AB InBev traces its roots to thirteenth-century Belgian monks brewing vats of beer in their monasteries. 800 years later, AB InBev is the world’s leading brewer and aims to reimagine what a beer company can be. They utilize data and technology to connect with their customers and consumers and to create a favorable customer experience. The company has deployed intelligent automation (IA) across its business — from the back office to supply chain and sales — and recently was recognized with the Innovation Brilliance award as a part of the SS&C Blue Prism Customer Excellence Awards.

Challenge

AB InBev, home to 500+ iconic and local beer brands, is firmly focused on delivering a seamless customer experience. However, when a customer’s order contains an error — like listing a below minimum quantity, requesting more items than a truck can carry or seeking an out-of-stock item — the order’s delivery could be delayed. Staff didn’t have an easy way to communicate with customers to quickly remedy the error. They had to call or email the customers directly to fix the error, get the final confirmation and place the order. This impacted the service level agreement (SLA) AB InBev had with their customers, which affected their overall customer satisfaction score. The company’s profit margins were affected too since delayed orders were often canceled. AB InBev needed a way to establish a tighter connection between customers and back-end operations.

Solution

AB InBev dispatched SS&C Blue Prism digital workers, alongside several other technologies like natural language processing (NLP) and conversational AI, to quickly respond to customers when an order was incorrectly placed.

Now, when an erroneous order is received, a digital worker creates a ticket in AB InBev’s CRM. This triggers conversational AI to connect with an NLP solution to process the ticket description and extract the relevant details. A digital worker then accesses the customer’s master data to help the conversational AI generate and execute an email or a phone call to the customer. The customers are asked to make the necessary modifications, fill in the required data and submit the revised order. The order is then updated in real time and the digital worker closes the ticket in the CRM. Lastly, the digital worker closes the loop and notifies AB InBev’s back office to push the order for delivery.

The solution has established a unified communication flow between AB InBev’s customers and the company’s front and back offices. They’ve significantly reduced their turnaround time on erroneous orders, which has created approximately $1.2 million in value, and approximately $310 million in orders can be delivered 1.5 days earlier. And because this work is now automated, members of the customer experience team are focused on tasks that will generate new value for both customers and the company.

In addition to a faster turnaround time, customers are happy to have greater insight into their order status and AB InBev’s customer satisfaction (CSAT) numbers have increased by almost 40%.