Case Study – Retail

Executive Summary

DoorDash’s multi-sided marketplace faced challenges in efficiently serving Merchants, Dashers, and Consumers due to an outdated Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system with touch-tone menus. This led to frustrated callers resorting to pressing “0” to reach a live agent, causing misrouted calls. DoorDash aimed to improve call routing accuracy by over 35% for 15 unique call reasons in just eight weeks, while reducing contact center costs, enhancing customer experience, decreasing hold times, and promoting self-service.

DoorDash partnered with CloudCookies, experts in conversational design, to transform their customer support operations. CloudCookies’ phased approach included improved intent recognition, optimized conversational design, and launching new self-service capabilities, leading to a successful transformation of DoorDash’s customer support operations. By modernizing their Amazon Connect IVR and leveraging Amazon Lex’s Natural Language Understanding (NLU) capabilities, DoorDash achieved significant cost savings and improved customer service. The partnership enabled full automation of 8 voice self-service solutions for common issues like order cancellations, order picked up by another dasher, and store closures, resulting in annual savings of over $2 million. Furthermore, CloudCookies accurately identified the top 18 most common customer issues with more than 98% accuracy, delivering an additional annual savings exceeding $3 million.

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“In less than 4 months, we achieved measurable success with conversational AI and self-service while building repeatable processes for future engagements. We couldn’t have done it without CloudCookies!”

-Chaitanya Hari, DoorDash Product Manager

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Customer Challenge

DoorDash, a multi-sided marketplace, faced a significant customer challenge involving three key customer segments: Merchants, Dashers (delivery personnel), and Consumers. The challenge stemmed from their existing IVR system, which struggled to efficiently address the diverse needs of their customers. Callers, regardless of category, often encountered frustration due to cumbersome touch-tone menus and prolonged wait times to reach the appropriate option. Many callers resorted to pressing “0” to quickly connect with a live agent, resulting in misrouted calls. To overcome these issues, DoorDash set a goal of improving call routing accuracy by more than 35% for 15 unique call reasons within an ambitious 8-week timeframe. They aimed to simultaneously reduce contact center costs, enhance customer experience, decrease hold times, and encourage self-service.

DoorDash realized that addressing their challenges effectively required a strategic partner with a diverse skill set. This partner needed expertise in conversational design, self-service solutions, automation, and data analysis. Proficiency in machine learning was deemed crucial to enable modern and natural language interactions. DoorDash’s primary goal was to revolutionize their customer support operations through the implementation of an efficient and user-friendly IVR system. This system was envisioned not only to resolve existing issues but also to streamline operations and ultimately enhance overall customer satisfaction.

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Partner Solution

In the initial phase of the engagement, CloudCookies dedicated their efforts to enhancing the accuracy of customer intent recognition and routing. Their goal was to achieve a minimum accuracy rate of 75% for routing customer intents and an overarching engagement goal of exceeding 90% accuracy when comparing expected outcomes to actual results across 18 specific intents. These included tasks like updating account information, checking order status, refunds, unauthorized charges, general customer service requests, and resolving issues with orders.

To optimize efficiency, CloudCookies committed to an agile approach, targeting a rapid turnaround time for each phase. Their objective was to complete every phase within just two weeks, ensuring a swift deployment of improvements and solutions to enhance DoorDash’s customer support operations.

Phase 2 of CloudCookies’ solution for DoorDash, the focus shifted towards conversational design, particularly in identifying and enhancing personas for customers, Dashers, and merchants. This phase involved several key components, including theme and pattern detection using existing transcription data, word cloud generation to analyze contact requests, triaging self-service opportunities, and creating a self-service benefit heatmap from transcription data. CloudCookies also aimed to discover potential API integration points for comprehensive self-service solutions. They developed conversational design storyboards, tailored interactions, and an architecture that leveraged existing transcription and interaction data. Furthermore, they trained and fine-tuned natural language bots based on DoorDash’s existing transcriptions and interaction data. The solution also encompassed touch-tone DTMF fallback experience storyboards for each use case and robust error handling practices to enhance overall customer support capabilities.

Lastly, the primary focus in Phase 3 was on enhancing self-service capabilities for seven distinct use cases. This was accomplished through a comprehensive conversational design process that included voice input, natural language understanding, and yes/no confirmations. The solution incorporated architectural diagrams and involved the integration of AWS Lambda functions with existing APIs to facilitate self-service interactions. Performance tuning was a key aspect, with a focus on key performance indicators such as containment, intent accuracy, and word accuracy/error rates. Dynamic prompts were introduced to suggest self-service options based on user data and input.

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Additional features included fuzzy logic for order IDs, free-form input collection, custom slot types, voice collection for complex alphanumeric data, and CloudCookies self-service performance benchmark for regression testing. To measure the impact, containment, deflection, and engagement return on investment (ROI) were assessed to develop a business plan for future engagements. The implementation process aimed for operational excellence, efficient tuning, and the promotion of self-sufficiency, with CloudCookies providing break/fix support and staff augmentation for three months.

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Why CloudCookies

Results

CloudCookies’ solution for DoorDash delivered outstanding results, showcasing the transformation of their customer support operations:

• Achieved an impressive $5.0 million in annual operational cost savings (OPEX).

• Marked a substantial 218% increase in self-service adoption compared to touch-tone systems.

• Realized an 81% increase in self-service containment, effectively reducing the need for agent assistance.

• Reduced transfer rates by 49%, streamlining customer interactions.

• Enhanced First Contact Resolution (FCR) by 13%, ensuring more efficient issue resolution.

• Trimmed AWS expenses by 15%, optimizing cost management.

• Demonstrated remarkable improvements in accuracy with a 52% increase to 93.3%.

• Boosted adoption rates by 37%, reaching an impressive 98.8%.

• Successfully reduced error rates by 35%, achieving a 2.9% error rate.

Building on this remarkable success, DoorDash has strategic plans to expand its self-service capabilities further, introducing additional languages, expanding the range of self-service use cases, and implementing new machine learning-based predictive intent and routing capabilities on a global scale. These results underline the substantial impact of CloudCookies’ solution in revolutionizing DoorDash’s customer support operations and fostering greater efficiency and customer satisfaction.

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About CloudCookies

CloudCookies is a distinguished Select Tier AWS Technology and Consulting Partner, specializing in business process automation, conversational design, and self-service solutions. We exclusively harness the power of AWS services to provide innovative solutions for our clients. Our services cover consulting, migration, integration, custom development, training, and support, ensuring our clients receive top-tier expertise. What sets CloudCookies apart is our extensive experience and deep knowledge, making us the preferred choice for those seeking transformative AWS solutions that break the mold.

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