “‘How can I help you?’ It talks to you like a person.”

Interactions has provided similar technology to “one of the biggest telecoms in the country,” Fox says. That installation recognizes more than 200 vocal prompts callers make, such as “Cancel my service.” The JustFab technology can’t recognize quite that many prompts, as the retailer has a limited number of repeatable call types, he adds.

Interactions works with each of its virtual assistant clients to understand their needs, Fox says.

“Typically we want to figure out customer intent and route that call immediately,” he says. “But some of our clients will say, ‘If a caller starts requesting an agent get them to one immediately,’ and others say, ‘Get them to one but first ask them why they’re calling so we can get them to the proper agent.’”

At JustFab, customers can always choose to speak to a live agent.

“If they do want to talk to an agent, we’re not putting a block in front of them, but this offers self-serve,” he says. “We’re not putting a touch-tone menu in front of them.”

The technology routes callers to the agent who can best meet their needs, based on the information they’ve given to the AI system, which further saves both the customer’s and retailer’s time, Fox says.

At the end of Princess’s call, Anna asked her the reason she’d be skipping payment that month.

“I don’t have funds this month,” Princess said.

Because the contact system is directly integrated with the JustFab customer relationship management system, Princess’s feedback—and all other feedback gleaned through the AI system—is directly routed to the CRM system. Feedback from calls taken by a live agent is also input into the CRM system, which then offers executives a bird’s-eye view into overall customer behavior, Fox says.

The price for the speech technology system is based on transaction, Fox adds. “So each transaction has a price associated with it,” he says. “There’s a transaction price for skipping a month, for checking an order status, for canceling an order, and JustFab pays when we serve that customer. If anything in the application fails, JustFab doesn’t pay for that transaction.”

The retailer has cut transaction costs considerably using the AI system and the costing model, Fox adds.

“We’re saying, ‘Here’s an order cancellation that normally takes your agents, say, five minutes to handle at a cost of X a call and we can do it for a lower transaction price.’”

In the future, Interactions may work with JustFab to add more types of repeatable transactions to the AI system.

“JustFab will come to us and say, ‘We’re getting a lot of calls of this type, how can we automate them?’” Fox says. “We’ll then look at how many calls like this they’re getting yearly and see how quickly we can generate an ROI on them.”

The retailer may choose to deploy Interactions’ mobile chat or online chat technology as well, Fox says. It could also implement Interactions’ voice biometrics technology on voice, mobile, or the web.

JustFab has seen improved customer satisfaction scores in the year since AI Anna’s been on the job, and those scores will only go up, Fox adds.

Princess, the caller who breezily thanked Anna at the end of her call, counts herself as one of those happy customers. 

App at a Glance

After implementing Interactions' AI Anna conversational virtual assistant, JustFab has been able to:

• automate as much as 40 percent of customer interactions using natural language technology;
• recognize a 35 percent improvement in call containment;
• directly route customer feedback from the AI system to the CRM system;
• cut transaction costs; and
• route callers to the agent who can best meet their needs.