Edenred
How powerful is AI customer service? During peak times, it can support 12 staff, and Yirui Smart relies on it to handle 80% of the services!
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How strong is AI customer service? During peak times, it can handle the workload of 12 people, and Yirui Smart relies on it to take on 80% of services!
As the electronic ticket market rapidly grows, Yirui Smart faces the challenge of soaring pressure on customer service during peak periods. To enhance service efficiency and customer experience, in 2022, they partnered with Wanjun Dento to introduce the AI customer service "Xiao Yi".
Data shows that AI customer service "Xiao Yi" now handles over 80% of customer service volume, equivalent to 12 real customer service agents during peak times, effectively reducing the burden on human staff. Furthermore, through precise data analysis and 24/7 service, Xiao Yi not only resolves 75% of customer issues but also helps the IT department flexibly adjust resource allocation, ensuring stable and smooth service.
More importantly, the introduction of AI customer service has significantly reduced negative reviews in the community, and the marketing team has witnessed how AI enhances brand trust. In this article, we will deeply analyze Yirui Smart's five major AI strategies, how they leverage technological innovation to enhance customer service efficiency, optimize brand experience, and drive business growth.
Brand Story
Originating from France, Edenred is a global leader in electronic vouchers and digital payment solutions, operating in 45 countries, serving 950,000 corporate clients and 52 million users, with a focus on providing innovative corporate benefits and digital voucher solutions.
Edenred has been in the Taiwanese market for over 10 years, partnering with more than a hundred channels and issuing over 200 million electronic vouchers, becoming a market leader. Its Edenred APP serves as a one-stop platform for employee benefits vouchers, integrating voucher management, promotional shopping, and the Eden Point rewards system to create a complete ecosystem of "spend–reward–redeem," significantly improving the efficiency of voucher distribution and usage, enabling both businesses and consumers to enjoy a more convenient and flexible digital voucher experience.
Edenred not only promotes the digitalization of electronic vouchers but also actively incorporates AI technology to enhance service efficiency. Through AI customer service "Xiao Yi", it achieves round-the-clock intelligent responses, optimizes brand service experiences, and demonstrates its strength in leading the market through technological innovation.
From Customer Service Pressure to Brand Upgrade: How AI Becomes a Turning Point?
As we reach the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2022, the customer service team at Eirui Intelligence faces a peak service period: the waiting message on the screen continuously climbs, the phone rings off the hook, and the team responds fully under pressure.
"Our customer service was almost overwhelmed by phone calls, 80% of the time was spent answering repetitive questions," recalls Winnie, Senior Customer Service Manager at Eirui Intelligence, with a tone of helplessness. Faced with service demand surging to 2-3 times normal levels, the traditional customer service model struggles to cope. Even more severely, these challenges from customer service directly impact brand image; "When experiencing a good service, customers rarely actively praise, but when issues arise, negative emotions are magnified," admits Cathy, Marketing Director at Eirui Intelligence. In the past, during coupon peak periods, when customers faced obstacles while using vouchers, their dissatisfaction often spilled over to social media platforms, with numerous negative comments under Facebook posts. "Managing a brand on social media requires strong psychological resilience, but when negative reviews start to affect the brand image that has been painstakingly cultivated, it truly increases the team’s pressure."
Facing dual pressures from customer service and brand reputation, Eirui Intelligence decided to seek a breakthrough. “The traditional customer service model can no longer cope; we must find new solutions,” says Cathy, the Marketing Director at Eirui Intelligence. Therefore, at the end of 2022, Eirui partnered with AI solutions provider NetEase to introduce AI customer service "Xiao Yi," hoping to leverage AI technology to alleviate team pressure while enhancing brand experience.
After the launch of AI customer service, the operations of the customer service team underwent a revolutionary change. "Xiao Yi was like a timely rain; during that year’s Spring Festival, we relied almost entirely on it," Winnie shared. With its powerful automation capabilities, Xiao Yi not only resolves 75% of customer issues but also supports over 80% of the total service volume, achieving the equivalent of 12 human customer service agents during peak times, assisting in reducing incoming call volume by 30%, allowing the team to focus on more challenging complex cases.
