Committed to long-term, sustainable growth, Deutsche Telekom focuses on being a reliable partner for customers, society, and the environment. At the heart of their strategy is a dedication to turning customers into fans by adapting to and anticipating their needs. Deutsche Telekom integrates cutting-edge technologies to provide its customers with seamless, efficient, and personalized experiences.
Key Takeaways
- Deutsche Telekom turned to Rasa to overcome scalability, customization, and transparency challenges.
- The Frag Magenta AI agent became the centerpiece of customer engagement transformation.
- Rasa enabled rapid, iterative improvements with customer feedback driving development.
- The partnership is positioning Deutsche Telekom for future growth with CALM technology and voice-first AI.
As Deutsche Telekom advanced toward its strategic goal of becoming a leading digital telco, they faced challenges in their customer service operations. Aligned with their business strategy to revolutionize customer engagement, the company sought to offer superior, round-the-clock service. Deutsche Telekom created customer-facing AI agent Frag Magenta to meet this need.
Challenges
customization options
data constraints
Deutsche Telekom identified key areas to improve. Low ability to scale meant that fast turnarounds along with agile prioritization and development were needed to continue meeting customer expectations. Limited customization left the system lacking flexibility, constraining Deutsche Telekom’s ability to tailor solutions to their unique business needs. Lack of transparency in the vendor’s black box approach to data management prevented Deutsche Telekom’s control over their own data and intellectual property, hindering model performance improvement to their satisfaction. Recognizing the need to move beyond the current technology plateau, Deutsche Telekom’s management and CEO identified the necessity for a foundational platform to continue delivering exceptional customer experiences.
Therefore, they began seeking a solution that would meet the current demands and also adapt to the future of the rapidly evolving telecommunications landscape. They turned to Rasa to leverage conversational AI services through future-proof, next-generation LLMs. Rasa’s customizable and extensible services transform how customers interact, receive support, and engage with digital services. Deutsche Telekom was quickly impressed by the transformative potential of Rasa’s technology, its responsiveness, and the substantial cost savings it offered. This led them to commit to a long-term agreement, marking the beginning of a strategic partnership and redefining what’s possible in conversational AI. Adopting Rasa’s technology led to a more data-driven, customer-centric approach. Rasa’s tools allowed for rapid adaptation to user feedback, enabling continuous refinement of customer interactions and more personalized support.
The partnership also catalyzed organizational changes, reshaping how teams were structured and conversational AI was developed. The transition strategy included holistic implementation by deploying Rasa's conversational AI across multiple touchpoints (web, mobile, WhatsApp, and IVR) to ensure an integrated customer service experience. Iterative improvement was pursued by adopting an agile approach with twice-weekly releases to deliver updated designs and experiences to customers. Augmenting the Frag Magenta team with a Rasa Resident AI Engineer dramatically transformed Frag Magenta’s design and functionality. Conversation-driven development was prioritized, driving continuous improvement to the solution rate (Telekom’s north star metric) by leveraging the Rasa Platform to learn from real end-user interactions.
The team at Deutsche Telekom analyzed its extensive customer interaction data, examining millions of chat and voice conversations. Customer questions ranged from changing customer information to explaining unusual invoice amounts, helping with technical problems, ordering a new device, and more. This deep dive was crucial to identify ways to improve the system’s accuracy, thereby enhancing customer service speed and quality.
Results
Adopting Rasa’s technology has led to significant improvements and future goals. Handling 38 million interactions represents an anticipated increase in customer interactions handled by the AI. Resolving 10 million issues reflects the aim to effectively address millions of customer queries. Achieving higher solution rates targets a 40% solution rate in chat interactions. Maintaining customer satisfaction continues to uphold a high customer satisfaction rating of 4.4 stars.
Having already successfully implemented a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) solution, Deutsche Telekom is now advancing further by migrating to Rasa’s CALM (Conversational AI with Language Models) technology. This move signifies their commitment to an LLM-native approach, migrating parts of its agent to Rasa’s CALM technology, enabling them to continue delivering top-tier service. There are plans to integrate Frag Magenta deeply into the broader customer service framework, enhancing customer support's overall efficiency and effectiveness. Moreover, the company is focusing on voice as the next significant use case, aiming to create the best conversational IVR and phone experience for its customers.
