A major telecom provider with 100M+ subscribers had reached the limit of its legacy IVR + agent-routed contact center. Hold times were creeping past 9 minutes; first-call resolution had stagnated at 52%; and the operational cost-per-contact was rising every quarter as call volume grew faster than headcount budgets.
Leadership wanted a 30% deflection rate without sacrificing CSAT — a target most peers had struggled to hit even with significant AI investment.
We ran a 4-week discovery analyzing 6 months of call recordings, identifying the top 50 intents that accounted for 78% of volume. Of those, 32 were genuinely self-serviceable with the right authentication, billing-API access, and conversational design.
The architecture: ServiceNow CSM as the system of record, virtual agents (ServiceNow + custom NLU on Azure for telco-specific intents like “my data is throttled” or “WiFi calling won’t activate”), seamless escalation to human agents with full conversational context preserved.
Two things distinguished this rollout from peer attempts. First, we treated authentication as a first-class problem — the virtual agent could verify identity to the same standard as a human agent, which unlocked 70% of the deflectable intents. Second, we ruthlessly limited the launch scope to the 32 highest-volume intents and didn’t add more until each was sustaining 90%+ task-completion rates.
Whether you're modernizing an existing platform, implementing new capabilities, or exploring AI-driven transformation, Mergen's certified experts will help define the right roadmap, scope, and delivery approach for your business.
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