More importantly, Xiao Yi provides 24/7 online service, which not only resolves customer issues promptly but also effectively reduces negative social media remarks, enhancing brand trust, making the marketing team feel the value of AI customer service. "We now hardly see the negative reviews we used to," Cathy pointed out, "When issues can be answered promptly, customers naturally will not turn to social media to vent their dissatisfaction; this is truly a sigh of relief for the brand." She further emphasized, "We certainly do not expect all praise on social media, but as long as negative reviews decrease, the brand can steadily move forward."
Next, we will share how Eirui Intelligence successfully utilized five strategies to transform the service model with "Xiao Yi," effectively resolving 75% of customer issues and achieving a perfect 5-star customer service experience, becoming a model of AI service innovation for enterprises.
Strategy One: Insight into Needs, Creating Precise Answers with AI Customer Service
Eirui Intelligence's first step is to return to the fundamental question: how to accurately identify customer needs and respond quickly?
Senior Customer Service Manager Winnie shares that the intelligent trainers at NetEase treat the customers' perspective as if they "wear the customers' shoes," diving deep into service details to dismantle complex issues such as voucher activation, return processes, and APP binding tutorials, then reclassifying and tiering them, ultimately constructing a dedicated intelligent knowledge base.
This setup allows Xiao Yi to respond quickly with accurate answers even when facing cross-platform, multi-scenario demands. "Xiao Yi can not only resolve vertical repetitive problems but also provide dedicated responses across horizontal multiple platforms," Winnie explained, as the flexibility and accuracy of AI customer service allowed it to stand out in various application scenarios.
In the early stages of Xiao Yi’s launch, the problem-solving rate reached 50%, and with continuous optimization of the knowledge base, it stabilized above 75%, a figure far exceeding the industry average. "Data proves that Xiao Yi can efficiently resolve the vast majority of customer needs," Winnie added.
Thanks to the integration of the latest large language models (LLM) and natural language processing (NLP), Xiao Yi achieved a 99.2% problem identification rate, understanding customer intentions with almost zero deviation. Additionally, the direct answer rate reached 96.1%, indicating that AI can correctly answer most queries, significantly reducing human customer service interventions and maximizing service efficiency.
Strategy 2: Perfect Human-Machine Collaboration for 5-Star Reviews
AI customer service is not just a replacement for manpower, but also empowers the team significantly.
“After implementing Xiao Yi, it felt like we had three additional full-time customer service representatives,” Winnie described the support AI provided to the team. However, during peak periods, this number is even more astonishing—AI is equivalent to 12 customer service personnel, supporting over 80% of service demands! “Without it, we would have to spend time training more people, which not only increases costs but also raises the overall operational burden,” she added.
When faced with more complex demands, AI automatically forwards the complete issue to human customer service and provides the chat history simultaneously, relieving customers of the hassle of repeated explanations and ensuring consistency and efficiency in problem handling. This collaboration model not only doubles case closure efficiency but also sets new satisfaction records. “In the past week, both robot and human customer service satisfaction reached a full score of 5,” Winnie proudly stated.
The perfect results not only boosted team morale and reduced turnover rates but also allowed customer service representatives to find more fulfillment. From human-machine collaboration to increased employee morale, Xiao Yi's integration has completely rewritten the customer service model at Yirui Intelligence, injecting new vitality into service quality.
Strategy 3: Data-Driven, AI Enables IT to Predict Peak Traffic
The value of AI customer service goes far beyond instant responses; it lies in deep insights into user behavior, providing precise data support for decision-making.
Marketing Director Cathy pointed out that although the team was able to predict the peak of coupon issuance in the past, it was difficult to grasp the specific time for coupon usage. However, after introducing Xiaoyi, the precise insights brought by data analysis made everything clear. "The peak time for coupon usage is during weekend dinner hours," Cathy shared, "such data insights help the IT department promptly adjust resource allocation to avoid customer dissatisfaction due to traffic pressure."
Senior Customer Service Manager Winnie also shared a case that impressed her. On a summer weekend afternoon one year, the intelligent customer service suddenly received a large number of inquiries about coupon activation. "At first, we thought it was strange why there was suddenly a peak on a weekend afternoon?" Winnie recalled. Through Xiaoyi's data analysis, she discovered the true reason: "Because the weather was so hot, everyone chose to go to cafes and restaurants to escape the heat, causing a sudden surge in coupon demand."
"This is a detail we wouldn’t have noticed before," Cathy added, "Unlike the peak traffic that can be predicted when concert tickets go on sale. In our business model, it's hard to grasp when customers will use their coupons; these insights accumulate gradually from the data." Now, Xiaoyi's data not only reflects the changes in user demand in real-time but also provides specific data for the team to respond immediately. "The intelligent customer service directly presents the data; we no longer need to guess based on feelings, and the IT team can be more convinced of the authenticity of this data," Winnie emphasized, noting that such information transparency significantly enhances the accuracy of decision-making and execution efficiency.
Strategy 4: AI Understands Customer Emotions to Create Warm Services
To achieve a satisfaction score of 5, besides providing efficient answers, Yirui also focuses on how to continue the rhythm of real human interaction in conversations, making the dialogue warmer.
“We don't just teach AI to answer questions, but also to understand customer emotions,” shared Senior Customer Service Manager Winnie. Through the meticulous arrangement of the knowledge base and the tuning of dialogue emotions, Xiao Yi's responses are no longer cold standard answers, but a more humanized communication experience.
For example, when customers encounter issues operating the APP, such as “the ticket won't open,” Xiao Yi won’t just throw out a list of operational instructions, but will confirm step by step through simple Q&A: “Which platform are you operating on?” “Are you using the website or the APP?” This hands-on interactive design not only reduces customer confusion but also allows problems to be resolved more quickly.
“This design not only reduces the hassle of back-and-forth communication but also makes customers feel that Xiao Yi is more considerate,” Winnie added.
In addition to solving problems, Yirui Intelligence further incorporates a negative emotion monitoring mechanism into AI. When AI detects customer dissatisfaction or frustration, the system will immediately transfer the case to a human customer service representative to ensure that the issue is handled promptly, preventing the escalation of customer emotions. “Our goal is not just to solve problems, but to avoid emotional escalation and provide customers with a better experience,” emphasized Winnie.
Through intelligent guidance and emotion management, Xiao Yi is not just AI, but the most understanding assistant of customer needs, truly providing a warm service experience for customers.
Strategy Five: Continuous Learning and Evolution, Making AI Customer Service Understand Customers Better
Intelligent customer service cannot be achieved simply by setting it up once; it requires continuous learning and optimization to meet customer needs.
Winnie stated that every week she holds meetings with the customer operations manager Helen and the AI trainers team, reviewing the performance of the intelligent customer service. "We don't just look at satisfaction scores or lack thereof," Winnie explains, "we carefully analyze the customer's chat records and messages to identify potential problems, see which keywords need strengthening, and which answers require fine-tuning." Such meticulous handling helps the team accurately optimize service content, ensuring that AI responses can genuinely resolve issues, reduce repetitive inquiries, and make the service smoother.
Currently, Xiao Yi can cover the Top 10 common customer service questions, and expand into various scenarios including corporate employee benefits, gifts for small and medium enterprises, e-commerce, and bank points redemption, providing responses adaptable to different platforms. Through continuous optimization mechanisms, Xiao Yi not only stabilizes service but also reinvigorates the brand image of Yirui Smart with a sense of trust and professionalism.
The customer service team led by senior customer service manager Winnie (left 1), along with intelligent training team led by customer operations manager Helen (right 1), conducts detailed analysis to uncover directions for improvement from customer interaction records, creating a five-star service experience.
AI Empowers Brands, Creating Ultimate Service Experience
"AI customer service is not to replace humans, but to assist the team in finding the most suitable position and focus on more important matters," shared senior customer service manager Winnie. The successful implementation of Xiao Yi has not only alleviated the pressure during peak seasons but also stimulated the professional value of the customer service team, raising overall team morale and sense of achievement.
For marketing director Cathy, the success of Xiao Yi is reflected not only in service efficiency but also infuses vitality into the core values of Yirui Smart.
"While business volume continues to grow, Xiao Yi helps us maintain a stable and high-quality customer experience," she emphasizes, "more importantly, it truly embodies one of the five core values promoted globally by Yirui Smart—Passion for Customer—in every interaction with our customers."
With these five AI strategies as a foundation, Yirui Smart not only successfully transforms challenges into opportunities for innovation but also sets a new standard for service. In the future, we will continue to deepen innovation, from voice-to-text technology, multi-channel integration to internal process management, continuously upgrading AI capabilities to provide services that excel in both efficiency and warmth, delivering experiences that exceed the expectations of millions of enterprise clients.
